This is EXACTLY why I started this thread. I want to read more of this. Reality written as pulp fiction. I'll try my best to contribute when my turn at bat comes, but this story was sublime. Well done, mate!
Now we just need to get the overlords to actually create the Trip Reports forum so we can gather these in an appropriate place.
I found a few really great brewpubs last fall in Japan — both Kyoto and Osaka Plus the Kyoto Beer brewery,which is primarily a sake place
Though not a brewery, I had a nice time at https://foxandgoose.com/ Also found the grounds of the capital to be intriguing https://capitolmuseum.ca.gov/about-the-capitol/capitol-park/ Also, also, the murals around town are super cool.
New England Tour (Part 4) Waterbury, VT → Portland, ME The Fairfield breakfast on day four required an act of will that bordered on the heroic. Six in the morning, PST biology staging a full revolt against the concept of consciousness at this hour, rain hammering the roof with the personal vendetta of something that had been saving this up. The eggs were what they were. They were consumed. Vermont was almost behind me. The routes to Portland presented a philosophical problem. One was shorter in mileage and longer in time. The other was damn near two hundred miles and somehow faster. Maine doesn't negotiate. I picked a lane and pointed the car east and the storm came with me like it had nowhere else to be. Loading the suitcase and merch bags into the car in the parking lot was a full contact experience, rain coming down with the administrative enthusiasm of a government agency that had finally found its moment. One last look at Vermont through the wet windshield, one last nod at the gas station pump, and then out into the highway abyss at speed. This was no trek past Barstow. There was no bat country on the Vermont-Maine corridor, no lawyer in the passenger seat losing his mind on ether. But it was abundantly clear that we could not stop here. Stopping was not an option the weather was prepared to offer. Mile on mile, the windshield took the full report. Every speeder blasting through the left lane kicked up a wake that would have given a 747 pause, a wall of spray that hit the glass and briefly converted the visible world into an abstract painting. Ten and two. Eyes forward. One hundred and sixty miles to go, and only one thing on the agenda at the end of them. Maine came closer and the rain doubled its tempo, the kind of driving where you lean forward involuntarily, as if three inches closer to the windshield is going to clarify the two taillights ahead and confirm they are at a reasonable distance. Every passing car disturbing the air around you, every gust of wake making you recalibrate your grip. At this point in the trip, a reasonable person might question the entire premise. More beer. Good lord. You have consumed enough beer to refloat the Titanic and here you are white-knuckling through a nor'easter for more of it. The disease is real and the prognosis is excellent. The exit for the hotel materialized and the rain, almost theatrically, began to ease. Several turns later the hotel sign appeared through the clearing weather like nature had been running a test the whole time and had finally graded the results satisfactory. Bags unloaded, cans and bottles distributed into the hotel fridge with the care of a man who has carried them through a storm and intends to see them honored. Then Allagash. The street Allagash sits on is a murderer's row and sobriety is the body. Half a dozen breweries within stumbling distance of each other, the kind of block that city planners either designed deliberately or have since claimed credit for. Allagash itself arrived like a pot of gold that had been worth every mile of that drive. The White first, because there is a correct order to things and the Allagash White is where you start, cold and hazy and doing exactly what it has always done without any interest in trend cycles. A flight followed. Several chapters of reading in the kind of taproom quiet that a weekday afternoon provides. Then a walk across the street to Definitive, where the nuevo hazy stylings were doing their thing, the newer school of New England IPA that knows what it is and executes accordingly. Back to the hotel. The crucial intelligence, confirmed: Uber exists in Portland. This information landed with the warm relief of a man who had recently considered walking thirteen miles through rural Vermont in the dark and had not fully processed the trauma. Novare Res next, bottles and taps of the quality variety, and schnitzel, because the body occasionally requires something that isn't beer or hotel eggs and schnitzel is a civilized intervention. A fast walk to Oxbow for several mixed fermentations to close the evening out properly, funky and alive and asking nothing of you except attention. Then the Uber home, hotel cans, horizontal, the rain outside finally running out of things to say. All 50 Progress after Day 4: TL;DR Allagash — The White is your opening move, full stop. Beautiful taproom, beautiful block. The street it sits on alone is worth the trip to Portland. Definitive — Solid operation across the street. Good palate cleanser after the Allagash classics. Novare Res — Quality bottles, quality taps, decent schnitzel. Nourishment in every direction. Oxbow — Good mixed ferm that's not gonna shred your enamel.
