Tour of the Tours - Brewery Tours!

I love touring breweries. I think the whole process is fascinating. The stories behind the businesses and the buildings that hold them are super interesting, and the free beer at the end is not only the cherry on top, but also the three scoops of ice cream beneath it.

So come along with me as I tell tales of frothy glory and demystify the workings of six different breweries I've visited over the past few months.
They are...

• Yuengling - Pottsville, PA
• Harpoon - Boston, MA
• Sam Adams - Boston, MA
• River Horse - Lambertville, NJ
• Weyerbacher - Easton, PA
• Brooklyn - Brooklyn, NY

Their stories will be told over six different installments, and in no specific order.
I will judge them on three subjects:

• Brewery Atmosphere - general feel of the brewery, brewery location

• Tour Guide / Presentation - effectiveness/likeability/entertainment value of the tour guide, layout and execution of the tour

• Beer - self explanatory

Before I delve into the suds, let me first tell you about my personal taste. I'll start by saying I am not crazy about very hoppy beer. I don't like IPA's. I think that sort of hop flavor makes the brew unbalanced, as it dominates all other flavors in the beer. I enjoy variety as opposed to being faithful to one beer (I'm kind of lying... I like yuengling lager). Belgian beer is my favorite, particularly sour beer. The absolute best sour beer I've ever had was at Brugge Brasserie in Broad Ripple, IN. This place also happens to be my favorite restaurant ever, but that's another blog. I enjoy fruity beer, so long as it's refreshing and not overpowering (prefect example is McMenamin's raspberry ale, Ruby). I love trying unusual flavors like Rogue's Maple Bacon Donut or Wells Banana Bread. Oatmeal/milk/chocolate stouts are delicious. Lambic's are tasty, though not very beer-like.
I think you get the idea.

Tour of the Tours - Installment One

Harpoon Brewery - Boston, MA

Harpoon Brewery, my most recent visit, lies on the east side of Boston, right next to the ocean. The atmosphere of this place is bright and decorated. Aside from the wall of very old and rare beer cans, this single beer tasting/merch room has large windows on 3 of the 4 walls. It seems they went through an extensive list of possible business merchandise items ever, slapped their logo on every single one, and put it up for sale. This list ranges from hoodies to snowboards to growler koozies. The overall feel was exciting, though a bit commercialized. The room was small, but not cramped. I liked it.

Brewery tours were $5, and included a tasting glass to take home + beer samples (and of course, the tour!). Our tour was lead by two female tour guides, one of which was one of the dullest I've seen, and the other, one of the best. The better of the two was snarky and cracked some pretty funny jokes. She was a go-getter, and knew every answer to our questions. The other was a bit shy and lacked confidence. She knew the material, but simply wasn't a people-person. The two guides tag-teamed the tour by trading presentations back and forth while we walked through the warehouse, eliminating the time it normally took for a guide to push through the crowed and walk to the next destination on the tour. It was the smoothest presentation of all the breweries I've toured. And also, it was the only tour I've taken where they gave us beer samples throughout, and let us sample from the fermentation tank. The time spent actually touring before returning to the tasting room was about 15-20 short, but information packed minutes. Aside from the one lame guide, the tour was flawless and well thought out.

Ohhhh the beer. At the end of the tour, they brought us back to the tasting room and allowed us to have as many samples as we could wash down in the 15 minutes before the next tour. Needless to say, it ended the like this:

Anyway, they had about 12 beers on tap. Harpoon's pride and joy is their IPA, which you know I hate. But luckily, they offered many other, more tasteful choices to imbibe. I particularly enjoy their series of beer known as UFO (UnFiltered Offerings), in which "the unfiltered yeast remains in suspension, giving this style its signature cloudy color and a soft mouthfeel" (yeah, I stole that from their site). I thought the UFO Raspberry was pretty yummy. But their chocolate stout needed some work. It was definitely chocolate, but it was chalky, overly sweet, and just not something I would ever want. Don't worry chocolate stout lovers, you'll learn about a better offering down the road of this here tour of the tours. The best part, aside from the unlimited beer during a limited time, was the price of the beer. 6 packs were about $6-$7, pretty good right? Well 64 oz. growlers filled with beer were only $9.49, and that includes the price of the growler! ONLY NINE DOLLARS AND FORTY-NINE CENTS!! That means if I work at my job for an hour, I could get a full growler of beer and still have money left for some muchies! It's such a shame I don't live closer, or I would have taken them up on this steal. Really though, if we bought it, Arlo would have only wanted a sip, and I would have ended up drinking the remaining 62 ounces by myself to avoid wasting it. I didn't want to spend my last night in Boston with my face over a toilet. All in all, the variety that Harpoon has to offer is wide enough for any palate (they even have their own hard cider), and it's sold at an unbeatable price. It's really a winning situation. Some may complain that they charge $5 for their tour while other breweries offer tours for free, but it's totally worth your lunch money. If you insist on being so stingy, skip the tour and pick up a growler! This place is a must-visit if you're ever in Boston. It was an afternoon well spent!


Next Up: Brooklyn Brewery - Brooklyn, NY