One day with a car and I’d start on Industrial Way for Allagash, Battery Steele, Austin Street, and Foundation (good mix of styles). They are basically all next to each other. I’d skip Bissell Brothers but I think their beer is overrated considering the hype and superior competition all over town- plus they are a single destination which eats into your one day limit, and you can drink their stuff everywhere.

To tick a few more places, you could then head to East Bayside where you’ll find Urban Farm Fermentory (excellent ciders/meads/kombucha but forgettable beers) and across the street is Lone Pine and Goodfire which are very popular with the hophead set. There is also the original Tandem Coffee shop in this neighborhood if you need an excellent caffeine fix. Alternatively, there is also the Coffee By Design flagship store around the corner. Across the street from there is Rising Tide (and the another Austin Street location). This is all a short walk within what amounts to a two-block radius.

Straight up Fox Street (driving or 7-10 min walking) onto the Hill and you’ll immediately find Maine Craft Distilling next to an outpost of Island Creek Oysters which is good and cheap. A short stroll down Washington Ave and you’ll see a cluster of places including my favorite spot- Oxbow Blending and Bottling. Pay them a visit if you’re looking for more saisons and mixed fermentation-style beers. As an added bonus, there is an outpost for Duckfat– skip the lines at the main spot and stop here, instead. Next door to them is Maine Mead Works and Hard Shore Distilling, which makes an impressive gin. Other-than-Duckfat favorite food options are here depending on your mood, and all are excellent- Izakaya Minato for Japanese street fare, Terlingua for the best BBQ in town, and Công Tử Bột for pho.

Sticking with tap choices, take a right and head down Congress St. which brings you to the downtown/Old Port area where an original (with all due respect to The Great Lost Bear) excellent beer spot lives- Novare Res. I recommend everyone stop here if they’ve never been. They have a tasty but limited food menu as well. It gets nutty in here at peak times so I suggest a visit early afternoon on weekends/early evening on weeknights or right when they open. For okay food but a great tap list, there is also The King’s Head just off Commercial St. If you’re looking for cheap but good food and more great taps- seek out The Mash Tun on Wharf St. $6 grass-fed burgers all day is the best deal in a town with few good deals outside of happy hour. Also nearby is Liquid Riot which is a brewpub and distillery with the world’s most uncomfortable bar stools. Central Provisions is a spendy, indulgent place for small plates but is fantastic- hype and all. But if you want to skip the waits and get an equally great experience, check out Sur Lie. It’s a short walk from CP and is as good or better, plus they have a killer happy hour. Both places also have a small but good tap list.

Further down Congress you’ll find other notable spots outside the Old Port like Slab (excellent tap list and lots of carbs to eat), Arcadia National Bar (craft beer and classic arcade games), Dutch’s (great breakfast/lunch, not a beer place), Nosh (good taps and an indulgent menu), Empire Chinese Kitchen (good tap list and excellent Chinese-not-Polynesian food). Keep on going, and you’ll be near Little Tap House (great beer list, good upscale pub food).

That brings you to Longfellow Square which has Boda (long waits for amazing Thai), Pai Men Miyake (great drafts and those pork buns and Paitan ramen!!), LFK (interesting crowd and good draft list- avoid the food other than the deviled eggs, seriously). LFK is a good place to wait for a table elsewhere.

This is just scratching the surface. I’m going to forget a lot but other good spots: Bunker Brewing, Salvage BBQ, Bramhall, the whole Eventide/Hugos/Honey Paw food empire, Blue Spoon, Duck Fat, The East Ender, Piccolo, Bonobo, Bearded Lady’s Jewel Box/Hunt and Alpine/Blythe and Burrows for your fancy cocktail fix, Miyake, Blue Rooster, Local 188, Hot Suppa, Rose Foods… the list goes on and on.

