23 breweries, 1 festival and miles of beautiful New England (plus New York, that's not part of it, right?) and 13 days later, my liver emerges slightly worse for the wear.
"Epic" was the word often thrown at Nathan and I as we drove a 2010 Roadtrek 22' Camper Van from Newark, NJ, to Littleton, New Hampshire, and back. "You did like 90% of it," one guy remarked, "You just missed Maine." Yes, the Portland-to-Portland connection will have to happen another day, but still, we executed a phenomenal tour de bier focused on highly rated and respected breweries of Northeast America. These are the highlights.
Day 1: The Longest Beer
Wednesday, September 14, 2022
It sucks flying East; you lose a day. We were up around 6AM to catch a 9AM flight from PDX to EWR (the worst airport on the planet save for its proximity to the better parts of NY). We landed around 6:50pm, booked it to Ringwood NJ where we picked up the Roadtrek in the last trickle of daylight, and managed to reach Equilibrium Brewery around 8:40pm.
They close at 10pm on weekdays, kitchen closes at 9. Sweet. And sure enough, we got some BBQ fixins straight away, after oohing and ahhing at the concentric taproom space adorned by equations, Albert Einstein and Zeppelin III pinball. I want to be generous and accurate as I describe our experience. I know Eq. for its highly rated pastry stouts and its signature Photon Pale Ale. But honestly, we just wanted a beer. As we accepted the reality of $5 for tasters or $7 for an 8oz pour, I knew I needed to do a lot of damage quick.
"Ahh, I see you have a LUKR there!" Nathan declared shortly after we sat down, "Is the pils on draft there?" A few ten minutes later, our slow pours of pils were perfectly whelming. We had beer. And food - Poutine, Sliders, Ribs. Hell yeah. We quickly sunk into the MC^2 and I was thrilled they had a King Sue collab called "King Al" - it was fucking good, and fresh. Smooth as hell and no onion or plastic, but a tiny bit of hop burn, and it was undoubtedly chewy. But the real treat was the Coconut Rum Barrel Aged Alfajores. With 3 different nuts, honey and vanilla, it was like a coconut bomb. And for $12 for a 4oz fill, plus tax, it was approaching the bottle price for Nathan and I to each try one.
For us, it was an incredible start to dive right into some awesome beers. For the staff, it was just a Wednesday. While I was asking to see the for-here bottle list ("Nathan... we have to try one big badass stout bottle while we're here"), they were polishing dry glassware and bringing us our checks. Crestfallen, we settled a daunting tab and egressed the eclectic building around 9:40 (6:40 our time). The only saving grace were the 4x16 packs of MC2 and King Al we brought back to our campsite.
Oh, right, the campsite. It was my night to drive so I only got to have about a pint of actual beer, and we were staying at Beaver Pond Campground in Harriman State Park about 35 minutes away. No problem. We stayed up way too late (not not really, our time) finishing most of those four packs. Oof.
Day 2: Don't confuse All Day Allergy for Beano
Thursday, September 15, 2022
Two beautiful hungover boys got their bearings in the crotch of "Upstate" New York. I happened to know that this area of NY was a large Jewish population, including some Hasidic communities. And I was excited for what hopefully every Gentile was - deli sandwiches. We needed more than just pastrami and kosher bread though, so we showered and made a Kosher grocery run. I don't know what we expected. But we were dazed and hungry.
Most of the items in the kosher grocery were imported from Israel. Very kosher, not that fresh. Everything single sealed in plastic. That was regrettable as we tried to travel and live "small" on our trip. But the highlight was the Jerky Bar. They even had "biltong" which was a pale shade of the grassy, funky and impossibly thin strips I know from South Africa. But it was decent, and we killed some time waiting for 3PM when the first breweries open. We also just about cooked the brakes of our van bisecting Harriman State Park on Kaanawauke Rd.
Drowned Lands Brewery
In what will go down as probably my most regrettable moment on the trip, my virtuous attempts to spare Nathan the negative externalities of eating Mustard and Beer Cheese with, well, beer vis a vis Beano gave way to a sinister self sabotage. I packed two little baggies that were neatly vacuum seal-seperated with a bunch of vitamins, antacids, and enzymes. But I didn't want to pack 4 little baggies (that would cost another 12 cents...), so I grouped some pills together. Vitamins with vitamins, melatonin with Vitamin D for sleepies, and antihistimines with antihistamines. Pepcid AC is an antihistamine, so is All Day Allergy. And I put Beano with my Lactaid, as those are both digestive enzymes. Except hungover me just thought "Oh, you take the Pepcid with the Beano, they're together". In case you're wondering, All Day Energy and Beano are remarkably identical egg-shaped white pills.
So there I was, woozy in the van as we rolled in just after open. "Go ahead man, I need a bit of sleep," I told Nathan. He snores like a motherfucker and I barely got sleep after going pretty hard the first night. It seemed reasonable. Except I didn't really sleep in that van, I just felt high and weird (kind of like what 20mg of antihistamine will do to you the first time you take it in a while). Anyway, with a spinning and pounding headache, I finally joined Nathan around 4:45, content on hair of the dog. Nevermind the bollocks, these are the Drowned Lands.
The approach to Drowned Lands wasn't quite pastoral, but it is set in a lush green network of brick institutional-looking buildings. Turns out the brewery was the administration building for this campus for wayward youths. I think this is where Catcher in the Rye was set. And in a trend we'd encounter across our trip, plenty of money flowed into the renovation of the brewery. The taproom was modern, austere, a bit industrial. But after getting my delightfully appropriate 3% table brett beer and heading out back, that facade dissolved to a gorgeous backyard that included picnic tables and a tree-lined pond. The brett character they achieved was awesome. Soft, lemon zesty, slightly earth but decidedly un-funky. Maybe a tinge of wheat.
