2013 - A beery good year

One thing is for sure.  2013 cannot be considered a dull year for me by any stretch of the imagination.  All of the below photos are from Mobile Uploads to my Facebook page.

Things got started off in January with a trip to the Celtics game with my daughter and friends Brian and Matt. 

 

 

 

Dorff and I attended the Scotch and Game dinner at the BBC in January.

My daughter Stephanie transferred to Plymouth State U. in New Hampshire and on the weekend I moved her in I discovered the nice little beer bar and deli on Main St. Plymouth called Biederman's.

Most of the Winter was fairly quiet until IT came.  I speak of the dreaded blizzard of 2013 that left us covered in snow, without power, and freezing in the dark for almost a week.  Fortunately I had homebrewed Altbier to see us through.

Finally the icy grip of Winter gave way and I went in to visit with my daughters and friends in Boston for St. Paddy's day weekend.  We enjoyed a pint or three at the local Irish pub at Mission Hill.

 

 

For Dorff's birthday we made an excursion to Portland and of course met Dave and Sandi at Novare Res for some quality beer garden time.

And I can't forge the weekend Josh and Ray Jay came to visit along with the Obergs.  I believe we annihilated a keg of homebrewed stout that night.

 

April must have been quite as I have no photos from that month.  But then came the great beer excursion to Germany - Franconia and Zoigland (Oberpfalz) in early  May where I first found myself in the Schwemme at the great Schlenkerla Tavern.

I endeared myself to the locals at a festival in Merkendorf.

 

I did some phenomenal beer hiking in the Franconia countryside.

 

Drank with some new friends (Ronny from Scotland, Tony from England, and not pictured Jason from the Jersey Islands):

 

And at Metzgerbrau in Franconia with some older friends (Juergen and Elmar of Franconia)

And in Zoigland with some even older friends (Ingmar, Gunther, and Isa (not pictured) of Hamburg).

 

June saw the graduation of my niece Katie (far left) and I had a great time with family that weekend in Burlington, VT.  Here we are seated at dinner at the Farmhouse.

 

Next I got to finally discover the delights of McNeill's brewpub in Brattleboro, VT with the Bennetts, Jeff, and Sandi.  What a great little town Brattleboro is!

 

 

A business trip to Rochester brought me into contact with the wonderful Brown's brewpub of Troy, NY along the way.  I would learn afterwards that this is my niece's favorite brewery.

 

 

I did lot's of walking this summer around Sandwich and other parts of the Cape.  I probably saw more of Cape Cod this year than ever before.

 

 

Including the really cool place called Coonamessett Farm where they have weekly farm dinners and Jamaican nights in the Summer and you can bring your own beer.

 

 

After over two decades I reconnected with some old high school friends and we revisited a campground in Naples, Maine where we used to raise some hell when we were younger.  It was a great weekend and we plan to do it again.

 

Unfortunately it took the loss of a mutual friend of ours this year for us to get together again but on the last day of our weekend we did spread some of his ashes out onto Tricky Pond in Naples before going home.  Many toasts were raised that weekend to Gary.

 

 

Finally the summer ended as it does every year with a trip down to the Poconos for ECT where I brought 3 kegs and one cask of homebrew.  It was a great weekend.

 

 

In September Rick and I did a pub walk around the town of Sandwich and talked about a potential beer/hiking excursion to Franconia in the future.  A goal we will realize in the summer of 2014.

 

 

A business trip to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia gave me a chance to visit the amazing Blue Mountain Brewery.  This trip made me realize the scenery, the music, and the beer of this part of our country are all fantastic.

 

Later in the Summer came the Cape Cod brewfest where Dave, Sandi, and Bill held court together in the hall.

 

The following weekend in early October brought the cask event at Novare Res in Portland, Maine.  This years event was fantastic and I enjoyed such amazing beers as the Monchsambacher Lager straight from the barrel along a few other Franconian beers.  Hung out with Darlene and Steve that night and the next day went to Bennetts Oktoberfest. 

 

 

Then came the invasion of the Germans from Hamburg for a almost two week visit to New England that saw us pub crawl Boston and Portland.  A round of golf.  Some dinner on the Cape and a grand finale get together for RKN Winternights in Lebanon Maine (pictured below).

 

 

The Great Dorff and I made a spur of the moment day trip to Martha's Vineyard.  Something we should do more often.  We did do several day trips like this during the year around the Cape and the Islands.  We're lucky to live here.

 

 

Then came the deployment of "Brewhilda".  This amazing three tier brewing stand was made by my brother Craig and can brew two different 10 gallon batches of homebrew simultaneously.  We put it to the test in November while having a shindig at our house in Sandwich.

 

 

And on this day a Badger was met by two Cougars.

 

 

My daughter Jess and I decided to make a weekend trip up to visit my other daughter Steph at Plymouth State and we of course had to start at Biedermans.  Jess and I did a pretty decent pub crawl of Main St. Plymouth that night.

 

Then came my craft beer pub tour of Dublin in December where I met my wife on her way back from Hamburg.

 

A pint of Mountain Man Hairy Goat IPA at L. Mulligan Grocers pub in Stoneybatter, Dublin.  Possibly my favorite beer of the tour.