The bottom line is that it’s easy to find good beer now in Portland and beyond. I think it’s more a matter of hitting a few key spots like Novare and some breweries and then picking from the virtually infinite delicious options in dining. My one complaint about Portland is that all this exceptional food and drink is expensive. Happy hour is a thing, so 4-6pm (sometimes even earlier) is where you can save a few bucks. The city is awash in mostly great options so you can skip Sebago, Gritty’s, Geary’s, Shipyard and Sea Dog. (Plus if you’re inclined, you can drink most of their stuff all over town with better food!)

I recommend the Bier Cellar, Bow Street Beverage, and RSVP as the best bottle shop options. Avoid the touristy options in the Old Port and their hefty markups. Whole Foods has a big beer selection, lots of quality spirits, too. There is also a restaurant here (Somerset Tap House) that is forgettable food-wise but has a really excellent draft list! Of course, there needed to be craft beer and grocery shopping. Also out there on Forest Ave is The Great Lost Bear, which is the original pub to get a good beer around here since ’79. It was a place to avoid for a while (bad food, dirty lines) but my occasional visits in the last couple of years have been good. It’s next door to Maine Brewing Supply which is notable for having a great specialty grain selection. It’s also the sneaky spot where you’ll regularly find the odd new release that has sold out elsewhere…

Only one day is barely getting started. Have a great time!

Pulled this 6+ year old monster out of the cellar. “The blend consists of: 31% Double Double Barrel Ale, 29% Sticky Monkey, 27% Parabola, 7% Velvet Merkin, 3% Good Foot, 3% Black Xantus”

Has a little bit of everything- figs, chocolate, bourbon, oak, maple syrup… very smooth, no heat. Absolutely delicious.

Oxbow Brewing Company’s Belgian imperial stout aged in stainless and apple brandy barrels, around 10% ABV. This held up well. The brandy notes have faded away but notes of port and oak round out the smooth flavors. This has aged gracefully.

A few shots from our Summer 2016 trip.

The warmth is officially here and we’ve had a great albeit dry stretch of weather lately to finish out the Spring and usher in Summer. Rain in the forecast as I type this, anyway. Today marks an obscure personal milestone: meeting a new neighbor younger than me. They moved into the only other house near us recently and we hadn’t met them yet. We crossed paths by chance and I got a great first impression. But that just capped off a day of polishing up the rough edges around the homestead.

After some weeks of hemming and hawing about brush mowers and walk-behind string trimmers I finally pulled the trigger on a DR model. Remember those late night ads? Marketing works, kids! That said, I had forgotten about the ads until someone mentioned it.

So this trimmer is a revelation with what is essentially weed-whacking on steroids. The typical gas-powered handheld numbers are all I’ve used. With the DR, being able to manhandle 40lb of spinning fury on top of a Briggs and Stratton between two big wheels was really fun…and a sweaty workout. It has instantly replaced both my regular trimmer and push lawnmower and is less work than both, to boot.

I have started the huge task of clearing the invasive strip of tall grasses, weeds, trees, and shrubbery that are invading my field. Over the course of the Summer, I’ll be clearing as much as I can. It will all culminate with a huge bonfire this Fall. That’s the plan, anyway!

Onward!

Let’s talk about “mike’s HOT HONEY”!

This stuff is awesome. I was first introduced to chili-infused honey a few years back on a swing through Greenpoint, Brooklyn. A friend of mine took us to a great pizza spot, Paulie Gee’s, and there is a pizza there called “Hellboy” which consists of fresh mozzarella, Italian tomatoes, soppressata piccante, Parmigiano-Reggiano and Mike’s Hot Honey. The sweet/salty combination is the dinner version of maple syrup with your breakfast sausage/bacon, with the added kick of hot peppers. And all you get is the heat, it’s not pepper-flavored honey! Just pure honey sweetness with burn.

After my meal at Paulie Gee’s, I went home with a bottle. It didn’t last long, and frankly, I kind of forgot about it after that. Recently I had a pizza at When Pig’s Fly in Kittery that had Mike’s on it and that was all it took for me to order a bottle straight from the source. I’m reminded of its greatness on Otto’s pizza night at the homestead.

