Wayne and Sue's Mystical Vacation
The story of Wayne and Sue's Mystical Vacation. They told us this was a vacation to visit Sue's relatives and to see Woody and Missy in Vermont; but that was an unsuccessful attempt to disguise the true purpose of the trip. Don't know why they bothered, we were all impressed by the true purpose - the Beer Hunt. Not only did they hunt the elusive beer, they bagged 'em, tagged 'em, and brought 'em home.
Day 1 - Left Micanopy figuring to drive through to Maryland the first day. About the time we got to South Carolina we realized that we would pull in very late and miss any breweries or pubs in between. Checked the list I had pulled off the internet and found two brewpubs in Fayetteville, N.C., so we stopped there early for dinner, deciding to try them both. The first, Huske Hardware House was a magnificent building in the old part of the city. Too early for food, we ordered the sampler of homebrew. What a disappointment. There was potential here that was being lost (like some other place we know). The light was hoppier and tastier that Bud, the raspberry wheat had gone lambic (although it would have made a good lambic), the red was phenolic, the IPA wasn't and was spoiled, the stout wasn't, but made an all right light porter. At least the Scottish brown ale was good and they gave us a free growler of it to go. We moved on to the other one, Cross Creek Brewing Company. Dinner was good and the beer was great. Their brewer, David Towne, was an import from California and winner of many gold medal awards for brewing and was BJCP certified. We would have loved to talk, but he was not there either time we stopped. Grabbed a growler of IPA and three six-packs on our way out. Hard to decide which to get. They bottled all six of their regular beers and would pour up growlers of the ones that were seasonal beers. Had to take some of the Old Glory Oatmeal Stout, Revolution Wheat and Celtic Irish Red. Interesting, they posted both alcoholic content and IBU content of all their beers on the board. This was the last place we could get a seasonal brew to go. For a free country, we sure have some screwy laws, and they aren't limited to Florida. We trucked on up the road just a little more before stopping for the night.
Day 2 - Got to Richmond, VA a little early for lunch at Legends Brewing Company. Bless Mark for soliciting information and passing on directions on how to get there from Leroy Strohl, III. We would have never found the place. Originally, just a brewery, they opened up an area to give out samples and it grew to a sizeable restaurant, but remains in the industrial wastelands outside the city. Because we were brewers, they let us see inside the brewery, but they were not conducive to tours. Had to go to a local grocery to buy bottles since they only sold full cases, but he let us have a couple of bottles of brown ale that were loose. Their IPA was a seasonal beer and not in bottles and the law in Virginia prohibited them from selling us a growler of it either. This was the norm everywhere except NC. You had to go through a lengthy process to register each beer you sold in a bottle with name, alcoholic content and all and they just didn't do it for beers that were seasonal. Stopped over at my sister's in Maryland for the night.
Day 3 - Missed the road change to get to Baltimore heading north and ended up driving up the east side of Maryland on 301. Huge farms, no traffic, 4 lane divided highway, best leg of the trip for driving. Just as you enter Delaware there is the cutest town, Middleton, full of gingerbread houses like the Keys in the middle of nowhere. One day I will have to go back for the history of that town. Got to my nephew's apartment in Brooklyn around 6:00. Great neighborhood full of brownstone buildings all 4 stories high. He had the ground floor which allowed the back "yard" and a small garden for a mere $1800 per month. Everything was only a short walk away. He and his wife walked us to their favorite pub where my half-sister and her boyfriend met us for dinner. Brooklyn Beers on tap. Wayne was into the hefe-weizen, I liked the brown.
Day 4 - Hung out later than expected waiting for American Beer Distributors to open on Court Street. The bad - they had a huge display of Samuel Smith beer in clear bottles stacked in front of the window. The good - they had six shelves of beers in the back, most of which I had never seen in Florida. Spent $250 here on one of this and one of that, but 2 six packs of Brooklyn Brown. They threw in four pint glasses free. Took off for Vermont. Best time to leave New York City is Sunday, but it was still bumper-to-bumper. Hit Vermont around early dinner and stopped in Bennington at Madison Brewing. Another lost opportunity like MSP. The toned down their beers until they in no way resembled what they were calling it and all of them had the same off flavor like a chemical that wasn't properly rinsed out. Food was okay. Got to the cabin before dark.
Day 5 - Only beer related stop was lunch at local cafe. Only had three beers no AB quality and one was Sam Adams. We decided Otter Creek Copper Ale was better than Longtrail Ale, but neither was special.
