Boston - Part 3 - Boston Beer
By far the biggest unintended consequence of starting this blog was the portal it created to new friendships. As the years have gone by, I've met some great people I might otherwise have never crossed paths with. For this, I am incredibly thankful. Although explaining my "Internet friends" to some of my local friends is often first greeted with a skeptical eye of "What the hell is Mike up to?", concerns are quickly vanished, as the adventures made possible thanks to the bridge of the Internet are truly extraordinary experiences. Our last full day in Boston is a great example.
A few years ago, my friend Todd of BostonSake.com, reached out to me. Like me, Todd has a love of technology, food, beer and something else I've always wanted to know more about, Sake. His Beer-Sake hybrid, is not to be missed. As a chance to meet, Todd first encouraged me to attend NERAX, the New England Real Ale eXhibition, but my schedule never meshed. So, low and behold, as we started talking about a weekend trip, Boston rose right to the top of the list. Not only would I finally be able to meet Todd over dinner, he invited all of us to spend some time touring the facility of his daytime job, the Samuel Adams Boston Brewery.
First up, an apology. On Friday night, we met Todd, and his wife Amy, for dinner at the Cambridge Brewing Company. None of my photos turned out, which killed me. It's too bad, as it was great for all of us to spend the evening with Todd and Amy. Cambridge's beer, which is brewed on premises, was fabulous. The food was also stellar. Between the charcuterie plate and the lamb shank, I was quite the happy boy. This is just the sort of place I wish we had access to in Dayton; fresh local food, fresh local beer and a packed house. It's a great combination.
After a great end to Friday, fast forward to Saturday morning where we took the subway to head towards the Boston Brewery. Arriving just a little bit before noon, we left the subway station and noticed a fairly large group of people walking all in the same direction. I believe it was Zoë who asked if they were all headed toward the brewery. After a few minutes of walking, it was apparent they were. Never in my wildest dreams did I realize just how popular the brewery tour was.
Walking with Beer
The line was out the door, but since Todd referred to us as "his people", we had a feeling we were in line for something a little bit more special than the average tour. We were right.
Todd figured on a busy Saturday, roughly a thousand people take the brewery tour. I'm not surprised. The waiting area, museum and gift shop were packed. This was a popular destination.
Our first mission from Todd was beer. He was thirsty from setting up and so were we. As we clutched our glasses of Whitewater IPA and Alpine Spring the departing tour groups walking past us, some looked on us with beverage envy. Their tour was ending and ours was just beginning with a pint. Good times.
Over the first hour, Todd walked us through the official parts of the tour. In the "ingredients room", Todd gave what I thought was one of the better discussions on hops and grain. It certainly was much better than anything I've tried to string together.
As we walked, we played a balancing act of staying out of the way of the tour groups.
We would sneak out to the middle of the brewery and then, when a tour came, sneak back out of the way. It was a lot of fun.
This is the original Boston Brewery, which before being purchased by Jim Koch, was owned by the Haffenreffer Brewery. Today, the Boston Brewery is home to their R&D and smaller batch work. Almost all of the bottled Samuel Adams Beer is brewed at their Cincinnati and Pennsylvania breweries.
Although I've only toured a handful of commercial breweries, I'm always amazed at the scale. Making beer, for the most part, is making beer….everything is just bigger, cooler and a lot more shiny!
The brewery is also set up to do small five gallon batches with what I thought was some pretty sweet equipment.
I would love to put one of these conical fermentors on my birthday list.
After Todd gave us a great look at the brewery, we started to take a look at some highlights not on the normal guided tour.
Our first stop, and by far my favorite, was the Barrel Room.
Inside the Barrel Room are three large wooden casks, or tuns. Assembled on site by hand, these tuns hold a type of beer used for the base in the Samuel Adams Barrel Room Collection.
When Todd gave us a taste, I immediately remembered it from when I had tried the American Krieg. It was definitely there.
To give an idea of scale, the tun holds 134 barrels. A barrel is about 30 gallons. A half barrel, aka the typical keg, is about 15 gallons and when we brew at home, we use 1/6 barrels, which is 5 gallons. So, one tun is just over 4000 gallons of beer. With our current capacity, the Backyard Brewers would be brewing forever to fill one of these things up.
Besides the tuns, the barrel room also hold other casks, most notably for Utopias.
Utopias is a special limited release beer, most noted for his it's high 27%-ish ABV and price, over $140 a bottle.
I think Gary joked about tasting it, but Todd was dead serious and poured tasters all around.
Wow, what a treat. Utopias really reminds me of a port. It was incredibly sweet and very, very good.
Although I'm not one to run out and drop over one hundred bucks on a bottle of beer, I may have to rethink this. Seeing as the longer Utopias ages, the better it gets, I may be able to justify this purchase as a special annual holiday treat. Part of me is regretting getting a taste, as now I really want to buy some!
After trying a few other beers in the Barrel Room, we headed next door to a larger room, that happens to be a large refrigerator.
It was here we walked past rows of kegs and shelves of hops. The grey containers at the bottom of the picture above are holding hop pellets, nothing unlike what we would typically use at a Brew Day.
This room also contained some local beer experiments pulled off by one of the brewers.
Todd gave us each a taste of a ginger porter which was going to be put on in the tour center later that day, it was better than great…and that's not just the Utopias talking. I really hope it ventures its way into a Single Batch or something bigger.
Walking through the next room we discover the beer library. Starting with Jim Koch and extending through all employees of Boston Beer is one word: quality. To this day, Jim still tastes every batch of beer that heads out for distribution. As part of the record keeping and quality control process, they organize samples of every beer shipped in the last year. We continued on through to the tasting room and the lab, where all of the beers are examined and analyzed.
For all of the times I forget to take a gravity reading, half of the stuff in the lab would make any brewer's life better, or in the case of my hack brewing skills, perhaps a little humbling!
Speaking of scale again, the grain mill used by the brewery is really just a larger version of the mill we us, albeit ours doesn't have a digital scale and fork lift access.
We continued along to the outdoor beer garden and then back into the brewery to wrap things up.
It was late in the afternoon and the last tour groups were just wrapping up. We spoke to, and overheard, a number of the tour guides. They all were very good and all appeared to have a great passion about the brewery. That sort of spirit is contagious.
In fact, it was readily apparent to all of us that Boston Brewery really promotes a family atmosphere amongst its employees. By "promotes", I don't mean by direction, I mean it occurs organically. I think it just happens, like getting beer from yeast and wort. Starting with Todd, there was not one person we ran into that didn't have that twinkle in their eye and the understanding that they were a part of something much larger than themselves. Their spirit was infectious.
Boston Beer was built on Jim Koch's idea that great beer should be held to a high standard with fresh ingredients and no adjuncts. Starting in his kitchen in 1984, Jim's work throughout the years helped usher in the craft beer movement and with all of that, it's hard to believe they have just 1% of the overall beer market.
Boston is an incredible city and our trip was fantastic. By far, our time with Todd at Boston Beer was the capstone of the weekend. Todd is a great guy who showed us an amazing time. From one "Internet Friend" to another, I send my heartfelt thanks! I think we will need to get together again very, very soon.
