New England Go To Beers

If you went to your local beer store/bar tonight, what beer(s) would you get. Not really interested in favorite beers as much as the beers that your local store regularly carries that you regularly buy.

For example, I live in the Berkshires, and these are the beers I know I could get at my local store tonight:

1. Coffeehouse Porter - Berkshire Brewing. This is one of the easier to find, good dark beers. I tend to get this almost every month over the winter.

2. Jack D'or - Pretty Things. I might not buy this every time I am at a store, but I probably consider buying it.

3. Fat Boy Double IPA - Big Elm. Not usually a fan of the really hoppy beers, but when I just want that double IPA, Fat Boy isn't a bad choice.

4. Hoponious Union- Jack's Abby. Very nice beer and usually very easy to find.

Seasonal Beers

5. (tied) Big Brekkie - Lefty's. This is a seasonal breakfast stout. My store was out of Founders Breakfast Stout, and this was my fall-back. Not a bad choice. I seem to always have a Big Brekkie in my fridge lately. Also like Lefty's Barrel-Aged Scotch Ale, but not as easy to find.

5. (tied) Summer Beer - Harpoon. I am a Kolsch fan. Not easy to find Kolsch in the US, and Harpoon's Summer Beer isn't exactly to style (not many are), but this just seems to be a beer that I always know I can find cold and that is really nice for that hot summer day.

 

I think what I was really going for here, and what pretty much is happening, is to find out the good, readily available beers that people in New England drink. Local beers are great, but if we want to go outside New England for a brewery, I don't want to exclude anyone. If you can get the beer at your local beer store regularly, that's what I wanted to find out.

A few years ago, for whatever reason, I just didn't drink Mayflower. Maybe I had a beer of theirs I didn't like or had an old beer at a party. I can't remember. I had their porter at a bar. Easy to find beer, really good, but something I passed up a lot, even when I wanted a good porter. It just got me thinking about going back through the shelves of my local beer store and figuring out what beers I might have passed on before or maybe that I didn't appreciate a few years ago. I tend to ask beer store guys about the beer they drink, hoping to get a recommendation for a beer that I might not have thought about. I just wanted to expand that conversation.