Where to next?

Sound a little like Ironweed.

 

If this is like an Olympic city selection, my delegation has a great history of bribing but we're a little short of bribe money right now.

 

Maybe you could offer a future payment?

Perhaps after Matt's great write-up this will generate the revenue for the compensation?

Or perhaps just offer free tickets for the Policeman's Ball!?!

 

A cool project would be to show how New England craft breweries shifted from nearly all Ringwood breweries making English-style ales (thanks to Pugsley playing Johnny Appleseed) to today where nearly all those breweries are gone - replaced by mostly haze/hop-forward breweries.

 

Portland has been mentioned a couple times, but I just want to mention Portland is also the densest city in the US for breweries (18), and second most dense for restaurants.

https://www.crresearch.com/blog/which-cities-have-most-craft-breweries

 

In under four hours you can be in Sherbrooke. I've had it explained to me that long car trips with small children is life extending. Four hours in a car with three kids is equal to something like twelve hours in people years, and that's not even factoring in the time spent anticipating, and then actually having, swabs jammed up everybodys' noses.

https://atrce.app.box.com/s/usmf7nk38cnkpdlp8u8jdaqqhmdn38h1

 

This is only a 1.5hr drive for me (plus no kids, so that's really 30 minutes, right?) and one I've been eagerly awaiting. I've been eyeing a day trip to check out Brasserie Dunham since moving to VT a year and a half ago, but we've been hesitant to attempt something like this until covid makes border crossing a little easier. Haven't found too much info about day trips and how testing for entry to Canada and then back into the US works if you're going to be gone for under 24hr. At this point, we'll probably wait till sometime late spring or summer.

 

It's not an obscure recommendation and I'm sure most here are familiar with most of our popular breweries, but since we've gone 1+ pages without a mention of NYC, I gotta throw it out there.

I could see a NYC trip with kids being a pain in the ass, not to mention pricey, but it's got as much to offer as any city in the country in terms of a high concentration of good breweries/bars and and endless laundry list of other stuff to do.

 

A friend and I spent the best part of a beautiful, sunny spring day hanging out in the courtyard at Brasserie Dunham a couple of years ago. Excellent beer, terrific food, idyllic setting. One of my top 3 beer outings, ever.

The trip’s not too hard if you’re vaccinated. A negative test three days before you go, and no test needed to return to the states. I usually cross at Stanstead and, I don’t know if it’s the same on I89 but, going up 91, there’s nobody else crossing these days so it only takes a couple of minutes.

 

Thanks for the info @papposilenus - we're both vaxed and boosted, so maybe we'll go sooner.
Curious - I don't speak a lick of French. Is everything bi-lingual up there (when going to a place that's a bit more rural like Dunham) or will we need to rely on my wife's broken French she learned in high school 25yrs ago?

 

A number of years ago my wife and I visited Quebec City for vacation and all of the people working the various businesses (stores, restaurants, bars, etc.) spoke English with us.

Let me suggest a tip, just start off at any place you visit with “Bière s’il vous plait” with a strong American accent and I am pretty sure they will reply in English. But you may get a weird look if you start off with that when checking into your hotel?

Well, that is basically me. I had four years of French in high school and I do remember quite a number of words but there is no way in hell I could converse in French.

Cheers!

 

The eastern townships were mostly settled by English colonists and I think it's still something like 20% anglophone. My daughter lives in Lennoxville and that's mostly English speaking.

My French is so bad that I'll usually try hand gestures rather than speaking out loud. I don't know about elsewhere but in the Estrie you get points for at least trying. Like Jack said, saying bonjour messieurs-dames, je voudrais une bière, sil vous plait in as hokey a Texas accent as you can pull off ought to do the trick. As far as I know, every child in the townships learns English, whether they'll admit it or not. In a pinch, you should just say 'pardon, je ne comprends pas,' I don't understand, at which point they'll most likely switch over to English - you should never ask 'do you speak English?' at which point they will pretend they can't hear you and you can forget about ever getting a drink.

 

Selective hearing loss – something that the French and Québécois have in common!?!

À votre santé!

 

Lake Placid, one of my favorite weekends ever. That whole region up there is gorgeous.

 

I am very familiar with Lake Placid Pub & Brewery, Big Slide, & Great Adirondack Brewery.

What other breweries/craft beer bars do you recommend?

Cheers!

 

South Shore of Massachusetts has some heavy hitters now that are producing great beer.
Widowmaker
Vitamin Sea
Stellwagen
Untold
Second Wind
Mayflower
And more!

 

I'm pretty sure that Matt's on the north shore. People on the north shore don't go to the south shore. Nothing south of maybe Squantum.

 

Time to expand his horizons!