Labor Day Weekend

So we’re in Portland, Maine for Labor Day weekend…sort of.  We’re not actually going to be there ON Labor Day, we got here today and are leaving on Sunday.

The primary reason for this trip was to see a few Portland Sea Dogs vs. New Hampshire Fisher Cats games.  But hopefully, we’ll have time to do other things, as well.

The timing was not so good – Hurricane Earl is about to hit us up here.  It started raining during the game, it was tied in the 7th, so we left before it got really bad.  The Fisher Cats, who we were rooting for, ended up losing anyway.  I found out today that wearing a Fisher Cats jersey at Hadlock Field causes other fans to give you the fish-eye.  Just as well we left, tomorrow I’ll wear a non-baseball shirt.

When in Portland, we always stay at the Inn at St. John.  It’s an easy walk to the Sea Dogs ballpark, but it’s not in the middle of downtown.  But that’s okay, the #1 Metro bus stops right across the street, and it’ll take you right downtown, and easy walk to all of the cool stuff that the Old Port has to offer.  If you love good beer, be sure to visit Gritty McDuff’s, Sebago Brewing Company, and/or Shipyard Brewing Company.  All are in the Old Port, the first two are brewpubs, Shipyard is a brewery with a gift shop.  There is also lots of shopping and other restaurants, as well as trolley and boat tours (in season).

The fact that the Inn at St. John is NOT smack in the middle of downtown makes it an excellent value – you have easy access to the Old Port without the high prices.  Rooms range from luxury, which contain such amenities as jacuzzi tubs, to value rooms, which have shared bathrooms in the hall and involve climbing a lot of stairs. The choice is yours, depends on your preference and your budget. Pets are welcome in many rooms.

If the weather people are correct, Earl will be out of here tomorrow, and the rest of the weekend is supposed to be lovely.  Let’s hope so!

Banned in Boston?

Beer served in a plastic cup at the Sam Adams Bar & Grill at Merchantsauto.com Stadium, Manchester, NH

You’ve probably heard the story about a man being killed by a shard of glass from a beer mug, as the result of a bar fight at the Landsdowne Pub in Boston.  Now, this bar is serving all drinks in plastic cups.  I don’t know what this bar is like, because I’ve never been there, but this is probably a good idea.

But now, according to an article on BeerAdvocate.com, the Boston licensing board is considering banning glass containers in ALL of the city’s bars.

It’s one thing to drink beer from plastic cups at a baseball game or other sporting event.    In addition to eliminating the risk of drunken fans throwing glass containers at players on the field, or at other fans in the stands, there are other practical reasons.  The cost of breakage would go through the roof, and make ballpark beer even more expensive than it already it.  And then they’d have to worry about washing all those glasses that don’t get broken.

Even at the Sam Adams Bar & Grill, which is located inside the NH Fisher Cats’ ballpark in Manchester, all drinks are served in plastic or paper cups.  This place has a really nice mahogany bar and all, and looks like the sort of place where you’d not expect your beer to be served in a plastic cup.  But they also allow people to take drinks out of the place and into the seating area of the ballpark.  They can’t watch every single person the whole time, so plastic all around makes the most sense.

On the other hand, I would not want to go into a nice beer bar and have my beer served in a plastic cup.  Different styles of beer are supposed to be served in different kinds of glassware; something they can’t do if they were forced to use only plastic.  Rather than give you a lesson on proper beer glassware, here’s a basic article about it from BeerAdvocate.com.  Many beer lovers have assorted glassware in their homes (we have a good collection), and we expect bartenders at better beer bars to know what beer goes in what glass.

The banning of glass would hurt these businesses.  Who is going to pay top dollar for a fine beer dinner, when all of the brews are served in plastic cups?  Beer geeks will simply go to places outside of Boston, the people who plan the beer dinners will have them at other restaurants, etc.