I could have stayed there for hours, which is how long it would have taken me to enjoy a few pints, but Nathan had already been there a while. My next halfsie was a witbier that used Pacific Jade - a hop I've experimented with in a wit - to achieve a orangesicle like creaminess. It definitely adds a touch of Vanilla. Nice beer. Nathan was gangbusters about the Marzen, so we took our pints onto the catwalk above their little brewery. That was a really neat touch and I hope they don't have to shut it down from people spilling beer or worse - glass. I wish I'd gotten to try the Marzen or more stuff, but Nathan wanted a change of scenery, so we grabbed a variety pack (that we were assured had some Marzen in it!) and headed up the road.
Tin Barn Brewing
What can I say, besides very little. Industrial Ag building, nice ourdoor space. Perfectly whelming beer and slightly burnt pizza. But at least we got food! It has some promise, but the beers we tried weren't really worth writing about.
So we headed back to the camp site, put on some TNF, had a couple more cans of Drowned Lands. Mmmmm... I'll miss those lands.
Day 3: Up That Valley
Friday, September 15, 2022
Hudson Valley is picturesque, with a rather wide eponymous river, beset on the east bank by Dutch and Irish blue collar towns. I had defeated what I later learned to be antihistimine exacerbated stupor and was ready to bring the Ruckuss on a fine Friday. We checked out, said goodbye to Nathan's raccoon friends sleeping in the recycling bin, and made our way up to Fishkill. Breweries around here don't open until 3PM even to very nice beer sojourners like ourselves, so we killed the time with a ~5 mile hike up Fishkill Ridge and back. Nothing like a good sweat.
Hudson Valley Brewery
In nearby Beacon, we descended upon a cozy industrial building in town, parked by the train tracks, and moseyed on in. It felt good right away. Pretty empty, but the bubbly staff were smiling and so were we. Look, another LUKR! Oh, we went straight for the pils. It was so good. Then we slinked around the brewery taking a few photos until a few of their mainstay concoctions: Culinary-inspired Sour IPAs.
And my experience was - cool beers. But even cooler atmosphere, and don't sleep on their other stuff. I eventually got to their table beer and it blew me away. Phenomenal character and complexity out of a 3% beer. I bought a bottle and a shirt and we headed off to make our next appointment.
Obercreek Brewing
Moving up a town on Highway 9D, we stumbled upon the driveway in what looked like a very residential neighborhood, to find a bunch of crooked parked cars on gravel in what was clearly a working farm. Beautiful.
The scene was what you want on a Friday night - full of locals, hanging out in the sun, eating pizza, chatting it up, holding their dogs on a leash. One of the little outbuildings was serving as their tasting room, and since they too had IPA, funky farmhouse beer, and stout on tap, we pretty much took it in that order. The DIPA was great. From my notes: "Big creamy juice bomb. Oddly not as hazy as the Cascade Pale ale." The grisette was quite mellow, also lemony (I'm sensing a trend... does everybody just still Shaun Hill's yeast?), wheaty. But the finisher was a phenomenal standard strength coffee Stout aptly named "French Press". I told the brewer I was a coffee roaster but he wouldn't spill the beans on where he sourced it, but I would guess it was a blend of Kenyan and something else, medium roasted. It was rich, and added a ton of body to the beer and depth of roastiness. You love it when the name telegraphs what to expect from the beer. Thanks for the best pizza yet, and off to the next farm.
NOTE: You're going to see what looks like a lot of two dudes drinking, and driving, and drinking, and driving more. As romantic as I want to make each stop sound, Nathan and I worked out who was driving the next leg beforehand, and managed our intake accordingly. Since everywhere had small tasters, we each got to try a little bit. Sometimes we'd just share a bit of that beer.
Plan Bee Brewing
Another 10 mile jaunt up the valley took us through Poughkeepsie proper, to the outskirts-but-still-very-much-in-town shared private road that led to Plan Bee. We were taking the van about 15 mph but a lady on the first property gave us the "slow down" sign and the disgusted look from when Gandalf enters Bag End.
With a bunch of green grass to pick our parking spot, we rolled in around 6:30, just in time to catch a local 60th birthday party and band on the stage. I thought it was just live music, but it was my turn to drink so let's not let a good buzz get in the way of narrative. The taproom was cool. Concrete pad outside with a basketball hoop and plenty of barrel hoops too. Inside was like a barn turned inside out, dimly lit, maybe where you'd slaughter and hang a pig some hundred years ago. There were local provisions like cheese and kombucha, plus a nice peek-a-boo into the upstairs portion of the brewery.
I've loved Plan Bee for quite some time. In fact, they are the prompt to include New York and Hudson Valley in the "New England+" beer tour at all. Zone 6 was one of my 3 favorite beers of 2019, with its quince and blackcurrant. Beautiful oak, tannin, and balance. The beers we had that night, which would be... all of them... were equally delicate and lovely. We met Evan (who Obercreek dubbed "a total sweetheart") and I got to talking shop real quick. He was generous with the pours, the details on how they coolshipped downstairs but maintained the bee-based culture for the rest of the beers. His spontaneous 2021 beer was my favorite. I didn't bother checking things into untappd, I was just in the moment loving it, like a first visit to Cantillon. I wish I had some notes, but I may have something better - three bottles to enjoy at home. Goodie.
Three winners on this Friday, we scurried across the river to boondock in some lady's driveway in Ulster Park. Today was a good day.
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