Day 6 - Overcast and rainy so we went pub hopping which involved two cars, because George didn't go anywhere without his dogs. Went to Rock Art Brewery in Johnson. Would have missed it except for the sign. It's just a house with a small outbuilding that wouldn't have served as a one-car garage for Fred's Miata. Matt, the owner/brew master, designed all his equipment and had it custom welded locally. One of the perks of living in dairy country is lots of stainless and welders of stainless. The shack held his mash tun and his kettle, which was shaped, like half a barrel with gas jets running down both sides. He ran the wort down a hose into his cellar where he had about seven fermenters that were connected to a glycol system that regulated each tank separately. He was doing seven-barrel batches from this setup, which he kegged or put into growlers and sold, to local pubs and stores. The two growlers we drank of his beer were the absolute best beer we had the whole trip. We replaced those before coming home. Went on to Stowe to the Shed. Boy is Stowe yuppie city. Didn't expect much here. Boy were we wrong. Good food, great beer, super prices. Got half a rack of bbq ribs and a pint for $6.95. Pints were so cheap we skipped the sampler and each just got a pint to pass. Beers were to style and ranged from a light ale to an ale with 7 percent alcohol, a super IPA with assertive hops and a great stout. They even had an experimental wheat beer from an old English recipe with lemon and poppy seed instead of hops. Pretty good. This beer was second only to Rock Art. The pictures on the wall reminded us why we did not want to live in Vermont. In 1996 their original building burned down and it didn't melt an ice sculpture 3 feet from the front door because it was 40 below zero. Had to stop at Ben and Jerry's, but didn't take the tour but had a $3 waffle cone. Remember 10-cent ice cream cones? I do. Headed to Montpelier to a meadery, but it was out of business and gone. Rained like Florida on the way back.
Day 7 - It is Tuesday isn't it? Who cares, pass the Rock Art beer.
Day 8 - Raining again. Headed towards New Hampshire, Franconia Notch, my old skiing stomping grounds of my youth. Too bad it was too cloudy to see anything. Went to Woodstock Inn Brewery in N. Woodstock. Again, we were bowled over by the quality of the beer. They didn't have any of the maple porter, but they had a great oatmeal stout and brown ale, an IPA, a British pale ale, a tasty red and one of the best Bud-wanna-be lights that we tasted. Food was really good too. Stopped at the Italian Oasis which was supposed to be one of the oldest brewpubs in Vermont. Four beers on tap, none finishable. Stopped at Trout River Brewing. Small brewery run by a female. Three beers: a fruity IPA that was not really hoppy enough, a pretty good Scottish ale and a red that tasted like Killians that was her most popular. Got growlers of the first two and some neat t-shirts.
Day 9 - More rain, but the front is moving east and we are heading west to Burlington. Went to the famous Greg Noonan's Vermont Pub. Was a little disappointed, although the beers were still pretty good. The hefe had no esters and the best of his regular beers that came on the sampler was the red, but he had a special wee heavy scotch ale you had to buy separately that was super. Vermont has an alcohol limit of 7 or 8 percent but this tasted higher. Bought a growler of the smoked porter and a t-shirt and went to check out the other places in Burlington. Three Needs wasn't open yet at 3:30 but they told us to skip Reuben James, it wasn't really a brewpub, but come back at 4:00 so we went to the Magic Hat Brewery. This is a big operation, three batches a day, 100-barrel fermenters, surprisingly open fermented. Had a tour set up for the public and a tasting of their beers, which were pretty good. A little light for style but clean and tasty. Also had special made for a festival, lemongrass peppermint wheat that was pretty good. Got two growlers to go. Went back to Three Needs. Another big surprise. Little hippy bar with Grateful Dead posters, lots of piercings and tattoos, tie dye, Simpsons on the TV, but the beers they brewed were Vienna lager, Hefe weizen, Dortmunder, Belgian specialty and Trippel wit. All were to style and super. It was getting difficult to rate these places but this was among the top four. Found out they brewed in the cellar and sold some to other bars in kegs so we went around the corner for his schwartzbier, also very good. Much better beer than the Vermont Pub.
