Friday, June 09, 2006

Andy Crouch's Good Beer Guide to New England

I decided not to write anything specific about the book content. Stan did a very nice job over here, and so did Alan over here. If you want to know more specifics about the book, I strongly suggest reading Stan's and Alan's reviews. However, I was at the book launch held at Harpoon Brewery in Boston, MA on May 23rd. It was an extremely happy coincidence that I was in town for work and the event was taking place. I had a very nice conversation with the author, Andy Crouch, who described the roughly one year process of getting the book's information gathered and compiled. How he combined that with his day job, phew, had to be tough. (Unless breweries and brewpubs are clients of his ;-) And, I suppose his site got some traffic referred from our site, because when I told him that I am from Philadelphia, he asked if I have that Brew Lounge website. Funny how those things happen, eh? The event at Harpoon was a smashing success, at least from my out-of-towner's point-of-view. It had all the makings of a feel-good beer event. At least 50 people in attendance. Nice things said about Andy, Harpoon, the Massachusetts beer region and its players, and all of the attendees. (Aw, goosebumps and shivers, right?!) And, to add to my visitor's delight, Todd Alstrom stopped by the event and I exchanged pleasantries with him. Though, never having met him or his brother before, I easily identified Todd, but mistook Tom (aka WarriorSoul) for his brother Jason, oops. (But, in fairness, they were both wearing BeerAdvocate gear....so cut me some slack!) And, through it all, six different Harpoon beers were flowing, plus a superb cask-conditioned IPA. I left with a 22 ounce Kellerbier from their '100-barrel Series'. As you can see from our review, it was quite enjoyable. But, I'll wait and save the rest of the Harpoon review another day. If you need a good guide to New England beer, make sure you pick up Andy's new book. I am sure it will come in handy when your bopping your way through New England! p.s. Two local guys accompanied me on my walk back into downtown Boston. They said their names were Ben and Matt. What do you think? Were they effin with a tourist? (You know....Ben Affleck and Matt Damon....both from Boston, get it?)

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