Ultimate United States Beer Vacation

If you wait a year you can do a new tour of MI. The new Michigan Beer Guide has 6 just opened and 37 in progress and planing. I am not sur that Rex has all of the hopes and dreams of the nascent beer barons captured.

 

Yeah, it's happening so fast that you can't tell the players without a scorecard. I haven't seen the latest MI Beer Guide, but I always use it to plan my trips. However, somehow I missed the new one in Munising on my last trip up that way (Shooters Firehouse Brewery), and it was listed in the Guide. So sometimes a scorecard doesn't even get the job done for me when I have sloppy planning.

 

I would say West Coast, SF to SD if you have a week, Portland to SD if you have two weeks. I can't even list all of the breweries, but you'd be able to hit 2-5 per day, and more than that in SD if you want. End it all at Alpine by picking up as many of their bottles as you can fit in your luggage.

I've always wanted to plan a cross-country bike ride. 3-4 months, hitting at least 1 brewery every day. I would start in Maine and end in San Diego, zig-zagging around as we go. End most nights camping with a growler from whatever brewery we hit that day. Possible train short cuts through mountains or to make up time for a shorter trip.

 

Plus, the Alaska Ferry leaves from my home of Bellingham, WA, so you would get to check out Chuckanut, Boundary Bay, Kulshan, North Fork, Menace, and the couple of new breweries we've got coming. Nearby is also Anacortes Brewing, Flyers, Skagit River, North Sound, LaConner, Skookum, and plenty more.

 

I saw a couple replies saying they were going to take a beercation since this OPed. How'd the trips go guys?

For me, it would be a trip across the South. I've been to Eastern Georgia, so I would start in Atlanta and work my wasy across Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee (with stops in Muscle Shoals, Knoxville, Nashville, and Memphis), Mississippi, Lousiana, Texas (being very careful, you know the old saying; go to Texas on vacation, leave on probation), New Mexico, and ending up in Arizona for some spring training baseball.

 

I'd probably use the Brew Dogs show as a guideline.

 

But Boston to Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine is easily doable in a two week span.
I would probably spend my UBV in the Northwest since that's an area I have not been to in about 40 years, just before I started drinking beer.

 

Trying to plan two right now. One is jsut the greater Denver area. The other is Portland area with a side trip down to see the guys at Russian River.

 

If you're in the Midwest:
Wisconsin's Best Beer Guide: A Travel Companion
Good for a free beer at many brewpubs and breweries. We've enjoyed it most for the context and history he supplies for many entries.

 

I'd do central Colorado before I'd do east coast. The weather is usually better (dryer and less humid in the summer, and snow if you like that kind of thing) and the east coast has too many people, most of them assholes. (Born and raised in CT, now a Masshole, I long for the days when I lived in the intermountain west, or even Texas.)

Someone is going to comment that Vermont has snow and few assholes, but Colorado still has more beer and bigger mountains.

 

The Michigan tour is simply stupendous. You can get to Founder's, Bell's, Arcadia, Schmoz(sp?) And Dark Horse in one crazy arose day. Then tour the rest of the state... Michigan beer scene is just insane as hell.

 

Damn spell check. Should be "arse", not arose.....