Craft beer in North America was born in the west, that much is pretty well documented – Anchor and New Albion in California, Horseshoe Bay and Granville in British Columbia, Yakima Brewing in Washington, etc. It thrived there, too, in the early days as well as still today, but thanks largely to Jim Koch, what we then called microbrews came to national prominence via not the west, but the northeast.
I refer, of course, to the Boston Beer Company, based in and typically associated with its namesake New England city, even if its beers were then, as they still are now, largely brewed outside of Massachusetts. The somber face of Boston Beer’s “Brewer Patriot” Samuel Adams was what introduced most Americans to craft beer, and the expansion of the Boston Lager to state after state after state played a huge role in opening up the national beer market to small, independent beer brands.
It was with this in mind, and after far too long a hiatus, that I returned to the U.S. northeast this past summer. After one hundred-plus beers, about 1,600 miles of driving and a whole lot of thinking, I arrived at the following conclusions and observations:
(Read more at The Celebrator…)