The festival takes place in October in Boston’s Fort Point, and as a blogger I’m writing pieces on three vendors that will be featured on the BLFF’s website and serve as PR for the festival.
My first assignment was Smuttynose Brewing Company, and addition to interviewing my contact at the brewery I decided to head up to NH and take a tour!
I love craft beers and discovering new brews, but knowledge is somewhat limited. After the tour, I had a greater understanding of the brewing process and was successfully able to identify hops!
I sampled six beers during the tour; my favorite was the Strawberry Short Weiss, a light fruity beer with low alcohol content, produced by sitting on a bed of strawberries for over a month. This is a very limited production beer, and was only available for sale to the public for the first time this year.
I enjoyed the Star island single, a Belgium pale ale made with coriander, and the Robust Porter a dark beer that was surprisingly light and smooth.
The pumpkin ale was also very good. It’s a spiced beer with very little actual pumpkin. Due to demand, Smuttynose like most breweries, has to brew this beer too early to use fresh pumpkin (the flavor comes from canned pumpkin). Even though it’s only available for three months a year, the pumpkin ale is Smuttynose’s third most popular beer (second to the IPA and Old Brown Dog).
I also tried the Finest IPA , which was very smooth and light for an IPA. This was hoppy but not as hoppy as the Shoals, which had more of a bitter finish.
In addition to trying the beers, I learned that Smuttynose is moving to a new facility in late 2013 / early 2014. Check out the BLFF’s site where I discuss the new facility in depth, as well as the steps Smuttynose is taking to lessen the brewery’s impact on the environment.
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