Just another great condiment to have around, I highly recommend it.

The 2016 sugaring season got underway early this year. Thanks to an incredibly mild Winter which saw record-setting temperatures throughout- the sap was flowing early and often. Some tapped at the end of January but I waited until the 3^rd week of February. Last year, I had 6 taps flowing. This year I decided to up that number to 26.

Relatively speaking as far as sap collecting was concerned, I was slightly disappointed. I figured there would be so much sap, I couldn’t boil it all with my equipment. Realistically speaking, the outcome was pretty much on-par with exactly what I was capable of processing. I made around 96oz of syrup (¾ gallon) last year but I didn’t keep track of how much sap I collected.

This year, I have been keeping prodigious notes. We’ve had some cold spells, which have slowed the flow but every day or three I’m collecting between 5 and 10 gallons of sap. Yesterday, I finished a 20 gallon boil, the highest so far this year. It yielded an ounce or two over a half gallon, about 66oz. The running tally so far is about 2 gallons of finished, 66 brix syrup.

I suspect there are only a few more days of sap running as the temperatures have been trending up. No more freezing nights and warmer days. The buds should be popping soon. Overall, it has been a successful season. Despite having tapped 26 trees, at least 10 of them produced poorly. Bad enough that they shouldn’t have been tapped at all! But this is part of the learning process and nature’s ebb and flow–you never know what you’re going to get year-to-year.

Being a homebrewer has made this an easy hobby to take up, although it’s rapidly becoming its own beast. Making syrup is not only fun but completely addictive. Using a 40 quart commercial braising pan and my 72,000BTU burner, I’m able to rip through sap pretty well. One of the strategies I learned this year was to preheat the sap before adding it to the pan. This has helped cut the boil day down from all day to most of a day. My recent 20 gallon boil started around 1pm. I pulled it from the big burner and finished it on the stove–another 90 minutes–at 8pm.

I’ve been very happy overall with the 2016 maple season. When the season officially concludes and my sweet, sticky maple nectar is packaged up I’ll update this post with additional notes.

4/5/16 update: So in the end, I was able to craft just over 2 gallons of syrup. Much of it was packaged up for gifts and the rest, shall we say, will make ourselves and our breakfast guests happy. I also made a few gallons of a maple wine which I plan to age for a year and open during the 2017 maple season. My goal will be a sweet wine, destined for pairing with a dessert.

5/29/16 update: So the maple wine is tasting really good, if not a bit hot. I used the stalwart Lalvin EC-1118 and didn’t actually take measurements! I figured I’d wing this one. I fed it for about a month, degassed, and added nutrients during the first week or so. Once fermentation stopped I kept adding syrup until it was sweet enough for my liking. Now it will age. I haven’t decided if I want to oak a portion of it but I think oak would really complement the maple.

2/2/17 update: Closing in on one year of bulk aging. Moderate sweetness with no burn. It has smoothed out nicely and definitely has an assertive maple character. Prior to bottling, I will infuse some with coffee and vanilla beans to play with the flavors a bit more. Very happy with how this turned out. Label design underway!

Surprisingly tasty. This was the latest bottle coming from the [simple_tooltip content=’This is what I call the cases of beer that I need to drink ASAP, and have sat on for too long cellar cleanout collection. I was actually surprised that it tasted as good as it did, with an almost port-like quality. I put a stopper in it to see how it drinks later tonight.

(This post is really meant as a test to see how the mobile WordPress posting works.)

I’m not a big music person, but I really like Trampled by Turtles out of Duluth, MN. Progressive folk, I suppose you’d call it? Here they are covering an Arcade Fire song. I didn’t even know who Arcade Fire was until I looked them up. Needless to say, this is way better than the original as far as I’m concerned:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-UqPQ7ORGM

Not a bad little lineup by the fire pit last night. Synthesis, Arboreal, and Stillbow (still!) were all drinking nicely. I quite enjoyed the Goods From The Woods beer, which I missed out on since I was unable to make it to the event last month.