Upcoming New England Beer Events…

…that we are going to be attending!  Please click links for more details.  Cheers!

Saturday, October 31 – Great Pumpkin Festival, at the Cambridge Brewing Company, Cambridge, MA.  There will be a large variety of pumpkin beers on tap, both CBC’s and others.  Also, a selection of foods made with pumpkin.  Starts at 4PM, $10 cover charge at the door.

Friday & Saturday, November 6-7 – Maine Brewers Festival, Portland, Maine.  Friday night is the second annual Dinner With The Brewers, at the Clarion Hotel in Portland (6-9PM).  Enjoy expert beer and food pairings, and the brewers will be on hand to answer questions in a panel discussion.  Saturday is the festival itself (16th annual!), where you can sample a large variety of beers from many Maine breweries.  Two sessions on Saturday, Happy Hour (1:30-5PM) and Evening (6:30-10PM).  As always, there is a great lineup of bands who will be performing.

Most tickets are sold out on the website, except for the Friday night dinner.  If you’re in the Portland area, you may still be able to snag tickets at a couple of local businesses…click here for details.  This sells out every single year, so don’t delay!

Friday & Saturday, November 13-14 – New Hampshire Brewers Festival, Radisson Hotel, Manchester, NH.  This is pretty much the same idea as the Maine Brewers Festival above, with the dinner on Friday night and two tasting sessions on Saturday.  It’s run by the same people, so I know it will be excellent!  This one will feature brewers not just from New Hampshire, but Maine and Massachusetts, as well.  There will also be beer seminars and great entertainment.  This will be the first time they’ve done this in NH, and it will be an annual event.

Tickets to the dinner and both Saturday sessions are still available on the website. Also check the website for lodging packages at the Radisson.

Sunday, November 15 – Washburn Underground Beer Dinner, Sweetwater Cafe, Boston, MA.  Six courses, and six perfectly matched beers.  I first heard of this event from @DrinkCraftBeer on Twitter.  I was intrigued by the dish that contains *hop-cured bacon*.  I love hops, and I love bacon.

Tickets just went on sale yesterday, and I wasted no time getting them.  Tickets are $75 each, includes tax & gratuity.  You can order online here.

The doors open at 6PM for a social cocktail hour, with a cash bar.  The dinner begins at 7PM.

Whew!  Sometimes I wish we could get some rv financing and find places to park it outside of all of these events. Would be cheaper than hotels in the long run, and we could just stagger to the rv and pass out after drinking all those beers!

Cheers!

Meeting Norm Abram

So Mike and I went to Old Sturbridge Village this weekend, for a brunch event with Norm Abram, of This Old House and New Yankee Workshop fame.

This truly was an awesome event.  Norm, as you may or may not know, is on the Board of Trustees at OSV, and has done a lot to help the museum stay viable.  Although the economy is bad right now, thanks in big part to Norm, OSV’s attendance has increased over the past few years.  Norm has also filmed segments of New Yankee Workshop at OSV, when he was building a replica of some piece of antique 1830′s furniture from there.

So, of course he was happy to donate his time to speak at this event.  It was in honor of a new exhibit of antique furniture at the Village.

After a delicious buffet brunch, after which one would need the best weight loss pills, Norm gave a little talk, and then did a Q & A session.  He talked a lot abut his PBS TV shows, how he got started in the woodworking business, and more.  YES, his house is filled with furniture that he personally built.  And NO, he didn’t reveal the location of the New Yankee Workshop, even though someone asked.

Norm in person is just like he is on TV…what you see is what you get.  He is a very nice guy, who is very passionate about what he does, and about OSV.

After the brunch and the talk, he moved on to the museum bookstore, where he was signing books and stuff, and posing for pics.  The line was really long, so we went and looked at the new furniture exhibit, walked around the Village, and then went back to get autograph/pic with Norm.  We were going to buy one of his books, but they were all sold out…that is how well this event did.  But they had handed out free copies of a Fine Woodworking magazine that had Norm on the cover, and he was happy to sign those for us.

And he posed for a pic with us, which the editor of the magazine was happy to take for us with my camera…he was doing this for everyone…

You can click on both these images to see them in embiggened form.

We had a really great time.  It’s always fun to learn some of the behind the scenes stuff about how favorite TV shows are produced.  And to help one of favorite museums at the same time!

Don’t mess with The Vermonster!

