In this episode we venture north to Harpoon Brewery to check out the Harpoon Championships of New England BBQ competition. We enjoyed some great barbecue, great beer and live music all outside on a beautiful Vermont summer day. This family friendly event offered all of Harpoons standard beers and all of their craft brew soda’s (unfortunately they hid the Leviathan brews for the day). We were hoping to taste some of the BBQ delights from the infamous “I Smell Smoke” team, however it seems they were completely sold out in the first hour of the event. Perhaps next year!
Overall this was a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon, my only wish was that I could have had a sample of two of the Leviathan Series. I was looking forward to taking home a growler of the newly released Big Bohemian Pilsner, but they were not offering it on draft. I guess we will have to give a call to Scott Shirley, head brewer at Harpoon Windsor, and give him a piece of our mind! Just kidding Scott…
I guess we will just have to order ourselves a case for our Putney Road Pub. So if you are in the Brattleboro area we hope that you will come join us for a pint!
We are excited to be heading down to Boston for this years Craft Brewers Conference. I am sure that we will get a bunch of great footage down there and it will be a nice way to say “hi” to some of the cool people we have met in our travels.
In their 26th year, the Craft Brewers Association puts on the largest beer industry gathering in North America. This will be our first year attending but based on the schedule and details we have read from others it promises to be much more than an ordinary trade show and conference. (No offense to the Professional Association of Innkeepers International PAII – whose also solid conference we just attended in Atlanta). But the bus tour of Boston area breweries, pre-party hosted by our friends at Harpoon and the promised special release and seasonal samplings really make this look like it has one up on the innkeepers…
If you are going to be down there, please let us know – we would love to hook up with some friends while we are in Boston! This will only be our second time in the city and we would love some travel advice…
In this episode we are invited up to Harpoon Brewery’s Windsor, Vermont location to see the bottling the forth beer in their new Leviathan series, a Quad. We jumped at the opportunity to get an inside look at Leviathan. We tasted the first in the series, Leviathan Triticus a wheat wine, in July of 2008 at the Vermont Brewer’s Festival in Burlington, VT. We were instantly impressed. We found ourselves equally impressed by the next two of the Leviathan series, the Baltic Porter and the Leviathan Imperial IPA. The good news is you can still find the Baltic Porter and Imperial IPA in stores, the bad news is Triticus was never bottled was only available in kegs, so it can not longer be found. However, according to Head Brewer at Harpoon Windsor, Scott Shirley, we will all have a second chance as they will be bottling another batch of Leviathan Triticus sometime this year. Scott was kind enough to chat with us and explain a little about the Quad and the Leviathan series, sharing whats next for the series in the interview (you’ll have to watch the video, don’t want to give it all away here!). If you are into heavyweight beers we highly recommend this Harpoon series.
In addition, Scott was gracious enough to show us around the newly renovated facility. Harpoon Brewery in Windsor, VT is no longer just a tasting room in the gift shop it is now a full fledged bar and restaurant. Open for lunch Sunday through Thursday (closed Mondays in Winter and Spring) and open for lunch and dinner Friday and Saturday. The new pub is beautiful with a spacious bar and dining room complete with a wood burning fireplace. Peek through the wall of windows to check out the brewery and bottling line, or take one of the weekend tours. There is more information on the Harpoon Website.
