all posts relevant to ‘drinking’

tax season is ovah!

so, after her tax day celebration with her former employer yesterday, carrie & i stopped by Duck Island pub before heading home. (good beer had, btw.)

and now i’m back to riding the bus or train into and out of downtown seattle for my commute. it’s weird going back. i also realize that it’s very difficult to wake up earlier so i can get the train. i’ve got to work on that.

so now our plans include brewing a beer to celebrate the demise of the tax season, and start working on the house – gangbusters. also, we should get out and about once in a while and have some fun.

and i have some ambitious plans as far as this and my other websites go. i really want to break this out so that mikeyboy.com is just about me & us & dog & cats & fish & house & etc. and have a separate URL & blog for the car, and one where i can rant about varied & sundried things relating to technology and the internet and whatever else strikes my fancy.

so stay tuned. i am most certain i will not shake up the ‘blogosphere’ with my nonsensical babbling. but maybe i can throw some context-based advertising on and make a buck or two. (yes, it will probably only be a buck or two.).

yes, we’ve recently returned from our 2nd trip back east. this time, a visit to carrie’s parents in New Hampshire. (live free or die)

much fun, and many tasty brews, were had by all. details follow.

the timing of our visit was driven by our attendance of a party held annualy by carrie’s parents to celebrate the holiday of Epiphany.

during the visit, we also got to visit with various family & friends. rather than timeline events (because quite frankly i can’t remember on what days we did what) i’ll outline things by place.

breweries, brewpubs and pubs

Milly’s Tavern, Manchester NH

milly’s is a relatively new establishment, in place of the defunct Starck Mill Brewery. we went on a weekday afternoon after the lunch rush, we were the only diners present.

atmosphere: basement of a mill building, dominated by a bar and brewing equipment. also a dance-floor area. most of the place was dark and smokey, even though nobody was actively smoking at the time. food: food was good, usual pub fair but with a bit of flair — sweet potato fries were good.

beer: most of the beer was perfectly unremarkable. they have a very light ale to appeal to the sporty crowd (named after the new hampshire baseball team that plays in manchester). they have a few varieties of cider, and a whole range of reds, browns, ales, stouts.

beer standouts: their seasonal pumpkin, which carrie enjoyed (and she’s quite the critic of pumpkin beers) and best of all – bo’s scotch ale. one of the best examples of a scotch ale that we’ve ever tasted (again — carrie can be considered a good judge of that style, too).

overall impression: eek, milly’s is trying to be a lot of different things to a lot of different people. and it does an okay (but not spectacular) job at each of them. beer bar? tavern? dance club? coffee shop? who are you?! still, next time we’re in town, we’ll go back. keep the bo’s flowing.

Strange Brew Tavern, Manchester NH

strange brew is the kind of place that we’re going to miss. tavern-style: bar-side with stools & rail tables on one side, seating area on the other side, main stage/floor in the middle. free popcorn. flatscreens everywhere, showing sports and/or CSI or somesuch.

huge plusses: live music wasn’t so loud that we couldn’t hold a conversation in the bar. server was knowledgeable of what was on tap. taps? lots of them (48 i believe). many many good things on tap, menu broken down by style (and labelled with brewery/state).

most memorable beer: i had a dogfishhead 90 minute – i know i won’t see that on draught on the west coast.

best surprise of the evening: apparently tuesday nights and all day sunday is $2 draughts. ($3 for belgians). 2-1/2 hours, 3 baskets of free popcorn, 5 pints between us: $10! i tipped quite heavily, i suggest you do the same.

Portsmouth Brewery, Portsmouth NH

we had a very good trip to the seacoast to visit Portsmouth Brewery. owned by the same parent as Smuttynose, they had a good selection of Portsmouth and a few Smuttynose brews on tap (and a Sierra Nevada seasonal). we had the sampler, which included 10 different styles.

food: more upscale as you would expect from the culture of portsmouth, but still not expensive. we had a delicious plate of pita with hummus & baba ganoush. atmosphere: a large, open place, not bad. big bar.

beer: all beers were great examples of their style. you can’t really go wrong with any of them (Portsmouth or Smuttynose). kinda confusing that they had a couple of the same style from both breweries, but were different enough that we didn’t feel like we got 8 beers instead of 10. beer standouts: the Portsmouth American Style Pale Ale was unique and tasty enough that we brought a 22oz bottle of it home with us.

overall impression: good stuff, worth it for dinner if you’re visiting. street parking’s tough, but we went up, around and down an alley to get to the metered garage behind the restaurant. (2hr limit on meters – don’t let it expire, we saw someone getting ticketed as we arrived)

Sunset Grill, Allston MA

we’ve been itching to get back to Sunset (BeerAdvocate review). it was a place we frequented years ago while we were dating, but we weren’t yet into beer! we were so close to a good thing and we didn’t even know it.

there’s not much to add to the hyperbole about this place that already exists on the web, so the summary: 112 taps. good pub food, giant nachos. decoration is eclectic kitch, but authentic (without the “TGIFridays kit in a box” feel to it).

