I’m accompanying my wife to a seminar in Boston on friday 4/25 and since the sox are not in town I thought I might visit some breweries. I’m walking so I was thinking about the boston brew tour. Anyone do it?
Go to one of the real Boston breweries. CBC, Night Shift, Mystic, Trillium…
Also I recommend hitting up the Publick House in Brookline. One of the best beer bars in the world.
CBC, Night Shift, Mystic are on the tour. As well as Idle Hands and Downeaster cider. Sam Adams and lunch at a place called Mead Hall.
aH… “Boston Brew Tour” not “Boston Beer Company Tour” which is what I thought you meant. If they are going to those places, I think it’s a good call, and you won’t have to deal with either traffic or the T.
An update.Just got back from Boston. Went on the Boston brew tour. The Sam Adams tour was quit interesting and informative especially for people who don’t really know the brewing process. They only brew experimental beer and send it to local bars. The stuff they serve in their tap room is brewed there. I also got to trillium but didn’t get a tasting, apparently they had some licensing problems and are luckily still open. Nice location down by the children’s museum easy walk from town. I bought some squealers so I’ll taste it later. Idle Hands on the other hand has a really bad location. Not quite sure where we were but it was under a bridge in what looked like an abandoned wharehouse. Fantastic beer though, saisson are their specialty and they do them well. They apparently merged with a brewer from a brewery I think was called Enlightenment which specialized in lagers , we were served a Helles right out of the bright tank, very good. They love sharing their beer in the tap room. Probably can’t get any of their beer unless your in Boston though since they self distribute locally only. Night shift used to be next door but they moved up to a great place with probably the best tap room of the bunch, very busy , big bar lots of tables. The beers on tap were mostly IPA and pales but they change them. For cider lovers Downeast cider has a great place also, I’m not a cider drinker but they had 5 on tap and the were very good. As a side note I also had the Birkshire brewing co maibock which I really enjoyed. :cheers:
The Harpoon tour is a nice one. Nothing earth shattering, but the time is about evenly split between A) going over the brewing process B) going over the company’s history, and C) sampling. Plus, they keep the groups super small (like, 15 people for two tour guides), so during the sampling process, I got plenty of time to talk about home brewing with one of the guides. They also have a fair number of taps that are only available on site at the tasting room, which is always fun.
Location’s not great, in the seaport area. Not rough or dangerous, per se, but not really walkable from anything else you’d be doing while visiting the city.
