Hazy Recollections of Summer

Hello again, weary travelers.  It's been quite some time since the Blogastery has seen any activity; it's a sign of industry from the members of the Order.  There are tales to tell on all sides, no doubt, and I'll begin the telling by revisiting the road trip undertaken by Mrs. Absalom and myself more than a half-year hence now.  Over two months we spent traveling through three time zones and fifteen states of this Union.  The best way to get a good overview of all it for this venue seems to me to 1)stick to the best beer experiences we had; and 2)include a lot of pictures.  Bearing that in mind, here we go.

Our first destination was Chicago.  Here we reconnected with Br. & Mrs. Thelonious, spending some good quality time with them.  For Br. Thelonious and myself, that meant brewing.  My fellow brother in fermentation was still refining his brewing processes, and elected a tried and true recipe from Jamil's tome Brewing Classic Styles, Janet's Brown Ale, to continue his journey.  A fine brewday ensued, punctuated by lunch at City Provisions and dinner at Hopleaf.  Definitely a great start for our return to the Midwest.

 
Next we spent a couple days in lovely (also hot) St. Louis.  Beery highlights included visiting the wonderment of the Wine and Cheese Place, a liquor store recommended by Br. Abelard for its excellent range of beers I couldn't find everywhere else, including Chicago--it's the only place I've come across Pannepot.  Our other beverage destination was Square One Brewery & Distillery, which served up a really fine pale ale and a gluten free mixed drink for Mrs. Absalom.  A fine first impression, STL.

As we swung through the South, we picked up the best damned peaches we'd ever tasted in north Alabama; these went on to be half the base of our first mead, Pennsylbama Peach Melomel.  We also discovered the burgeoning craft beer scene in Lexington, KY; searching for a homebrew shop to provide us with yeast for the melomel, we stumbled upon Lexington Beerworks, a pretty new homebrew shop/bottle shop/beer bar.  While they didn't have much to offer in the way of appropriate yeasts for our purposes, they did have some exceptional beers on tap--I reunited with Goose's Imperial IPA and finally sampled Dogfish's Burton Baton--and plenty of great local beer shoptalk with the bartender.  He sent us down the road to West Sixth Brewing Company, which had only been open for a matter of months at that point.  There we enjoyed their beautiful bar and patio, really incredible food from the Fork in the Road food cart, a Local First Lexington event in full swing, and a couple fine drinks as well.  We'll look forward to the next time we pass through Lexington, to be sure.

Our next stop was Pennsylvania, land of my birth.  We picked up some local honey and brewed the melomel, but more importantly I reconnected (and Mrs. Absalom connected for the first time) with old, dear friends whom I hadn't seen in years over drinks at the very decent Appalachian Brewing Company in Harrisburg.  Another Keystone State stop was the newly-relocated Troeg's Brewery in Hershey; the new brewing premises and taproom are spacious and well thought out, not to mention that they're pouring some damn fine beer.  We spent most of our time in the central part of the state, in a log cabin off the main road with a WHOLE lot of homebrewing equipment in various states of disarray and disuse in the basement.  The owner's brother came in from out of town every so often to brew, and it seemed that he wasn't worried about letting things gather a patina, if you will.  Finally, no trip involving Pennsylvania, especially in the summer, would be complete without copious green bottles of Yuengling Lager; I'll fully admit to being downright snobbish about beer most of the time, but the call of Lager is like a siren song for me.

Our last eastern stop was south central Ohio for a couple weeks at the end of July for the Lancaster Festival, an annual summer arts event.  We took a day trip up to Columbus and discovered the might and majesty of Brothers Drake Meadery.  We'd planned to stop in for a quick tasting and instead had our entire understanding of mead redefined.  This was certainly the best mead either of us had ever tasted, and we really enjoyed chatting with the owners for quite a while on our own; we showed up just as they opened the tasting room, so had the run of the place for quite a while.  They source all their ingredients locally, and only sell their libations in the greater Columbus area.  Their range of semi-sweet to dry meads, melomels, and metheglins are just amazing, and we'd recommend anyone interested in mead--including those who don't think they're interested at all because of poor past experiences--check them out.  That visit has continually inspired us over the intervening months to continue our mead making adventures; we love what we've done so far, and will take them a sample next time we go that way.  Possibly equally exciting was discovering a new brewery in Lancaster itself, Rockmill Brewery.  Specializing in Belgian and farmhouse (read saison) styles and built on a working farm, everything we saw of this micro (verging on nano) operation was exquisite, from the tasting room to the full grounds.  Thankfully, the quality of the beer matches that of the setting; I still have a bottle of their Oak-Aged Tripel just waiting for an appropriately special occasion to open.

On our return west, we were able to stop again in Chicago for a last hurrah with Br. & Mrs. Thelonious.  I'd read on some forums that bottles of Pliny the Elder could sometimes be found in Philadelphia; while my search for that beer on a trip to the City of Brotherly Love during our time in Pennsylvania proved fruitless, I did manage to come across one of Russian River's sours, Consecration.  Br. Thelonious and I indulged in this excellent beer to mark our final parting of the ways for the summer.

We returned to Utah road weary and happy to be home again.  It was a long trip, but full of great times that have afforded a superb store of memories.  We came across a staggering array of breweries (and a meadery), nearly all of which are dedicated to keeping as much of their operations and ingredients locally sourced and as much of their business in their respective communities as possible, which was a heartening sign.  We haven't made another big drive since, which is out of character for us, but it will undoubtedly occur again sooner rather than later.  I do have one more excursion from the past few months to detail on this hallowed blog soon; until then, stay warm and drink good beer.

-Br. Absalom