Shane: I love New England IPAs. They're easily my favorite beer style right now. But as I looked back on my beer selection for our last few posts, I realized that I have been pretty IPA-heavy. That won’t do. There are too many great breweries in New England doing amazing things outside the IPA genre. It's true, I did bring Alter Ego and beer.I.am, both of which technically fall under the IPA umbrella, but both beers are so different and unique that I couldn’t resist bringing them with me. Also in this batch of beers is Bissell Brothers' 2016 release of Seed, a fruit beer made entirely with local ingredients, and a selection from Liars' Bench, one of my new favorite places in town. Finally, there’s Mayan Mayhem, a spicy sour that stands alone as maybe the most interesting beer I’ve ever had. I look forward to seeing what the others think!
York: Bissell and Tree House making another appearance each. I’m yet to be fully bought into the lore of these places based on what I’ve tried so far, so I can’t wait to have some of the big, highly touted brews from them. Don’t get me wrong, beers like Swish and JJJULIUSSS have really wowed me, but not nearly to the level Shane and Pete hype them. There's some clear excitement in Shane’s description of a few of the real local beers he was able to grab and I always like a good story. Of those, I’m very excited to be getting some more from Earth Eagle since they blew me away when we visited, but I must admit that I’m reaaaaal skeptical about the spicy sour profile. Pete: Shane refused to tell me if he was stopping at Tree House before coming down to the beach. Lucky for him, he actually did. This was also a nice collection of new breweries that Shane discovered while up in New Hampshire as well as new beers from breweries we have already tried. I was excited to try a non IPA from Bissell as well as Julius’s evil twin Alter Ego. Actually, come to think of it, is Julius the good one? I feel like we all assume that Julius is the good brother, maybe it’s the evil one? Who knows? Tree House should get back to us on that.
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Shane: Honestly, I didn’t think I could top the last batch of beers I selected, but it seems like New England is just a never-ending fountain of incredible beer. I’ve been telling Pete and York that Khaos is my favorite Garrison City beer for quite some time, and it’s been frustrating for me to not be able to include it in a post yet. Finally, FINALLY I have managed to get my hands on some, and I’m very excited to see what these guys think. Also included are a couple of beers that represent something a little different: Rising Tide’s Maine Island Trail Ale is probably my favorite session IPA of all-time, Bissell Brothers’ Bucolia is a different take on a classic amber style, and Henniker’s Sour Flower is a sour that packs a punch of floral flavor. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk about the two beers here that I never thought I’d be able to get my hands on: Nothing Gold and JJJULIUSSS. Nothing Gold was a special release from Bissell Brothers in honor of their new brewery location, and it spawned the single longest line I’ve ever seen at a New England beer release (luckily I have learned to get there extremely early). JJJULIUSSS...well, I never thought I’d see the day JJJULIUSSS made it into cans. I’ll talk a little more about that when we get to it, but suffice it to say that York will finally get the introduction to Tree House that he deserves.
York: Lots of wishlist beers in this batch! Shane has been mercilessly talking up Khaos and JJJULIUSSS to us right from the get go. I’ve been even higher on the Garrison City beers than Shane so far, so I’ve got really high hopes for the DIPA from them. I also really enjoyed the Rising Tide beer we had a few batches ago and of course really dig the beers that our friends at Henniker make so a sour from them has me extra excited. On the opposite side of the spectrum, I’m typically less enthused with Bissell than the others (this is a VERY relative statement of course) so I’m glad to be getting access to a few more from them to really figure out what the disconnect amongst the three of us is. Talk about a powerhouse of summer beers - can’t wait to get started on these! Pete: Shane and I play an interesting game every Friday. Every Friday we check twitter to see what Tree House is canning because if it’s good sometimes Shane will throw caution to the wind and drive down to get it. The last few weeks, they brewery has really been pushing their release time back to when Shane won’t want to drive to Tree House just to get something he’s already had. Then they drop a huge beer by releasing an amped up version of Julius, their much admired IPA. Guess Shane had to drive to Tree House that day. And I am glad he did. I also really like the collection of IPAs here. Nothing Gold is very intriguing because I have not seen a new Bissell beer in a while. And more Garrison City and a great collection of New England IPAs isn’t a bad thing. Shane: Finally, we get to the beers I had on hand for our Beercation. Before I say anything else, do you guys know how painful it is to have three bottles of Mott the Lesser staring you in the face for over a month? Well let me tell you right now: it sucks. Mott the Lesser is probably the best stout and one of the best overall beers I’ve had in my entire life, and I had to save it for over a month until you guys were here. It hurt me. It hurt me DEEPLY. And that’s in addition to the rest of these beers. Two Tree House beers (if you read my post on Tree House, you know it’s one of my favorite breweries in the country), two Foundation beers, another Bissell Brothers beer, and a few selections from two other regional powerhouses, Liquid Riot and Grimm. Saving these beers has been brutal, but the result is almost certainly the single best lineup of beers I’ve put together yet.