Also, at these higher-end establishments, people are less likely to get so drunk that they get into fights.  There is a huge difference between “beer geeks” like us, and people who go into some dive bar to get drunk on Bud Light or some other cheap, mass-produced swill.  Beer geeks enjoy the flavor of beer, we don’t drink to get so drunk that we can’t taste anything.  We’ve grown way beyond the college days of keggers and cases upon cases of Natty Light.

Those who drink to get drunk do not only not care what their beer is served in, they also do not care what beer they drink, as long as it’s cheap and there is plenty of it.  So the places that cater to such a clientele should, by all means, eliminate serving anything in glass.  But they should also be paying more attention to patrons who’ve had too much, and shut them off as necessary.  This not just because of potential bar fights, but for the safety of the general public.  You would not want someone to get so drunk that they cannot safely drive home.  Even the better beer bars should be paying attention; they would not likely serve somebody endless glasses of some 9.0% ABV double IPA.  As much as I personally love beers like this, I might have one serving at the beer bar, and then switch over to something with a lower ABV (alcohol by volume).

Hopefully, the owners of beer bars and brewpubs in Boston will speak out against this stupid law, and it will never be passed.  Let the bar and restaurant owners decide what to do, according to what would be best for them.  But don’t put people out of business over an issue which is not applicable to their establishment.

Passport – A Craft Beer & Culinary World Tour

I heard about this for the first time on Facebook…don’t know why I’ve not heard of it last year, as we are members of Strawbery Banke Museum.  Don’t know why this was never announced in the member newsletter.  But that’s okay, we know about it now, tickets have been bought.

Passport is an event that will be held on the grounds of Strawbery Banke in Portsmouth, NH, on September 25.  It will feature fine craft beers from New Hampshire and other parts of New England, paired with foods from some of Portsmouth’s best restaurants.  Please watch the video below to get an idea of what to expect.

If you can’t see the video here, try going to the Passport website and see it there.  Seeing this video definitely makes me all the more excited to go.  It’s clearly not a mob scene, as those Phantom Gourmet Food Festivals are, and you get more than a little teeny-tiny cup sized portion, also a hallmark of the Phantom Gourmet festivals!  The grounds of Strawbery Banke are gorgeous, and the weather should be lovely at the end of September.  It’s certainly a lot more fun than attending an SEM Chicago event, and certainly nicer than that Phantom Gourmet crap!

We decided to splurge and get the VIP tickets, which include a special reception with the brewmasters, and tastings of beer and food not included in the regular event.  And a VIP goodie bag, too!  VIP tickets are $85 per person and are very limited.  If you don’t want to spend that much, general admission tickets, to the regular event only, are $45 until August 15; after that they’ll be $60.

The VIP reception goes from 4-5PM, the regular event runs from 5-9PM.  All proceeds go to benefit Strawbery Banke and New Hampshire Public Television; both excellent causes and well worth supporting.  For more information and to buy tickets, go HERE.

Cheers!

Save with HHonors Points!

It does pay to be loyal to one chain or another.  Mike and I often stay at the Hilton Garden Inn in Manchester, NH, because we go to a lot of Fisher Cats games.  And we’ll likely be staying there a LOT more next year, because we are getting season tickets.

So I decided to sign up for the HHonors Rewards Program.  Why not, we stay at this place enough, why not earn some points to use for free future stays?

It’s a cool program, you can also choose to earn airline miles, as well as room stay points.  Or, if you are like me and don’t fly, you can earn HHonors Points and HHonors Points, earning 150% points in lieu of airline miles.  Not too shabby.

A cool thing they do is offer Point-Stretcher periods…these are only in selected hotels at selected times, but if it happens to be where and when you want to travel, you can make out very well.  You can get a free room for 40% less points than normal.  This worked out very well for us – we are planning to go to Manchester, NH in November for the New Hampshire Brewers Festival.  Naturally, we have to stay at a hotel nearby, as we don’t want to be driving all the way home drunk!  Rather than staying at the Radisson, where the beer fest is taking place, I checked and saw  that the weekend of the beer fest was a Point-Stretcher period at the Hilton Garden Inn.  So I booked with them…the room will be free, and they also have a free shuttle van that will take us to the Radisson and back, we stayed there for last year’s fest and used it.  Even so, it’s still a reasonable walk.

