Lord Hobo

Praise of New England Craft Beer from Lord Hobo himself.

Some kind words from Lord Hobo Bossman, Daniel Lanigan:

Thankfully, much has changed. Now when I drive to VT I don’t even make it to Burlington. Starting at Whetstone, I can have a word class beer every hour as I head north. Worthy Burger. 3 Penny. Black Back. Pro Pig. Alchemist (sometimes). Hill Farmstead. Lawson’s (sometimes). Parker Pie. On my way to Portland from Cambridge I now stop at the new Smuttynose, I offer words of encouragement to Tod Mott in Kittery, and I roll on to Maine Beer Co before landing in the Industrial park that house’s Allagash, Bissel Bro’s, Foundation, before finishing my evening at Infiniti and Novare. I haven’t made it to Blind Pig or Black Back’s new joint yet, but I hear great things. In Boston, when I’m not at my own joint Lord Hobo, I see great Craft Beer popping up all over town. Stallwart’s like Deep Ellum. Newbie’s like Trillium, Mystic, Nightshift, Aeronaught et all. I see craft beer being poured at serious foodie joints like West Bridge and Row 34. And Worcester? Well, now we’ve got Armsby, and the Dive. A little further out we’ve got Treehouse… and if you make it to the 5 college area we have The Dirty Truth, High Horse, and now Seymour in Greenfield.

Pretty amazing to see that a lot of what’s listed here didn’t even exist three to four years ago. Craft Beer has been exploding in New England in the past few years, and being locally made is great, but the fact is these brewers are making some truly world class beer, too. Lucky for us here in Capital Region, all of it is within a four hour drive or less, with plenty of stops in between. If this doesn’t light a fire under your Upstate NY ass to get to beer traveling, I don’t know what will.

Check out Daniel’s full post on BeerAdvocate here.

Best Week Ever.

If you followed me on social media last week you know it was pretty epic week of beer and food. Let’s break it down real quick:

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America’s 100 Best Beer Bars 2014

Ah, another Draft Mag Top 100 list, another reminder to do more traveling outside the East Coast. Didn’t make much headway this year, as some of the bars I’ve hit in past (Bier Markt, Sunset Tap and Grill) are off this year’s list, so while I have hit four new places since last year, I’m only up to nine total.

I’m hoping to add ChurchKey to this list next month, Monk’s Cafe during Philly Beer Week, and surely Torst is in my sights later this year. How many of America’s Best Beer Bars have you been to?

EDIT: For clarity, I just want to reiterate, this is not my top list of bars, this is a personal recollection of the places I’ve visited that were featured on Draft Mag’s America’s Best Beer Bars for 2014. Please click through the link at the top or bottom of this post to see their full list.

Source: Draft Mag

Lost Abbey / Port Brewing and Sours at Lord Hobo

 

Lord Hobo was unfortunately a much quicker stop than I intended. I wish I had more time there to have a few sours but I just didn’t have time before heading to the Night of the Funk. I was happy they opened up early that day and I was able to stop by at all.

As you can see there was a pretty killer selection of sours there and if I had the chance and was there to split the bottles with friends I would have tried them all. As it turns out, the previous night was their The Lost Abbey / Port Brewing tap takeover and there were plenty of beers I would probably never see again on draft in my lifetime. I had a tough decision to make: sours or Lost Abbey.

As the sours they intended to have on draft that afternoon weren’t on yet, and the ones they had in bottles I figured I might be able to find again (maybe the next time I’m at Lord Hobo, even) I went with some Lost Abbey Deliverance; it sounded too nuts not to:

A blend of bourbon barrel-aged Serpent’s Stout and brandy barrel-aged Angels Share, Deliverance is the epic battle being waged between heaven and hell for the souls of mortal men… and your enjoyment in a glass.

Let’s face it, there was no way for this beer to go other than exceptional. There’s tons of stuff going on with this beer: Dark fruits are very apparent with a bit of chocolate, vanilla, bourbon, and caramel. It’s all over the place really, but it works very well. I’m definitely happy with my choice of the one beer I was able to have while I was there.

Before I even ordered a beer I noticed a few friendly faces from Hill Farmstead and Great South Bay. I already showed you guys Sean’s tattoo (although I did find out he has moved on from Great South Bay), and Shaun Hill and his crew were there having a few beers before heading over to the Cyclorama. I stopped over to BS with Shaun for a bit, and we got talking about what my potential options were for the Hill Farmstead Harvest Weekend.

Since we were going up to VT the night before the festival, we had a few different things we could do that night. Blackback Pub was definitely on my list, as they often times have more Hill Farmstead on tap than the brewery does, and it would be nice to check off a few beers that we weren’t going to get at the festival. Obviously, Prohibition Pig is right across the street from Blackback and was in the running as well, considering how great of an experience I had there last time. I’ve also seen some really great reviews of Hen of the Wood, which while not a beer bar, does have some great stuff from Hill Farmstead and other Shelton Brothers beers. Lastly, The Beer and Cheese Maven (Ruth Miller) offered to put together a tasting if we stayed at a bed and breakfast or lodge with suitable space to hold the group. It was a tough decision for me to make, but when I put them up to Shaun he was adamant that Hen of the Wood needed to happen. He was insistent that I go and make the reservation that second. Who was I to say no? (Hint: it ended up being one of the best, if not the best dinner I’ve ever been to.)

I had a tough time pulling myself away from Lord Hobo. I finished my Deliverence, said goodbye to friends and made my way to Night of the Funk. So far, the weekend was going much better than I could have ever expected…