Spending a Spring Weekend with Old Man Winter and Really Good Beer
So much about Maine culture can be vividly experienced in the state's craft beer tasting rooms, and we have lots of 'em
Nominally, theoretically, spring has arrived, and in Maine this weekend that means that before we’ve brewed this morning’s first cup of coffee thin and vulnerable tree branches are sagging from three or four inches of heavy, wet snowfall overnight. It’s forecast to keep falling, too, all day, then in phase II of the storm transition to an inch or two of sleet and freezing rain before wrapping up early Monday morning. There will be power outages across the state. Management at Maine ski resorts is delirious. I couldn’t be happier.
Around mid-afternoon today Kerry and I, outfitted in Maine spring attire of layers of smartwool, mittens and insulated waterproof boots, will buckle up in my Wrangler and four-wheel-drive north about 30 minutes to watch the fat flakes fall through a window in the tasting room of the Norway Brewing Company. We can’t wait.
We discovered the Norway, Maine, brewery after a hike together earlier this week. We were headed home on Main Street in Norway at 3:00 p.m. Thursday when we saw a jolly looking fella outside the brewery raise an open for business flag on the frame of the brew pub doors. We very much liked the notion of being the day’s first customers, and after four miles of hiking through snow, slush, ice, and mud we felt we’d earned our reward. Two hours later Kerry and I both knew that we’d discovered yet another Maine small business gem, that we’d be regular patrons at this brew pub, and that with the weekend snow forecast we wanted nothing more than to return to sip fabulous craft beer while seated before bartender Maciej, who hails from Poland and makes his own sausage for the brewery menu.
In addition to lobsters and blueberries, Maine does beer — very, very well. There is a well decorated and well patronized craft beer scene all about New England, but Maine is its Mecca. According to the Maine Brewers Guild (‘The Way Beer Should Be’), the trade association for the state’s craft breweries, as of 2022 Maine was home to 165 active, licensed breweries — about a hundred more breweries than there were here in 2010. And the state boasted the second highest brewery per capita (14.6) in the country.
“This state was built to be a craft beer oasis,” Portland radio WBLM wrote in a profile of the state’s beer scene earlier this month.
Sebago Lake, just up the road a bit from Portland, is I learned a primary source of Portland’s craft beers. It offers some of the best drinking water in the country. Its water is so clean it doesn’t need to be filtered, and it has the same mineral content as the water used by Belgian beer brewers.
One of the coolest features of the beer scene here for me is the story of the Maine Beer Box. I’d never heard of anything quite like it. Imagine a behemoth shipping container housing only an immense sample of a state’s craft beer products, delivering its liquid delight fresh, cold, and on tap. It’s been called the largest kegerator in the world, and only Maine has it. The Beer Box doesn’t travel merely from state or regional beer festival to ski lodge to (big) bachelor party; it actually is hauled out of Portland’s shipping port across oceans to other countries. Such is the demand.
From the state’s brewery guild: “The Maine Beer Box is a custom-built, 40ft., refrigerated shipping container with 78 beer taps and a self-contained draft system that was commissioned in 2017 by the Maine Brewers’ Guild. Serving as a symbol of the collaborative spirit of Maine and American craft brewing industry, the Maine Beer Box is utilized as part of a multi-year project based around a global exchange of beer between brewers from Maine and countries around the world.”
The craft beer scene nationally was booming about 5 years ago and more recently has fallen flat, hit hard by inflation and a broadened market of emerging, niche canned alcohol products. But beer in big brewing numbers and big steins isn’t going away in Maine any time soon. Kerry and I can attest.
Over the course of five years here I’ve sampled my share of sublime suds. I’ve organized walkable ‘pub crawls’ among pals during big snowstorms. After a hearty hike in the western Maine foothills I’ve parked my Wrangler at the Sunday River and Oxbow Brewery Companies, blending quality recreation with quality restoration. It’s a great way to spend a full day, in every season. Every established restaurant about the state knows to offer at least a handful (and often more) of samples from the most venerated Maine craft brewers.
On Thursday Kerry and I took our perch on the bar stools of the Norway Brewing Company at 3:05 p.m. and commenced an early happy hour. The bearded flag bearer outside was in fact Maciej, brewery bar manager, and back behind the bar he engaged us as if we’d been prized patrons for 10 years. Two young local women, solo suds sippers, soon thereafter joined us on adjoining stools, and they, too, offered only warm and cheerful banter at a naughty hour away from office supervisory eyes.
The four of us had Maciej pour 4-ounce samples and 16-ounce statements of leisure conviction from a striking array of beer offerings. ‘Mr. Grumpypants’ is a well crafted oatmeal coffee stout named in homage to a certain pub manager maybe named Charlie who is renowned for his a.m. surliness if his coffee isn’t in hand. (Not to be confused with the imperial stout, ‘Grumpalumpagus.’) Kerry delighted in the brewery’s renowned ale, ‘Triple Stack,’ which is aged for more than a year in bourbon barrels and delivers a hefty 9.5% ABV. There are a handful of high-alcohol pours at Norway none of which taste high in alcohol, all of them crisp and smooth, well crafted and memorable pub immersions. Kerry and I took a few cans home with us Thursday.
Norway Brewing is a family owned and run business, and one family member, Charlie, invited Kerry and me on a tour with our pours Thursday. Charlie explained that he has a young and immensely talented chef working for him, and that his family of brewers takes enormous pride in delivering not only delicious beer but a kitchen whose aromas waft wondrously into the tasting room and testify to the talent within.
The snow is piling up outside and I’ve some shoveling to do before today’s return visit to Norway. Authentic spring will eventually arrive here in Maine, but this afternoon, seated on bar stools at our favorite craft brew pub, my fiance and I will smile widely in our thick sweaters while sipping delicious and fresh beer made locally with pride and heart, certain of making new friends.