The points can be earned and spent at the entire Hilton Family of hotels.  When we visited Mystic Seaport, and I had a choice of hotels, I chose the Hampton Inn in Mystic, because I could earn some HHonors points for staying there.  Sadly, they are not a Point-Stretcher hotel, but the Hampton Inn in Sturbridge is.  And they have Point-Stretcher periods every weekend in December, right when Old Sturbridge Village has their Christmas programs.  Yay!  Another free hotel stay!  Yeah, we’ve been normally staying at the Super 8, which is closer to the Village and also walking distance to the Piccadilly Pub.  Nothing wrong with it, but who am I to turn down FREE?  I did sign up for the Wyndham Rewards thingy through Super 8, but we don’t stay at any of their properties enough to ever maintain membership or qualify for any freebies.  So why bother?

The Hilton properties are nice – the Hampton Inns are a small step down from the Hilton Garden Inns, mostly in that most rooms do not have refrigerators.  But we have a portable mini-fridge, so that is not a problem.  Still, they have a lot of amenties, such as cable TV, free internet, free breakfast, and a well stocked bathroom.  No acne treatment gel, if you need that, as I do, you gotta bring your own. But they have shampoos, conditioners, nice soaps, lotions, and more.

I’m so glad I signed up for this!  We’ll be enjoying many freebies now!

Learn Your Beer!

I know it’s only July, and both the Maine and New Hampshire Brewers Festivals are months away.  But it’s not too soon to order your tickets to either or both of these great events.  In fact, the sooner, the better, as they always sell out.  It’s usually best to get your tickets sometime during the summer, so you won’t be disappointed.

I actually pre-ordered our tickets to thew Maine fest at last year’s Maine fest.  Haven’t gotten my tix yet, but no doubt they will mail them out in plenty of time.  I think this year we might go to the Dinner With The Brewers event the night before the actual festival.  This will be held at the Portland Clarion Hotel on Friday, November 5.  I think we were planning to come up on Friday, anyway, and stay over for two nights at the Inn at St. John.  We would be going to the afternoon session of the festival on Saturday, November 6.  This weekend usually coincides with single game tickets for the Portland Sea Dogs going on sale.  From the Inn at St. John, we have to walk right past the ticket office at Hadlock Field to get to the Portland Expo, where the beer festival takes place.

The New Hampshire festival will be held the following weekend at the Manchester Radisson Hotel.  As with the Maine festival, there will be a Dinner With The Brewers on Friday, November 12, followed by two tasting sessions on Saturday.  I don’t think we’ll be going to the dinner for this one, because I don’t think Mike can take two Fridays off in a row.  I think we will just go to the evening session of the festival on Saturday, stay overnight, and go home the next day.  But that could change, it’s still a long ways off.

Although they will be offering special package deals which include lodging at the Radisson, I don’t think we’ll be taking advantage of that this year.  Since we always stay at the Hilton Garden Inn when we’re up for Fisher Cats game weekends, I’ve accumulated a boatload of HHonors points.  I got an email from them about “Point-Stretcher” periods, where I could redeem points for 40% less than usual at certain hotels and certain times.  I checked, and the Manchester HGI is not only included, but so is the weekend of the beer festival.  So that’s where we’ll be staying…you can’t get any better than FREE!  The HGI also has a free shuttle for guests, and last year, they were more than happy to take us to the Radisson…much appreciated since it was raining that night!

This will be the second year of the NH festival.  At this one, they have various beer tasting seminars, in addition to the regular tasting booths.  They promise to have even more of these this year than they did last year…but I wouldn’t look for anything too weird, such as the best face creams to use with your favorite beer. But they did have an interesting beer & chocolate pairing seminar, which was cool. Many people would not think about pairing beer and chocolate, but it definitely can be done, with very tasty results!

November will be here before we know it, so the time to start making plans is now!