Day 10 - George and Janice Sue have bought a piece of property, now known as the moose bog, because there is one on the property, but there is also fantastic lake frontage. The only problem is that there is currently no road in and the road-to-be has to span a small (until spring time thaws) creek. We went to look at a steel bridge for sale that had been made from a railroad car. Vermonters are really big into reusing everything and this was lying around the property of a defunct scales company when the owner bought it. We then went to walk the moose bog, despite (of course) more rain, to check it out and see if the bridge would work. (It wouldn't) We then grabbed lunch in town at a real soda fountain in the drug store where blt's still sell for less than $2 and headed off to see the house Janice Sue's nephew bought. As luck would have it, the owner was there even though he is not living in the house, so we got a thorough tour, including all three floors and the cellar, which has an old ice box walk in cooler, where the blocks of ice were slid down a chute to keep a room, big enough for all of us to stand in, cold. Of course we had NO IDEA what that room could be used for, although it will probably end up a wine cellar instead of a lagering room. We are going to have to teach Stott to brew beer. Interesting piece of trivia we picked up here. School vouchers are not an issue, as towns don't have public high schools. All are private and paid for by town vouchers. Everyone chooses the school of their choice. Heading back we get to experience, once again, the local sport, Vermont Roulette. Since there are no staightaways, there are no passing zones, so people in a rush routinely pass in the scariest places. I wonder if the odds are any better than Russian Roulette...
Day 11 - Wayne and I set off to Canada in search of, what else, beer. It isn't far since Island Pond is only a few short miles from the border. Wayne took the time to remove the gun from the truck, but I didn't even remember I had a pepper spray in my purse until they asked specifically. Me and my big mouth. I figured they would just let me toss it. Half-hour later, we finally got back on the road. Entering Quebec province is like leaving the continent. This is the province that tried to secede from Canada. They are proudly French, and many don't speak any English, even though they live just miles from America. I have vowed to come vacation here sometime to brush up on my parlez francais. We found lots more interesting stuff here. The fact Canadians like their beer strong was very evident. They even have premixed boilermakers. We passed on those for the Belgians and such. I raised a few eyebrows with my big mouth coming back through customs. I was pretty excited and assumed the limit the liquor store told us was accurate. I don't know whether she was just shocked at the amount of beer we bought or whether is over the limit, but she let us pass anyway. Please, don't anyone ever ask me to smuggle anything!!!
Day 12 - Sunday again, and Wayne and I decide to head back to my sister's house for the rest of our vacation. Why two left wing, pro choice, democratic/independent pagans get along so well with two right wing, pro life, republican, super Catholics I will never know, but we always have a good time with my sister and her husband, so we have decided to spend half our time with them. We say goodbye to the panoramic views off I-91, slide through Woodstock, VT, the town the Rockefellers built, and leave the Green Mountains behind us as we enter the Adirondacks, although, for the life of me, I have no idea where they changed. We never left mountains. We started a little later than anticipated, so I reconsidered our lunch stop. There was a brewpub listed in Lake George, only ten miles off our route, and the next one was two hours away. We went for it, despite the detour, and serendipity smiled on us again. Here was a town that looked like all of New York City was here on vacation, certainly not my kind of vacation town, but up at one end was this great lodge like building, the Adirondack Pub and Brewery. They have only been open a year, but are doing it all right. The beers were great and they only served their own beer and a few, select micorbrewed beers. The food was also great, but the biggest surprise was that one of the two owners, Paul Flaherty, was tending the bar, so we were thoroughly entertained by descriptions of how the bar had been part of the original Royal Pines, where Sammy Davis Jr had danced on it in 1937, and they had found it in the back of an auto parts store along with the stage lights. Many of the other features and wood had been saved from old churches and cabins being demolished. We also did a lot of talking about beers and sampling of beers including a nice fruity koelsch that was not yet on tap and a great brown they had just tapped. These were really good beers ranging from light ale, with pilsner style hops, to a great stout with smokey overtones. The IPA was admittedly a little light on hops for style, so we talked about changing names instead of recipes. They made a super British Ale and and an American version of a hefe (fruity and hoppy). When the conversation switched to where we had been and where we were headed, we mentioned our desire to stop at Ommegang Brewery in Cooperstown. This long haired, hippy dude at the bar two seats down calmly told us it is not in Cooperstown, but in Milford. He should know, he works there and, if we stopped by after 8:30 in the morning, he would give us a personal tour. He was assistant brewmaster, Kevin Davis. That was too much coincidence to pass up, especially when another couple came into the conversation to tell us about the brewpub in Troy, Brown and Moran's, having been rated as one of the ten best brewpubs in the country. We changed our plans again and decided to stop for dinner in Troy and spend the night so we could be at Ommegang in the morning. Out of the Adirondacks into the Catskills, but still no break in the mountains.