So I’ve been devoting a lot of Tweets, Facebook posts, and a couple of blog posts about the whole Rock Art Brewery legal fiasco.  You can read my blog posts here and here for all the details.

Basically, Rock Art received a *cease & desist* letter from the makers of Monster Energy Drinks, demanding that they stop using the name of *Vermonster* for one of their beers.  Their argument was that people might confuse the two drinks.  This, of course, was absolutely ridiculous, as the labels look NOTHING alike!  One would have to have consumed many, many Vermonsters to be drunk enough to not notice the difference!

Now, if you know me, you know how much I love craft beers, as well as being supportive of the little guy over huge corporations.  So it brings me great joy to tell you that Rock Art has won the battle!

Basically, Rock Art gets to keep calling their high-octane barleywine “The Vermonster” if they promise to stay out of the energy drink business.  That will be easy, as Rock Art’s owners, Matt & Renee Nadeau, never had any intention of doing so in the first place.  All they want to do is brew beer!

Also the Monster people have agreed to pay any legal fees incurred by Rock Art in this whole mess.  That has to be a HUGE relief for Matt & Renee, as they do not have the deep pockets of a multi-billion dollar corporation.

What is really amazing about this whole thing is how quickly people came together to show their support.  I first learned of Rock Art’s plight on Facebook, on the fan page for Smuttynose Brewery, of Portsmouth, NH.

Although I had never even heard of Rock Art Brewery before, I was outraged enough to take action.  I blogged, Facebooked and Tweeted it.  I signed an online petition.  I contacted Hansen, the parent company of the Monster drinks, to let them know of my displeasure.  I contacted a few Massachusetts liquor stores that specialize in hard-to-find beers, such as Yankee Spirits, and asked them to order Vermonster and other Rock Art beers so that I could buy them.  And I called the brewery to order their *Save The Vermonster* T-shirts for me and Mike.  Buying and wearing the shirts would not only help spread the word, but the proceeds from the sales would have gone to help defray their legal fees.

And I wasn’t the only one to show support.  Craft beer lovers from all over signed the petition, joined the Rock Art Facebook fan page, etc.  Even people who’ve never even been to Vermont joined in, from people who run microbreweries in California to employees of Blue Cross NC.  It was simply amazing!

Hansen/Monster has definitely underestimated the power of the craft beer community.  It’s not a cut-throat, super-competitive industry…craft brewers like to support one another.  So when one of their own is in trouble, they’ll rally together in support.

And that, as Martha Stewart would say, is a good thing!

Save The Vermonster!

I posted the other day about how the makers of Monster Energy Drink sent a “cease & desist” letter to the Rock Art Brewery.  The reason?  The energy drink company seems to think that they own the exclusive rights to use the word “monster”, and they want the brewery to stop calling one of their beers “The Vermonster”.

Anyway, I wanted to show you a new blog devoted to the cause – SUPPORT ROCK ART BREWERY, SAVE VERMONSTER.  It has an extensive list of other blog posts about this issue, as well as ways you can help.  I strongly urge you to visit and do what you can!

Some stores apparently have pulled the energy drink from their shelves in support of the Rock Art Brewery.  Did they also need to run the air filters to get the stench out?

I plan on doing as many of the 12 things listed on that blog as I can.  I have already done several of them.

Oh, and in case you live in Massachusetts and want to buy this beer, I’m told by the owners of Rock Art that it is available at Drum Hill Liquors in Chelmsford.  Yankee Spirits, in Sturbridge, may possibly have it, too, as they have a ginormous beer selection.  I sent the latter an email to ask, and am waiting to hear back.  But we’re going to Sturbridge a week from today, anyway, for the Norm Abram brunch thing at Old Sturbridge Village.  And we never visit Sturbridge without making a stop at Yankee Spirits.

So, as soon as I know if they have it or not, or I find out who else carries Rock Art beers, I’ll be posting it right here!

It’s getting COLD!

And you know what that means…cold air outdoors that makes your skin dry, and dry heat indoors that makes your skin even drier!  So you’ll need some good products that will soothe and moisturize dry winter skin.

I’m sure you’ve heard of the Burt’s Bees line of products.  You may think they just make lip balm, but they make much, much more than that!  Perhaps you didn’t know that they also make natural baby products. Well, they do…there is a full collection of soaps, shampoos, lotions, and more.

Burt’s Bees uses all-natural ingredients in most of their products – so why not give them a try, if you haven’t already?