2015 BEER DISCOVERY TOUR: Tröegs Brewing Company, Hershey, PA (July 1st, Brewery Stop #17)

2015 BEER DISCOVERY TOUR: Tröegs Brewing Company, Hershey, PA (July 1st, Brewery Stop #17) The 17th brewery we stopped at on our cross-country beer discovery tour (click to read about the whole trip) was Tröegs Independent Brewing Company in Hershey, PA. After saying goodbye to our friends Sara and Rusty, we made our way out of Pittsburgh and headded east towards Hershey. The drive was pretty quick and painless, lots of toll roads and turnpikes to get you around the congested areas. The scenery on the drive was pretty spectacular, lots of foot-hills, mountains, trees and beautiful farm-country. Once we got close to Hershey, we discovered that the Tröegs brewing complex is just down the road from the Hershey’s Chocolate amusement park. And yes, it’s like Disneyland for chocolate lovers. We didn’t stop there, but I can imagine that it’s not somewhere a diabetic would want to go. As shown in the pictures, the tap-room/restaurant is located inside their main production facility. Lots of parking out front, a big entry area with multiple rooms including a swag store, tour room, meeting room, and main tap-room and restaurant area. We did poke around a bit and spent a little time in …

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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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