2015 BEER DISCOVERY TOUR: Great Lakes Brewing Company, Cleveland, OH (July 7th, Brewery Stop #29)

2015 BEER DISCOVERY TOUR: Great Lakes Brewing Company, Cleveland, OH (July 7th, Brewery Stop #29) (recovered post) The 29th brewery visited during our cross-country beer discovery tour (click to read about the whole trip) was Great Lakes Brewing Company in Cleveland Ohio. We did a considerable amount of driving after leaving Boston the day prior stopping at Rochester NY. We continued through NY state up to Niagra Falls and then made our way west along Lake Erie to Cleveland where we stopped for lunch at the Great Lakes Brewing Company. Their production facility is quite large, located across the street from the restaurant/taproom and we were able to find parking in that lot. Lots of semi-trucks and loading docks speak to the amount of distribution they do. I’ve had their beers in the mid-west, but not quite to the west coast yet. You’ll find that during the summer months, they have a lot of people eating at the restaurant/patio that takes up almost the entire front of the block. We decided not to wait for a table there and went inside and were pleasantly surprised to find a table available shortly after walking around. They have a couple of different …

Continue reading

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, …

Continue reading