During our recent visit to Maine, we reserved a spot on the Allegash Brewery tour in an industrial section of Portland. It was great fun and our tour guide was terrific! We got there early and were invited to sit outside in their rustic beer garden until the tour commenced. Our host brought us a set of beer samplers to pass the time. Once inside the facility we were told to put on special head gear with earphones as the brewery itself could be very loud in places. The history and process was fascinating and our tour guide was quite good and explaining every detail with plenty of quips in between to keep us laughing. Of course, the samples along the way kept us laughing, too. We enjoyed their Belgian style Allegash White and Black, but when I tasted their specialty Allegash Brett I took pause to savor it. Wonderful! I do admit to some skepticism after seeing a few barrels bearing the word: Sriracha.
I highly recommend the tour, and would suggest the Allegash people offer a limited food menu of some kind at the bar to help your belly along…
Nice! I have wanted to visit Allagash for some time. I also want to stop in at http://www.mainemeadworks.com/.
I’ve done the Shipyard brewery and Geary’s in Portland. I liked that Geary’s was so low-key. Some of the tanks were at the point they were uncovered, and from the catwalk above we could see the foaming mixture inside. Never saw that before.
Is there anything notable about the Allagash setup that makes it worth the trip? Other than the beer-tasting, of course, which speaks for itself.
Oh, my husband would have loved that!!! Did you get to Ocean?
During our trip to Kennebunkport we certainly mixed it up, but we never dined at Ocean. We did walk by it several times during our panoramic Ocean Ave. walk from Walker Point. Maybe next time. I will be posting about my entire trip on another thread…
I have not done many brewery tours so I do not have points of comparison, but we did enjoy it and were treated very well by the staff. Apparently, the tasting bar and store are recent additions. And we did see the ‘foaming mixtures’ at various states of production all the way to the packaging…
Looking forward to it. I missed my Maine fix this year!
