MA Craft Brewers Trail!

Glad to see this. Picked up NH's new one this past weekend. Really helpful for visiting beer-lovers!

 

There's also this: http://www.mass.gov/agr/massgrown/culinary_tourism/docs/brewery-passport.pdf

It's weird they think you'd need a passport to keep track of your visits. You'd think the dozens of growlers--one from each frickin' MA brewery--rolling around your trunk would be reminder enough.

 

A big reason Pretty. Things won't be on that list is that they don't have a tap room or other public facility. They have a small office in Somerville, and brew and ship out of Buzzards Bay / Westport.

 

Nah, they have a whole section dedicated to contract brewed brands on there under the "Look for these other fine Massachusetts Craft Beers" heading.

 

Pretty Things is not part of the Mass Brewers Guild. The guild has some stupid by-laws that contract brewers can't vote in the guild, they can only pay dues. Makes no sense. So rightly so Pretty Things has refused to join and thus are not on the passport thing.

 

I can almost sort of see that - but they do their own brewing, as opposed to having someone else having doing it.
But in any case, being allowed to pay dues, but not have a say in what goes on? Not blaming them at all for not joining.

 

Not true Rob. Those bylaws were changed back in 2012 in an effort to provide all breweries (contract or otherwise) an equal voice in the guild. There are several breweries that are not part of the guild that are still listed on the passport. The passport was made possible by a federal (I believe) grant to the MA Dept of Agriculture and is mainly their project. The guild was only consulted in an effort to make the information on the passport as accurate as possible.

The fact is, the lead time it takes to create the paper version of the passport automatically makes it out of date the moment its printed due to the ever changing landscape of MA breweries. As to why Pretty Things was omitted, I can only surmise that it was a clerical error which should be corrected in any subsequent printings/updates.

 

Now why can you say that and get away with it?

 

Thanks for clarifying.

 

Pretty excited about this, me and my fiancee do did the wine passport thing last summer, do now I have an excuse to do the beer one this year!

 

One thing about the passport, why does it suggest people go to THREE beer works in one area? Every other passport with multiples of the same brewery family have one slot per group.
Lets face it going to beer works once is a push three times is incomprehensible. Also the requirements for a t-shirt are more extensive than teh other states. Guess I will just have to keep wearing my Vermont and Maine t-shirts rather than a MA one.

 

Could somebody explain to me the attraction of such passports. I understand it from the state/guild point of view - to direct tourist traffic - but from a consumer's point... The reward of a t-shirt or a glass seem hardly worth a hassle, a "stamp"? - all seem extremely gimmicky to me. Sorry, don't mean to sound cynical, I just really don't get it.

 

Just picked one up this past weekend. Of course, we went on a 4 brewery(+ brewpub) tour and got this at the last one, so only one stamp to show for.

 

I'd guess the psychology isn't much different from that which creates tickers, and that the attraction falls squarely into the general Just for Kicks category.

 

Just for fun, the wine passports usually you get entered into a raffle when you go to a certain number of them. I was told last year only 40 people entered for the grand prize of a cruise. Nevertheless, I didn't win anything but it was a fun thing to do with my fiancee, and I plan on doing this one as a fun thing to do with my fiancee as well.

 

we were going anyway, it put all the addresses on one sheet of paper and at the end we ended up with bottle openers, tshirts etc. And sometimes you get reminded of a brewery that you haven't visited for a while. What's the harm? well apart from suggesting visiting 3 beer works (shudder).