Hi all you Craft Beer Drinkers! For those who don't know me, I'm Jeff from DrinkCraftBeer.com and I'm (along with Co-Founder Devon) am slightly obsessed so you don't have to be. I only clarify why I'm obsessed because this morning (Tuesday, April 21st, 2009 for those not reading this as I type) I found myself waking up at 6am on purpose for the second time in recent memory. The last time was to write Professional Brewer for a Day and involved a life threatening commute through an epic blizzard. Why would I do something so utterly dreadful yet again? Well this year Boston is playing host to the Brewers Assocations' National Craft Brewers Conference. DrinkCraftBeer.com managed to score press credentials to this event so we'll be reporting back to you all throughout the week, starting today with the Boston Proper Brewery Tours!
Each year, the Brewers Association sets up a series of brewery tours in the host city and surrounding areas. The Boston Proper tour included (from first stop to last): Beer Works Canal Street, Watch City Brewpub in Waltham, Rock Bottom Boston, Cambridge Brewing Company and Samuel Adams. This year, DrinkCraftBeer.com was on the tour.
After getting on the bus around 8:15am I was struck by how quiet everybody was. Actually, I was fine with it since I was still waking up myself. Coffee had been no match for this early morning. Around 9am we pulled into stop #1, Beer Works Canal Street. As the resident Boston... resident, I was able to answer many of the non-indigenous brewers' questions such as: "Why do you folks drive so crazy?" "How man people live in Boston?" "Is that the Boston Garden?" My answers, in order: "Because cows designed our road system, they're just paved cattle paths." "More right now than in the summer when the college kids leave." "Yes, that's the New Boston Garden." Around 9:05am everybody started to perk up. As you probably already guessed, this is when the beer started to flow. I grabbed a Houblon Rouge with Brettanomyces, which is their hoppy Belgian-style ale. The hops were strong with good bitterness, but the Brett really asserted itself and brought the funk... perhaps a little too much funk for this early. With beer in hand I followed Beer Works' head brewer up to the brewery where we were all intrigued to learn that they practice open fermentation in their brewhouse. While waiting for the other group to go through their tour, I also ran into the folks from HereForTheBeer.com. They do some great craft beer video content, definitely check them out!
With the remnants of the Beer Works tasting still littering the bar (top right), we headed back to the bus to depart for Watch City Brewpub in Waltham. Twenty minutes and some good beer discussion with my seatmate Brandon Wright, Head Brewer for Silver Peak Grill & Taproom in Reno, later we wound up at the doors of Watch City (left). We were met with a great tap list, as per usual, and an astounding assorted array of foods which quickly got devoured. I grabbed a sample pour of their Barleywine which, at nearly 9%abv, you could barely taste the alcohol. It had a great strong hop presence with a solid malt backbone to keep things civil. This was a tasty beer, although I think it was still too early for Barleywine. I sat with some of the brewers to discuss the offerings before us while small groups were led on a tour through the brew house. I figured I've seen a brewhouse before, so I took this time to talk with some beer brethren. Upon noticing the Chocolate Porter tap handled, I slyly turned the conversation to Taza Chocolate and Watch City's Taza Chocolate Thunder Porter. A few of the brewers and myself all ordered a pour of this chocolately concoction and it garnered raves all around. They loved the dry chocolate taste and mildy astringent finish. Towards the end of this tasting we were informed by Julia Herz, the Brewers Association's Director of Craft Beer Marketing and our friendly tour leader for the day, that it was time to get back on the bus. Next stop, Rock Bottom Boston!
At Rock Bottom Boston we walked into something we hadn't seen yet today... An already busy bar. This brewpub is right in the Theater District of Boston and is patronized by many of the local population as a lunch stop (sans beer, I assume). Undeterred, we took over the bar area and proceeded to do what we do best: sample beer. Head Brewer Scott Brunelle joined us and discussed the brewery and offered to take people back to see his cramped brew system. As people went back, I perused the tap list and ordered a Liquid Courage Barleywine (will I ever learn?). It was hoppy and balanced, with less malt than the Watch City version. A very well executed Barleywine if I do say so (right). After seeing the cramped conditions of Scott's brew system for myself we headed back to the bus and onwards to what many had been buzzing about: Lunch at Cambridge Brewing Company.
After a mistaken stop at John Harvard's in Harvard Square (I didn't think we were going the right way), we landed at Cambridge Brewing Company and did they ever deliver! They had 8 beers on tap for us: Regatta Golden Ale, Tall Tale Pale Ale, Cambridge Amber, Biere de Mal, Berliner Kendall, the Symposium Brew Audacity of Hops, The Colonel Barrel Aged Porter and Sgt. Pepper Saison. My first beer had to be the Berliner Kendall, Brewmaster Will Myers' interpretation of a Berliner Weiss beer. It is dry, very light and slightly tart. An amazing summer beer that, at 4.2%abv, you can drink all day long. Then we took a trip down to Cambridge Brewing Company's famous barrel room which, in my mind, is better labeled a dungeon (left). 