best surprise: 2oz and 5oz sampler sizes (in addition to pints, imperials, half-yards, and yards) mean you can try more beers and not get completely wasted. i believe we tried 7 different beers and only had the equivalent of a pint of beer each.

in summation: go!

this concludes the beer portion of our tour. between what we sampled at the pubs and what we drank from bottles, we tried between 36 and 40 different beers for the entire trip.

other attractions

you mean we actually do things besides drink beer while we’re on vacation? why, yes. we do.

currier museum

the currier was a must-visit on our list due to their commissioning, ownership, and display of Amoskeag Canal, a work by Charles Sheeler (one of my favorite artists).

wow, i think that’s it. okay, we mostly drink beer on vacation. but we did a lot of non-specific driving around, too. this got us all nostalgic about being in new england again — until we picked up a Real Estate guide. i guess we could wait at least a few more years before we move back east … or i hear that buffalo is quite affordable.

we’re back from a week spent in new york (and briefly in new jersey). we visited with my family, for the first time in a number of years. it was a good trip! exhaustive & boring details follow.

a picture of my mom’s greyhound, spirit, sleeping with his christmas bells on

tuesday

we arrived in newark tuesday night on the 20th, rented a vehicle and drove to saugerties to sleep for the night.

they didn’t have any more “jeep grand cherokee or similar” so they upgraded us to a durango SLT. i bought more gas in the last week than i have put in my focus in months. (granted, i drive my focus a round-trip of about 4 miles a day).

wednesday

anyhow, wednesday morning we drove to albany to check the city out and stop at Mahar’s Public Bar (BeerAdvocate review). turns out we were early — they didn’t open until 4. we had planned on being on the road to buffalo by then, so we skipped it. loved albany, however.

to buffalo, where we stayed with my parents & their kitty & their 2 greyhounds.

thursday

we got up early (by pacific time standards) and went into downtown buffalo, for a couple of reasons.

first was a stop at the currently-being-restored Darwin Martin House. much activity there, couldn’t get too close to it of course. (stark contrast to when the University @ Buffalo School of Architecture & Planning first acquired it — i remember having a professor say we would meet @ the Martin house, and got to walk around and sketch it from all angles.)

second stop was Pearl Street Grill & Brewery (BeerAdvocate profile) in downtown buffalo.

great beer, great food, great service. waiter found out we were beer freaks & homebrewers and we were in town from seattle — so he arranged for us to be able to bug the brewer for a while. Paul (self-described as a part-timer who was previously the master) was quite nice and seemed to genuinely enjoy a grilling about their beers. maybe he doesn’t get enough beer geeks coming in?

upon prodding for a recommended local package store we were directed to Premier Gourmet, and we were not disappointed. many many local micros, as well as the better-distributed micros from other regions.

friday

drove out to visit my brother & his wife and family. was good to see his little farm & kitties & dog, and my nephews and niece.

saturday

christmas eve means family gathering at my aunt & uncle’s house. the whole extended clan was there, many of whom we hadn’t spent any measurable amount of time with since our last christmas visit (in 2000).

sunday

christmas day was fun, got to spend a lot more time with my brother & sister-in-law and the kids. hopefully they’ll actually recognize their uncle mike next time he shows up.

monday

back to the reportable action. we left monday morning to head back down to joisey. drove I-90 out for a while, cut down on rt 96 to go to ithaca. there we stopped by Finger Lakes Beverage Center and picked up 12 bottles of local NY/PA microbrews.

we continued down 96 though many charming little towns, to the Southern Tier Expressway. then it was east on 17 through binghamton and through the southern foothills of the catskill mountains. what a gorgeous little collection of towns nestled in nooks and valleys, all covered in snow.

about 60 miles outside of NYC, we started hitting rushhour traffic. but we got to the Courtyard Newark within an hour of projected ETA. our room contained the most comfortable king bed we’ve ever slept on in a hotel!

tuesday

on a plane at 9am, out of newark and back to seattle. we kept alive our travel traditions of parking at doug fox parking, and enjoying lunch & a pint at bison creek pizza in burien before returning home.

overall, i think a great trip. the only downsides would be the fuel consumption of the durango, and the fact that newark is unbelievably confusing. would we do it again? next time we’d probably drop the extra coin to fly to buffalo. we’ll visit albany again, but it will be a more deliberate and more encompassing vacation.

now we’re almost still on eastern time (maybe central time) and we’ll probably stick to this schedule for a week, since we’re heading back to new england to visit with carrie’s family soon!

carrie & i went up to the Big 4 meadow today. that’s one of our favorite destinations, and this time didn’t disappoint. snow snow snow!

you obviously couldn’t see the mountains in the distance, but we’d seen that before. today, we wanted snow. and we got it!

here’s the rest of the flickr photoset:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikeyboydotcom/sets/1346426/

enjoy!

after big 4, we went to mount vernon to Skagit River Brewery for lunch/dinner.

homebrewers, or alcoholics?

that would be “homebrewers.” 5 points!

(i know, it might be both.)

we bottled 5 gallons tonight.