York: So Pete and I figured we’d each bring a couple cool beers to kick off our New England trip with a taste of home. Heading into the trip, we’ve learned that Shane has a stockpile of beers from his favorite breweries waiting for us. He has been fawning over Tree House since we’ve started this project, so I’m pretty excited to try that, and we have had great experiences with both Foundation and Bissell thus far. Probably the most intriguing is the Mott the Lesser (not sure why, but I had been assuming this was an IPA until this trip) and the Grimm beers. This collection alone represents some of the most renowned beers and breweries in the country--what a way to kick things off. Pete: Shane deserves all the credit in the world for amassing this collection of beers. I was taking a bus up to Boston, so, I chose wisely with the beers I was putting together for space constraints. Shane took it upon himself (with no prompting) to get a huge haul. He saintly saved some Tree House and managed to find beer from Grimm Artisanal Ales, the uber-hyped gypsy brewer from Brooklyn. I could not have been happier because every day leading up to the trip, I felt like I was getting an update from Shane because he had found another unbelievable beer. Also saving Mott the Lesser for us? Come on. Amazing. This was an epic bottle opening. Shane: There are nine beers in this post, but there's no debating that Swish is the center of attention. Bissell Brothers' most beloved creation, Swish is a beer that people line up for hours just to taste. Which is exactly what I did. I'll talk more about it later on, but suffice it to say that Swish is one of my all-time favorite beers, so I'm curious what you guys will have to say about it. Other highlights from this group are the well-respected Calcutta Cutter (which sits at 92% on BeerAdvocate and 98% on RateBeer), the Lil' Heaven session IPA from Two Roads, and G-String from upstart Maine brewery Funky Bow. I also included two more Garrison City beers (although my personal favorite, Khaos, continues to elude me), as well as some goodies from Foundation Brewing's first ever canning run of Blaze. I tried to vary the selection a little more than last time, but in New England the IPA is still king.
York: So Shane's first set of beers had the most highly rated beers in it, and he has promised an even better collection this time. It seems that my excitement about the Almanac beer I included is matched or even outdone by Shane's enthusiasm for the Swish from Bissell Brothers. There are a whole bunch that I am really looking forward to here, and think this a perfect spectrum to have samples of back-to-back. Good variation across the light end of the beer spectrum and a ton of variety in the hop combos and ABVs. The Calcutta Cutter is probably the most exciting to me outside of Swish and its hype, and I'm really pumped about how many of these are dry-hopped too! The Hop Swap is an intriguing beer--keeping the backbone of the recipe the same each year but switching the hop type(s). I'd love to be able to try more than one year of this in the same tasting to see how much is controlled by the hops vs the rest of the beer. That’s a really cool concept to me. Maybe a visit to Sebago will provide something on that vein one day. Pete: Shane set the bar very high for the first post. Realistically, I wasn't sure if he could top himself because he said he wanted to mix in fewer IPAs. Thankfully he did not do that, and instead stuck to the beer style that has New England as the top IPA destination in the United States (and also the world). Bissell has been dialed in with everything we have tried, so Swish has the highest of expectations. I like that there are a few Garrison City beers too, because they really exceeded my expectations last time. This is just a cornucopia of hop goodness and I expect everything to be top notch. Not sure how Shane tops himself after this. P.S. the Amber Apparition has one of the creepiest can designs that I have ever seen. Looking forward to digging into all of these. Cheers! Shane: From Bissell Brothers in Maine to Treehouse in Massachusetts to Alchemist in Vermont, when you visit New England you’re never far from a brewery that has drawn national acclaim. From my vantage point in New Hampshire, I have access to some of the best, and I wanted to ensure that, for the first New England-based post, at least a couple of the major names were represented. I made a trip up to Portland, ME to visit the Bissell Brothers Brewery and grab a few beers. Bissell is a stone’s throw from at least three other breweries, including Foundation Brewing (some of whose offerings are also included in this post), Austin Street Brewery, and the more well-known Allagash. The area is basically a beer Mecca. I have to admit, my expectations were thrown out of whack during my first visit: with only The Substance and Lux on offer, it didn’t take long to get in and out. This created...well...let’s just say false expectations. When I returned a few weeks later for the Swish release, it drove home just how much of a big deal Bissell really is. So with that in mind, let’s dive in.
Pete: New England is my favorite location for beer right now. At first, I just loved Sam Adams and only wanted to drink their beer, then on a random Saturday Churchkey in Washington, DC managed to score a few cases of Heady Topper and that changed the game. The cloudy fruit-forward New England IPA was on my mind and I could not get enough. This beer list really excited me because clearly everyone in New England is producing these wonderful beers, and I had not tried most of these breweries before. York: I haven’t had much from the New England area before this. I’ve always been sort of apathetic to most of Sam Adams’ beers and just hadn’t been exposed to much else. I am really interested in wrapping my head around the 'New England' IPA and where if falls in my preference spectrum, as well as getting to try all the different hop combos listed for these beers. Looking forward to the complex and drinkable combo Shane seems to endorse from the region. |
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