Beer and other good things

Locally, we try and sample the wonderful brews at Trap Rock Brewery in Berkeley Heights, NJ as much as possible.  Stop in and ask Charlie the master brewer for a sample of whatever he is working on.  

Christine and I traveled to Belgium in March 1998 to meet friends and sample some of the wonderful beverages. They are unique beers which are very different from the beers of the Northwest US or of the UK. Our Belgian  favorite is made by the Trappist monks at Orval. In addition, the location is absolutely beautiful....if you are ever in the south of Belgium (or north of France), I recommend it highly. Other incredibly good Belgian beers are made by Chimay, also a Trappist monastery. Note that the monks even maintain the web page here!! Leffe has a slightly cheesy homepage, but their beers are good nonetheless, and they have a nice page with links to other beer sites.

For our honeymoon in August 1997, we traveled around the beautiful state of Oregon in search of good beer (do you see a pattern to our trips?). We hit 16 breweries in 10 days!! Some of our favorites included:

• Rogue Brewery in beautiful Ashland, OR, home of the hop-alicious Rogue Red. Absolutely the best American beers, at least according to CTV. Christine's favorites are from...
• Deschutes Brewery in Bend, OR. Their Obsidian Stout is dark and tasty and smooth and yummy and their beers are top notch across the board.
• The McMenimans beer empire in Oregon and Washington is impressive. Although their beers are not as distinctive as Deschutes or Rogue, they have some of the coolest pubs around. They have converted old poor farms, schoolhouses, and dance halls into beautiful brewpubs all over Oregon. In fact, we spent a part of our honeymoon at Edgefield, a a fantastic B&B outside of Portland with a brewpub and winery on the estate.
• The Lucky Labrador brewpub in Portland is also recommended, as is Bridgeport, and Portland Brewing Co, although the only Portland Brewing beer I really like is McTarnahans Amber.

 

 
 
 

A foine pub to visit if you are ever in Seattle is the Elysian Brewpub in Capitol Hill. Nothing better than a Dragon's Tooth Stout on a misty Seattle afternoon...
Yakima's own Grants Ales.
Redhook, the beer that started the microbrew craze in Seattle. They now have a brewery in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, which is a replica of the Woodinville, WA, brewery. Try their Double Black beer made with Starbucks coffee! Redhook has made conststently good beer throughout the years, just don't buy the stock.
Juneau, Alaska's Alaskan Brewing Co,, makes a fine amber ale.
  If you are in New Hampshire ever, try the cool Portsmouth Brewery.
 

There is some guy who has sampled thousands of beers just so that he could give you ratings of them all. He claims that Beer is My Life.
Granted, it's not beer, but we love Wine anyway!

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