2015 BEER DISCOVERY TOUR: Flathead Lake Brewing Co., Missoula, MT (July 9th, Brewery Stop #37)

2015 BEER DISCOVERY TOUR: Flathead Lake Brewing Co., Missoula, MT (July 9th, Brewery Stop #37) (recovered post) The 37th brewery visited during our cross-country beer discovery tour (click to read about the whole trip) was the Flathead Lake Brewing Company and Pubhouse in Missoula Montana. It was approaching dinner time, and we decided to visit Flathead Lake Brewings downtown Missoula location to get some food and try their lineup. This is a higher-end restaurant and pubhouse with no brewery production on site, but they do have a great setting for hanging out. The building they are located in has two floors. The upstairs is the ‘sports bar’ type vibe, the first floor room is more for the ‘fine dining’ approach. We did take a look at the upstairs, but decided for the beer tasting and dinner to stick with the first floor. As this was not the first time I’d been to this pubhouse, I was looking forward to trying their beers again, and perhaps some of the guest taps they had available from Blackfoot, Blacksmith, and Big Sky. We settled on a table towards the back of the dining area, and ordered up a round of their tasters and …

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2015 BEER DISCOVERY TOUR, Portland OR to Portland ME and back… 24 June-9 July, 2015

2015 BEER DISCOVERY TOUR, Portland OR to Portland ME and back…7800 miles later… From late June to early July 2015 I was lucky enough to go on a cross country road trip with Gary and our nephew Devin. We drove my car from Portland Oregon to Portland Maine in just about three weeks. We took a ‘central US’ path East and came back taking a more northern passage. Regarding where we went each day, we made it to about 40 breweries and a handful of tap-houses, bars, and brewpubs to find local beers and food along the way. While the long distance driving was challenging some days (10+ hrs at a time), we really enjoyed the trip with it’s the ever-changing scenery and wonderful cities, towns, and people we met. Before leaving on the trip, we gathered and then took a couple of cases of local specialty beers for our friend Rusty in Pittsburgh. The sucky part was that while we wanted the beers to not get ruined by the heat, we ended up unloading and reloading it a LOT as we stopped each night. This is a valuable learning experience, to stick to mailing stuff like beer and wine, …

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