Portland, Maine, is a hub of craft brewing in the United States, which might explain the surprisingly high number of young bearded men who drink IPA around there. There are craft breweries everywhere, it seems, and I had organised a brewery tour for the last day of the trip to take advantage of this. As it turned out, given that the high temperature for the day was a rather hostile -16 degrees, a hearty ale or two was just what the doctor ordered.
Our hosts were the Maine Brew Bus, which turned out to be a green school bus - one of the shorter models - and our guide, Alex, turned out to be a real aficionado of the brewing art, as she explained how the day would work, where we would go and what we might expect.
The first stop was at Thompsons Point, on the edge of the town, just beyond the railway station, where the Bissell Brothers Brewery is located. Their signature beer is called The Substance Ale, at a chunky 6.6% ABV. That was my first surprise, the sheer weight of alcohol content, as I explained, we tend to drink beers at about 4.2% ABV, with strong ales at 5-6%.
But not at Bissell Brothers, whose beer list includes Angels with Filthy Souls at 9.3% (a maple porter), Umbra at 7.5% (an oatmeal stout) and my personal favourite, Here’s to Feeling Good All the Time, a 7.8% double IPA. They also do an interesting Flemish ale with raspberries, whose name I didn’t catch.
We had a bit of a tour, with the brewing process explained, and I noted with interest that my fellow tourists were evenly split male/female, with the women just as enthusiastic about their beer as the men. It’s interesting that beer is becoming a lifestyle product, with the quality of the ingredients key to its appeal, and that whilst men do dominate the industry, their customers are more diverse.
But we had to move on, with a drive to Freeport, home of the Maine Beer Company. The first thing that I noticed was the artwork on their labels, in that it is very minimalist. One of the things about craft beer is that there is a link to art, with beer labels designed to attract the eye. Here, the labels were white, with the name of the beer, a small symbol and the name of the brewery, all relatively small. This was, apparently, deliberate, to indicate that their focus was wholly on the beer.
We were offered a flight of four 5 oz glasses, and I chose Pilot, a coffee stout, Mean Old Tom, a regular stout, Zoe, an amber ale and Lunch, an IPA, all of which fall into the 6.2-7.5% ABV range. The Pilot was very good, the others very drinkable, but the Mean Old Tom was pretty spectacular.
Time to head back to Portland, but with a hand pie to eat on the way - a vegetarian one. It was, from the perspective of a committed carnivore, pretty good.
Our last stop was at the Rising Tide Brewery in Portland’s East Bayside neighbourhood. I had already drunk their Ishmael, a copper ale, at the bar of our hotel, and was pretty impressed. The Waypoint, another coffee stout, was equally as good.
It was, all in all, an excellent tour. Not cheap, but certainly not nasty, and I would recommend the Maine Brew Bus if you’re interested in beer, and in particular, craft beer. They’re a fun bunch, engaging and knowledgeable, and I wish them every success in the future.
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