Tour guides are always the unknown in the touring equation. You know there's going to be beer, and you can probably find a bunch of pictures of their brewery online, but the tour guide is almost always a surprise. Some breweries, like Yuengling, don't really need a great tour guide. The place sells itself. But others (remember Brooklyn Brewery?) need a guide that can convince a crowd of 100 tipsy, elbow-bumpin hipsters that they're having a great time, even without any free samples. The job is tough, and the crowds are thirsty, but put the right man or woman on the job, and the result will be customers that swear by the beer they've just tasted.
Unfortunately, giving free beer away can be costly for a brewery, so most rely on volunteers that may or may not be all that great at the tour giving gig. I've experienced situations where I thought they should be paying the guide a salary, and where I thought they would be better off letting the beer sell itself instead of having some boring, soft-spoken clown babbling on and on about things they don't fully understand. I'm no expert by any means, and I'm not saying I could do a better job than the worst of them, but it doesn't take an expert to know when someone is talking out of their ass! Needless to say, mediocre tour experiences result in the beer or brewery atmosphere needing to be really amazing for me to feel like I had a good time. And even though I'm not paying for the experience, it's in the brewery's best interest for me to enjoy myself so I continue to buy their beer. Tour guides, in a way, are the company's way of making a sales pitch to the public. A bad pitch won't kill sales, but it definitely doesn't help them. If you're going to make a sales pitch, make it a damn good one, or don't make it at all. No one wants their company to be remembered as mediocre.
River Horse Brewery - Lambertville, NJ
Lets get some of this terminology out of the way. For those of you that don't know, "river horse" is another name for a hippopotamus. And the name is fitting because the brewery is wedged between the Delaware river and the canal (though there aren't any hippos around). The two bodies of water make a nice cradle for this rather small place at the end of a quiet street. The brewery carries the quaintness of the town, and makes for a lovely stop on an afternoon jaunt. Even the interior is very fitting. The decor is tasteful and even a bit classy. The size of the tasting room, however, is very tiny. Twenty people in there would make a can of sardines feel more spacious. On this particular Sunday, it was full, but not cramped. And luckily so, as the rest of the brewery offered a similar amount of standing space. If there was one thing I could say about this brewery, it would be that they did not waste any room! They spoke of expansion within their current space (additional fermentation tanks), but they clearly need a few more rooms or buildings! I suppose such a thing would be difficult when you're the oreo cream of a canal-river sandwich.
Having arrived several minutes before the next tour, we decided to grab a few tastes first (more on those later). The tour was ready go before we were, so we quickly sloshed down our beer and shuffled after the tail end of the beer-enthusiast train. Our tour guide, a middle-aged, timid man who seemed a bit out of his element, lead us from room to room and explained all of the regular processes you hear on every brewery tour. He gave us the lowdown on River Horse history, and explained what an IPA is. (India Pale Ale - originally dubbed as such during the 1700's for it's popularity in India. The higher hop and alcohol content kept the beer fresh on it's trip from England to India, while other beers would spoil and go flat.) He spoke slowly and took great pauses between sentences. It wasn't anything drastic or incredibly awkward, but it definitely induced several yawns. I couldn't help but stare at the remaining two ounces of beer left in the glass he was walking around with, wondering if he was ever going to drink it. There were more than enough opportunities and moments minutes of silence to knock them back. I was more interested in those two ounces than in what he was saying, not because I don't like it when people don't finish their beer, but because of the way he was dishing out the information... boooooooorrrringgggggggggg. He did his job, and knew a whole lot about the ins and outs of the brewery and brewing processes. But above all else,
I was ready to lean back
against a pallet
of grain
and
catch
a
few...
Zzzzzzz.....
But maybe my expectations are just too high. Here I am, getting this free tour and usually free beer, and I'm also expecting to be entertained. A bit too much? I don't know. I just want to be excited about their beer! That's really hard to do when the tour guide's demeanor better lends itself to calming sugar-filled children with ADHD to sleep. I know he was a volunteer, and I know you can't pick the people that work for free, but tour giving is a pumped, caffeine-injected, people-person's world. Get me excited about buying your product or I'll buy something else!
The best part about my last statement is that it's not entirely true. If your beer is good, I'll buy it anyway. But every time I do, I'll remember the tour I took and wish it was more interesting! And then I'll think about tours that actually were interesting. And then I'll smile and buy some of their beer, too. Aaaannnd...
BEER!
That caught your attention, didn't it? Let's talk more about beer, and less about sleep-inducing tour guides. $1 got us 4 different 4oz samples. The two most notable were the Oatmeal Milk Stout, and Hop-A-Lot-A-Mus (double IPA). When I think milk stout, I think River Horse, and also about that adorable, little hippo with utters pictured on the side of the six pack. The beer and the box art are equally fantastic. This near-black stout is smooth and creamy, and has a bit of milk sweetness to it while being all malty-oatsy on my tongue. If there was ever a cow that ate oatmeal and drank beer all day, this is what the milk would taste like. Mmmmmm... ooooooooooooooo!
Hop-A-Lot-A-Mus is unlike any beer I've ever tried. I mean this in the way that I have never been so repulsed by the amount of hops in a particular beer ever before. By now, you should know that I'm no hophead, but this might have enough bitterness to scare away the lesser devout hop lover. It may have been that the flavor profiles were given to us in reverse order (in my opinion, it should go by color from light to dark - similar to tasting white wine before red). We had the sweeter, darker beer first, and this lighter, intensely hoppy beer last. I couldn't even finish the little, 4oz sample. I honestly almost got sick, and for this, I salute River Horse. Such an abominably hops-crammed beer has probably made several hop enthusiasts happier than a tot on Christmas morn'. I, however, will stick with my oatmeal milk stout!
They also have a beer called Hop Hazard. I've always made it a point to try IPAs when I go on tours, but given the history, I don't think I'd ever put myself through the trouble with this one!
It was a good time, and they really do have some tasty beer. A little improvement on the tour-giver, and they've got gold! Better yet, tastier beer! (Good times make beer taste better!) They're small, they've got heart, and they have my dollar. If you love hops, you're now bound to stop by and try this Hop-A-Lot-A-Mus nonsense. Just grab a cup of coffee before you go in case you take the tour. ;)
Hoppy Touring!
Next Up: Sam Adams Brewery - Boston, MA
No comments:
Post a Comment