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Weekend Ale Trails: Virginia Beach, Virginia

April 1, 2019 by Tupper Leave a Comment

Weekend Ale Trails:  Virginia Beach, Virginia

Weekend Ale Trails:  Virginia Beach, Virginia

Aerial view of Virginia Beach. See* for credit

Aerial view of Virginia Beach. See* for credit

For the next several weeks we’ll feature fun places to explore beer — and much more–a different destination each week.   Our beers of the day will feature beers from this wonderfully wet destinations.

This week’s beers are from Virginia Beach, Virginia.   You can stay on the beach and walk to several of the town’s breweries; other’s will require a ride sharing service.  Be warned — while some of these breweries are easily reached by walking or ride share, others are a fair distance from the center and Virginia Beach is, by area, larger than either New Orleans or Philadelphia.

The main attraction of Virginia Beach is, of course, the beach and its three-mile-long boardwalk.  The statue of Neptune is iconic.  There’s also an aquarium, an historic lighthouse, and a huge pile of trash that has been landscaped into a tourist attraction (Mount Trashmore).

We’ve tended to stay at the north end of the beach more or less near 32nd street.   There are good bars in addition to the two easily walkable breweries and a number of chains to choose from if you’re using or stockpiling points.  A Hilton Garden Inn is a bit more affordable than the full scale Hilton nearby.   A Courtyard was one of the best of that brand if you’ve got Marriott status.  An impressive buffet breakfast is around the corner from the dreary “Bistro” on weekends and in season.

There are many dozens of hotels up and down the beach and reaching up to five miles inland. The number of new hotels dropped like a stone during the Great Recession and recent growth has still left the number of rooms in season well short of demand.  Off season is a great time to explore if you can live without an ocean dip.   Rates drop like a stone, but most businesses stay open most of the year.

A dazzling array of breweries await you if your quest includes all within the massive city limits.   We’ll start with three that are walkable from the beach.    Home Republic and Smartmouth’s Pilot are an easy walk back from the boardwalk on either side of 32nd Street.   Back Bay is a longer walk west on 9th, then continuing as it turns into Norfolk Avenue.

The nearly one dozen breweries run from fairly small local favorites to the much more ambitious New Realm which took over the space built for Green Flash’s failed east coast project.  Check out our Beer of the Day feature each day this week for some of our favorites.

*Featured Image By Jason Pratt (FishSpeaker) – self-made; also on Flickr as Virginia Beach, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3652496

Filed Under: Hopping Around

Well-Aged Beers from our Vault: links to our Beers of the Day stories.

February 4, 2019 by Tupper 3 Comments

Well-Aged Beers from our Vault: links to our Beers of the Day stories.

In February, we present Beers for your Beer Vault: well aged beers that aged well.  Read on for the links to these beers as well as Pennsylvania weekend trips and great beers for the new year.  Click on “read more” to find easy links that take you to these beers.

February:  Beers from our Vault:   #12 is Stone Master of Disguise, then scroll down for “more beer reviews” to see the rest of February’s offerings.

January featured small town brewery trips.   In February we lay down beers for interest or improvement.  We started the New Year with a series of big beers for winter.   Read on for the links for all these beers and more.    The first of the Pennsylvania Brewery weekend finds was here.   Scroll back for the others in the series.  Our aged beers begin here .   Scroll up for the others.  Find a set of links to Great Beers for the New Year here – scroll down to find the dozen links.

Here are direct links to some of the aged beers:  Stone Porter with Chipotle; Lost Rhino Wandering Belgian IPA; Magic Hat Wee Heavy Champ; Samuel Adams Norse Legend Sahti;

Filed Under: Hopping Around

Twelve Beers of Christmas

December 1, 2018 by Tupper Leave a Comment

Twelve Beers of Christmas

We’re presenting our list of 12 great beers for the season. We’ve tasted well over 200 Christmas beers over the years.  Some have been bad elves, others have been nothing short of gifts.    Some of the ones on this year’s list are relatively easy to find, others are from our archives and beer vault. We hope even the ones from the archives will have stories that will help you find you own path to great beers.    Follow these links to find earlier posts in the series:   first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth,

Filed Under: Europe in Your Backyard Tagged With: Twelve Beers of Christmas

Augustiner Bräustuben: Munich’s Best Bargain is a Refuge Away From Tourists

September 15, 2018 by Tupper Leave a Comment

Augustiner Bräustuben:  Munich’s Best Bargain is a Refuge Away From Tourists

Augustiner Bräustuben:  Munich’s Best Bargain is a Refuge Away From Tourists

You might rub elbows with brewery employees at the Braustuben; it is on the site of the brewery.

You might rub elbows with brewery employees at the Braustuben; it is on the site of the brewery.

The Augustinian Monastery founded the Augustiner Brewery in Munich in 1328.  Napoleon’s sweep across Germany forced its secularization in 1803 and the brewery found its way into the hands of the Wagner family buy the middle of the 19th century.

Augustiner is one of the last two large independent breweries in Munich.

Augustiner is one of the last two large independent breweries in Munich.

The last of the Wagners, Edith Haberland Wagner left her majority share of the brewery to a charitable foundation whose mission is to provide good beer at fair prices to the people of Munich, and to use “profits” to better the city.

Happily tourists are included in the beneficiaries of the foundation’s efforts.  The Hirschgarden is the biggest in the world, and the Keller and Biergarten is the best center city beer garden anywhere.   Brewery restaurants in downtown Munich provide decent beer and Munich’s best beer.   Most serve from wooden barrels; Augustiner is the last of Munich’s breweries to use them extensively.

The main hall of the braustuben used to house the brewery's horses.

The main hall of the braustuben used to house the brewery’s horses.

While the prices of all the places you’re likely to run into are fair, the best bargain  in the city for Augustiner beer is in the Bräustuben, the brewery restaurant at the current site of the brewery at Arnulfstrasse 52 a short tram ride from the main station.  Only 5.5 Euros buys you a liter of the glorious Original Helles, which is one of the best lager beers in the world.  The dunkel goes for the same rate and the Edelstoff, slightly stronger and sweeter, is only .20 Euros more.   A daily menu features specials that go beyond schnitzels and roasts but those German standards are tasty and affordable.  A schnitzel or perch fillet is less than 12 Euros and some filling choices drop below 10 Euros.

It doesn’t hurt to get a reservation, but we’ve never had a serious time being seated.  The main hall used to be the brewery stables – it’s big and noisy and exciting.  These days, we prefer that relative serenity of the Bräustuben, with its rich dark woods and comfortable table seating.

Less of a bargain, but more of an adventure is the Keller on the opposite side of the tracks from the brewery.   The garden is hard to miss; we’ll take you downstairs in the Keller in our next post.

Filed Under: Just Go

COMING NEXT WINTER

March 12, 2018 by Tupper Leave a Comment

COMING NEXT WINTER

We’ve taken a winter hiatus to work on our next book.   The book is a guide to beer travel in the Mid Atlantic.  It features breweries where you can walk back to a comfortable room to spend the night after visiting the brewery.   We feature B&Bs, Inns, and iconic Hotels along with some of the most interesting beer destinations in the region.brews and snooze cover 001 crude

Watch this space  for some of the gems we’ve found in researching this project.  And look for a new Beer of the Day starting the second week of June.

Filed Under: Hopping Around

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