 

Finally Disney World with the whole family this past week.  I never walked so far and went on as many amusement park rides in my life.  Oh yes and there was that "around the world" thing at Epcot.

 

 

That's 2013 in review folks.  I don't know if 2014 will beat all this or not but I will certainly try to make it happen.  Happy New Year.

 

 

Franconian Beer Hiking

There are many things that for me make the Franconia region of Germany stand out culturally.  But if I had to pick one thing that is truly unique and something you really can do quite to this extent anywhere else it would have to be the ability to go on long hikes (I use the term hike loosely as these are fairly easy, albeit hilly, walks) and visit plenty of breweries and beer gardens along the way.  Biergarten Wanderungen they call it and there is plenty of options in the Franconian countryside to do this for the motivated and adventurous.

One of the most convenient routes that one can find using Bamberg as a base is the walk from Tiefellenern to Strullendorf.  This route is half of a much longer walk or bike ride that can be done in a section of Oberfranken often referred to as the Franconian Tuscany (presumably because of the beautiful rolling, agricultural terrain found there). 

One can find an online map of this walk here: Thirteen Brewery Walk

On foot there is no way one is going to do this entire walk in a day but it can be done over two days easily and there are places to stay overnight along the way.  I met up with some fellow beer lovers from England, Scotland, and Jersey for the day that I did the walk and we didn't quite hit all the breweries even along half the path.  We did manage to visit 4 of them but given more time there were two others as well as an extra beer garden or three that could have been managed along the trail.

The best day to go is on a Sunday since this is when all the places along the way open the earliest.  So it started out in the village of Tiefellenern that can be easily be reached by bus #970 from Bamberg across from the train station.  There is a good website that helps you sort out all the bus line #'s and schedules at www.vgn.de.  Yes it does help to learn a bit of German and spend some time studying this site.  Eventually you'll figure out how to pull up the correct bus line number and view the schedule like so:  http://www.vgn.de/efa9/efa99/vgn_www/TTB/00003dd4.pdf

Anyhow the bus left Bamberg at 11:25 and had us at the doorsteps of the first brewery by 11:51 am.  Leaving a solid 8+ hours of daylight to walk and enjoy good beer along the way.  The bus ride is very easy and convenient and if I had not left my camera on the seat it would have been less stressful too.  Luckily the bus returned 10 minutes later to the same stop after turning around and I was able to get back on and retrieve my camera thanks to the very friendly bus driver.  Brauerei Honig is the brewpub at Tiefellenern and it's got a nice beer garden in the back for when the weather is as nice as it was that day.

 

 

 

The beer at this first stop was a respectable Pils served in a ceramic krug and they gravity pour the beer from a barrel at the serving counter.  Not nearly the best beer of the days walk but a nice start.

One of the pleasures of this walk are how easy the trails are to follow and how well kept they are.  The first walk would take us from Tiefellenern about 3km mostly downhill to the next village of Lohndorf.  As mentioned in a previous blog post the beer and pub at Brauerei Holzlein is outstanding.  One of my top 10 Franconian lagers easily.

About a half hour or so of walking and the village of Lohndorf comes into view.

And before you know it you are working your way through the streets to the brewery.

It a little bit of head scratching to figure out what street the brewery was on but it didn't take too long.  It's hard to miss since it's a big blue-ish building right on the main street.

 

 

And before you know we are having a lovely lager beer poured right from the barrel by the braumeister himself.

 

Nice beer garden out back to even though we sat inside and had some lunch and a couple of beers.

It was tough to leave Holzlein but there was more places to visit a lot of walking in between so the next stop would be the village of Melkendorf.  This one took us up over a forested hill and was about another 3 kilometers in distance.  But what lovely views, firstly of Lohndorf behind us and then up through the woods and down into Melkendorf.

 

I love the mushroom statues that welcomed us to Melkendorf.

The brewery at Melkendorf is called Winkler and I've heard mixed reviews about it so I set my expectations for the beer somewhat low but it was actually better than I anticipated.  It was worth stopping for along the way at least on this day.  Maybe my standards aren't as high as some others?  But then again my hiking/drinking comrades for the day seemed to enjoy it as well.

The place might have the worst architecture of any brewpub I've seen so far though.  It was 1950's concrete block construction  no frills kind of place.  But a very nice shady patio was a good resting spot for two krugs of this beer.

After Melkendorf the brewery density begins to rise as the next 3-4km walk takes you to Geisfeld where there are two breweries and a great beer keller called Griess Keller.

This was probably my favorite part of the walk that day as the forest that you pass through is just stunning and is complete with beer signs to point you in the right direction.

We didn't have time to visit Brauerei Krug in town so went straight to the Griess Keller.  I've attempted to visit the Griess Keller twice before on previous trips but found it closed both times due to cooler than seasonable weather.  This time I was not to be denied and found this glorious bier keller open and the beer was every bit as good as I hoped.  Again they gravity pour it right from the barrel in the cellar.

There is so much more to do on this walk and I will do it again and again.  You've got Brauerei Krug in Geisfeld.  In nearby Rossdorf Am Forst you have Brauerei Sauer that also has it's own bier keller nearby and finally you can pass 2 or 3 other nice beer gardens and pubs along the way as you head back to Strullendorf where you can catch a quick train ride (5-10 minutes) back to Bamberg.

Can't wait to do this one again.