Serendipity saved us again, we think, on the way to Troy. We got off the interstate in Saratoga Springs looking for the Mendocino Brewery, not thinking it was Sunday and wouldn't be open. We finally found the brewery, with the name changed and closed and wondered why fate had sent us on a wild goose chase, until we got back to the interstate and found it closed due to a very bad accident just south of Saratoga Springs. My gut feeling was that we would have been involved if we had not gotten off the interstate. Serendipity rode with us again into Troy. We found no listing for Brown and Moran's, but we found one for the Troy Pub and Brewery and a street name. Three bridges to choose from and no city map, we lucked into crossing the right bridge and picking the right street on pure intuition. "If I was a brewpub, I'd want to be there" and there it was. It was even Brown and Moran's, only renamed when the partners split. My impressions of the beer at the Troy Pub are probably badly skewed by the guy smoking the cigar and their poor choice of sampling glasses. They had ELEVEN different beers so they gave samples in these tiny, skinny glasses that got warm and flat too quickly and didn't allow for any aromas. It was like drinking out of test tubes. I may have also been suffering from some palate fatigue from lunch and I let them sit too long before I drank them (yes, I was talking). They seemed a little light for styles and non-descript, except I did note that the light lager had an incredible hopping. However, Wayne ordered a pint of the pale ale and it tasted totally different than the sample, more full bodied and malty, with good hopping, and it was only $2. I will never know what the other ten beers really tasted like, but I would go back to try them again for the first time. They were all clean and fresh-tasting and I'm sure I underestimated them.
As our luck would have it, we decided to drive on instead of spending the night in Troy. If we had not, we would have had miles of construction to pass through heading west on I-88. As it was, nobody was working and we passed smoothly.
Serendipity saved my butt one more time that day. As we got closer to Cooperstown/Milford I bypassed all the motels along the highway and got off to follow the secondary roads, looking for a quiet little mom and pop motel. I didn't care to unload all that beer and didn't want to leave it in the truck to be stolen in some motel along the interstate. Wayne was just about to blow up over the waste of time going through miles of little towns, when, there it was. Eight units and very private and only one mile from the turnoff to Milton. If anybody came across the truck, they would have woken us up trying to fight the bush blocking the tailgate three feet from our door. I could sleep in peace knowing the beer would be safe in the truck.
Day 13 - We got a very special tour at Ommegang. They aren't even open for tours until afternoon, but we got the works plus some. We were allowed access into the room where they open ferment and were allowed to climb the ladder to check it out up close. We had a private tasting. We bought a mixed case and they gave us some glasses and Kevin threw in a case of "chile beer", a batch that had non-viable yeast added at bottling that didn't carbonate that had been sitting around until they decided to give a case for "cooking" (thus chile beer) with the purchase of two. Actually, the bottle we tasted was a lot like an old ale, slightly oxidized, but very complex and somewhat carbonated despite the bad yeast. If it isn't drinkable as is, it will go into the next beer's priming bucket. Ommegang was named after a festival celebrating Emperor Charles V's entry into Brussels in 1549 and sits in a 135-acre farm in the middle of what used to be hops country. 80% of all hops before prohibition came from within 40 miles of there. Now they are almost all grown in the Pacific Northwest and only a few private patches survive. When asked what kind of shelf life the beer has, we were told four years, maybe longer, because the brewery is only four years old. Anyone who would like my notes of the brewing and spices used may have them. We will eventually have the yeast available from our yeast bank. We have had so many growlers to drink that we haven't even chilled the first Belgian yet. There are three brews 6.5, 7.5 and 8.5 percent alcohol, all very different from the spices, but all having the same malt, hops and yeast. We may have to have an Ommegang knockoff contest sometime in the future and send Kevin a sample of the best of them.
Sometime around lunchtime, we finally left Ommegang behind. The Catskills turned into the Allegheny Mountains, somewhere, and the wildflowers in New York managed to outdo those in Vermont. We managed to make it to my sister's in time for dinner.
Next few days - Family time broken by one memorable side trip to Historic Savage Mill, and old mill turned into a very arty type mall, with antique stores and a lot of art and restoration businesses. We ate lunch at the Rams Head Restaurant and Tavern inside, which had great food and really fine beer. We never did go out to find brewpubs while we were in Maryland. Wayne and I were getting burned out, and my Irish brother-in-law prefers just Guinness or some light American lager. The only one we really wanted to catch was in Annapolis and we found out it was the same Rams Head chain (if you can call two a chain), so we didn't miss anything. We did buy some more beer when we went to Mike's favorite beer store for more Guinness and found some we had not seen. We ended up commandeering Mike and Linda's cooler so we would have room. Total, four coolers, one large tool box and two cases full of beer, or was that three. Next time we bring a trailer.
The trip home from my sister's was pretty much a straight shot. Since we were coming to our house, it didn't matter if it was late, so we only stopped in Richmond for a little while looking for more Legends beer to replace what we drank, but we didn't find any. We also stopped at Cross Creek Brewery in Fayetteville to eat dinner and replace the beer we got there that was shared on the trip north.
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