New Hampshire - Breweries in Planning & Road Trips

I've been really busy lately, and it's not going to get any more open for a while, so in an effort to get back on schedule, this post is going to be short on details and long on brevity. Except for that first sentence.


A couple quick updates before we get started. This past weekend I had beers from two breweries that I've mentioned in past posts. The first was Cisco (Massachusetts) Summer of Lager. I was surprised to see them on a menu in Philly, so I tried it out. I wasn't very impressed with it, maybe because it was pretty hot out and it was maltier than I expected for a beer with Summer in the name. But it's the first I've tried anything from them, so I won't write them off yet. The other was Flying Dog Tire Bite and it was a great choice for a hot afternoon.


Also, on Sunday my friend and I brewed a batch of what will be dubbed Amy Wombat Wheat in honor of Abby Wambach, her difficult-to-remember name, and the U.S. Women's soccer team. And even though they lost, Wambach scored, so our beer is destined to be spectacular. Either that or you will choke while taking what seem to be very easy penalty kicks, I mean sips.


These breweries are currently being planned in New Hampshire:
1. Prodigal Brewery at Misty Mountain Farm, Effingham. - Don't know much about them. They only have a facebook page, not an actual website.
2. 7th Settlement Brewery, Dover. They are really into community, so much so that their brewery will be a Community Supported Brewery, which is exactly like a CSA, only for beer. The hope to use 100% local ingredients, which is pretty much the entire point of a CSA. You buy 96 22oz bottles up front at $6 each, and then over the course of the year you go pick them up. You get a refund of $1 per bottle at the end if you bring them all back. I think they may need to decrease the amount of bottles you have to buy up front, because people definitely enjoy trying new beers more so than trying new vegetables. But it's a pretty cool idea and I think it could catch on, hopefully with a few tweaks. It doesn't look like they will distribute at all, so unless you live in the area, you won't be trying them any time soon.
3. Throwback Brewery, North Hampton.

The name is a nod to the fact that they want to emulate pre-prohibition brewers by using farm fresh, local ingredients, and by recycling their spent grains by sending them to pig farmers for feed. The guys at Throwback also hope to get to 100% locally sourced ingredients. In any region, climate limits the types of hops, malts, and fruits available, but they want to work with what they can get from New England. They say that there is a good blueprint of doing this if you just look to wineries. Regional winemakers end up making wine with the ingredients that fare the best in each set of unique conditions. That means that wine from each region has its own flavors and are unique to the rest of the world. Throwback thinks that can be done with beer. It's a great concept. They are also looking into using solar power for their brewing. They will distribute mostly in NH, but don’t have a full list yet. They make 7 beers, with pretty good names and interesting labels. Dippity-Do American Brown is my favorite just for the picture.

http://throwbackbrewery.com/beers/dippity-do

Honestly, the ideas of sustainability and using local ingredients are so pervasive in the craft brewing community that I might just stop mentioning it. If a brewery blatantly tries to waste energy or is openly discouraging a sense of community and local identity, then I'll mention it. But otherwise, just assume that each brewery loves local ingredients, recycling, bio-fuel, and pre-heating water with the sun. 

Road Trips:

If you are into hiking, New Hampshire is a state for you. There are plenty of mountains, and the Appalachian Trail runs right through NH, including Mount Washington. Even though I don't hike much, I like the concept of it, so I read a hiking blog called Easy Hiker, and I found an article about the Franklin Ridge hike in New Hampshire. Looks pretty cool.
There are also plenty of places to ski in the state, including Tuckerman Ravine, which is near Tuckerman brewery. And I've learned from a simple wiki search that the ravine is actually part of Mount Washington. The really cool part about the ravine is that in the spring there is still plenty of snow from the winter, so people will hike up the side of the ravine, and then ski down the ravine, even up until July.

Next week I'll post about some of the brew pubs and some updates.

#9 - New Hampshire, "The Granite State" - Intro

It's fitting that during the week of the Fourth of July we celebrate our independence with the state whose motto is "Live Free or Die." New Hampshire was the ninth state to ratify the constitution and the first so far that has managed to nail both the motto and the nickname. You gotta be tough to live in The Granite State. Live Free or Die? Ballsy.

Let's celebrate our independence from average beer by taking a look at what New Hampshire has to offer to the American craft brew scene.

Stats:

Population: 1.3 million (42nd in the U.S.)

Size: 46th largest state in the U.S.

#of Microbreweries: 5 (with 3 additional in planning)

# of Brewpubs: 7

Cities: Concord, Portsmouth, Nashua, Manchester

Cities I could have named without Wiki's help: Concord.

Tax Policy: I compare New Hampshire's tax policy to how one of my neighbors views the general societal norm of wearing shirts. He only wears shirts in the case of extreme cold and in that case, it's a wife beater or nothing. You cannot box that man in and tell him what to wear! He'll have none of it. In that same way, New Hampshireites hates taxes. No sales tax (cheaper cases of beer). No state or local income tax (more money to buy beer with). They keep their hard earned money and buy shirts with it. Cuz shirts are awesome. Let's try to spread that word. Because old tattoos and beer bellys everywhere are begging to be covered by some extra household income.


Brewers in New Hampshire very quickly took advantage of more lax homebrewing and brewpub laws once they were put into effect something like 25-30 years ago (I have no intention of checking that timeline, but it feels right). The bland beer that dominated for decades following Prohibition didn’t stand a chance in New Hampshire or in neighboring Massachusetts. The brewpubs that opened eventually became the full breweries that make up New Hampshire’s beer backbone and the three new breweries that are starting up are welcomed by a thriving Northeastern craft beer culture that New Hampshire played a pretty good role in cultivating. However, in no way did I do any research to back that last statement up. Again, it's a feeling. Writing down facts is more of an art than a science anyway. Just read any newspaper.

Five of the eight breweries are in the Southern part of the state, close to the major cities and the other three are located father upstate. There seem to be more than a few notable brewpubs so, I'll be delving into those in later weeks. I've noticed that probably half of the brewpubs in New Hampshire bottle their own beer, which makes it difficult to only call them a brewpub. But in my arbitrary mind, if you have a full restaurant at your brewery and you don't list where you distribute your beer, I'm considering you a brewpub. 


For the record, I’ve never been to New Hampshire, but my Mom lived there for several years growing up, so by genetics I am qualified to speak about it. Next week I'll probably be talking about the five breweries that are currently in operation.

Lastly, when you have a blog, Google tells you how many people click on your page, what websites they came from to find it, and what their search terms were. Most of mine are boring, like "PA brewery map." But some are awesome. So, if you are the guy in Russia who searches "beertrails.blogspot.com" once a week on the search engine yandex.ru, leave a comment or email me or something. I'm really interested to learn how you found this site. I guess all of those bus-stop ads I put up in Moscow were worth it.