At best you can barely stand up straigt and, at worst, you're sometimes nearly crawling to get around. Somehow, though, the CBC folks have managed to fit over 50 barrels in here and are looking to do more. This allows them to almost always have a barrel aged beer on tap and, to be honest, I think the effort is worth it! After Will told us about his plans for expansion and future/current barrel projects we headed back up to sweet daylight and lunch. I ordered a pulled chicken sandwich with house made barbecue sause, which paired nicely with their Sgt. Pepper Saison, a Belgian-style saison with black, white, pink and green peppercorns added. This gives the brew a little heat and just the oomph it needed to stand up to the barbecue. The yeast was a little overwhelmed by the spicing, I thought it could probably have been a great beer without the pepper. But, with the pepper, it tasted great while eating my sandwich. In a rare move, I went for a third taste and grabbed some of The Colonel Barrel-aged Porter. This is their Charles River Porter aged in Buffalo Trace Whiskey barrels with Brettanomyces added. This adds some boozy notes along with a medium-strength English funkyness to the beer. It's got to be tasted to be believed. Everyone I talked to raved about both the Porter and the Saison.
While everybody still wanted more, the day was quickly dwindling and we still had one last stop to make at Boston's (and the nation's) largest craft brewery, Samuel Adams. After getting off the bus and into the rain, the Sam Adams staff quickly ushered us into a tasting room and poured us some of the freshest Boston Lager to ever be poured. Then, it was off on the tour. We heard all about the company and Jim Koch's trips to Germany to select hops, then the tour guide opened the floor to questions from our group of professional brewers. The guide answered each question, no matter how technical, very thoroughly and impressed a few people, I think. I was, however, more impressed with the fact that they had live hops growing inside their brewery! We moved on to the famous and traditional Samuel Adams copper brewing system (below left), a 10 bbl setup used for recipe development and to produce experimental batches and Utopias. The tour guide now answered even more technical questions from the brewers with a focus on water chemistry. So I'll move this story along to the point where we went into the Barrel Room. This is where Samuel Adams ages its Utopias and various other fun curiosities. The barrels are five high in some places with signs that mark them as geueze, cherry lambic, Utopias of various vintages, and mystery projects. We tried to persuade the guide to pop open some of the more delicious sounding barrels but were rebuffed. We were told we'll have to wait until tomorrow's hospitality event. 
They did pour us some Utopias, though, which was quite the consolation. This stuff is barely beer, but delicious! Closer to a fine liquor, it's sweet and super boozy at 27%abv. It burns a little but has a great, rich maple-like sweetness full of malty complexities! This is a beer you'll want to slowly savor in one or two ounce portions with a large group of friends. As we left the Barrel Room, which reeked of Utopias sweetness, we headed back to the tasting room to try some brewery-only offerings: a West Coast IPA with Chinook, Amarillo and Simcoe hops, a Belgian Double IPA and a Rye Ale. I tried the West Coast IPA and it was good! The hop aroma was a little lacking, but I think I should blame the Utopias for that. It was bitter with great hop flavor, these three hops worked well together. As we finished up, we were rushed back onto the bus as we were running a bit late. We boarded the bus and thus ended our day of brewery tours in Boston... but not our day of drinking delicious local beer!
Back in Boston, I met up with Devon and we headed down to Harpoon Brewery for the Welcome Reception hosted by the Massachusetts Brewers Guild. Many local breweries were pouring their beers and we sampled some more Watch City Taza Chocolate Thunder Porter, Watch City Bitter & Jaded ESB (right), Harpoon's Summer Ale dry hopped on cask, Harpoon's Barrel-aged Barleywine and finally capped our night off with some Mayflower Porter. The Bitter & Jaded was good, hoppy and very drinkable while the Summer Ale on cask was light and absolutely delicious. The Barleywine tasted almost like a glass of bourbon... it was good and the malt was solid and complex, the barrel aging just hit me hard! And, of course, the Mayflower Porter was delicious. We even ran into Ryan Gwozdz, Assistant Brewer at Mayflower, and Matt Steinberg, Head Brewer at Mayflower, which is how we found out that Mayflower recently brewed a Barleywine and racked it into some old Samuel Adams Utopias barrels to age for 6 months. Look for the release in January. We're super excited about it and thought it was a good note to end our first day at the 2009 Brewers Association Craft Brewers Conference on.