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Top 12 (OK, 13) Beers of the Year, 2020
The tale of 2020 can be told through the beers we drank along the way–and they give us a specific sense of where we were a year ago, and how much they helped us retain both a kind of normalcy as well as keeping us connected with the hospitality industry, which took it on the…
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Lion’s Tail Brewing Co, Neenah
A tale of two years…and two visits one year apart to a fantastic brewery in the clutch of historic Neenah, Wisconsin. With 20 tours at the Experimental Aircraft Association’s annual pilot-fest, AirVenture, under my belt, the cancellation of the aviation pilgrimage in 2020 stung hard. And I still had an airline ticket to use–and as…
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Tröegs Brewery, Hershey
The aromas of chocolate filled the air, but we were there for the beer. My husband, as a Brit, takes Hershey’s chocolate as an affront to his senses, but we both remarked upon how well the company has apparently invested in the town as we drove through it on our way to find the Tröegs…
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Antietam Brewery, Hagerstown
Well, it took us long enough to make it to our first local taproom–but I’d sampled the Hager-Weiss Hefeweissen from Antietam Brewery in Hagerstown, Maryland, in six-pack form in December, so I knew we had a winner on our doorstep. The brewery used to be in town, but grew beyond its meagre space a couple…
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BrewDog DogTap
Every decent road trip requires at least one worthy pause–and we didn’t have one on the way out to Iowa from Maryland for Christmas 2019, because of certain circumstances. So we needed a good one for the trip back. I’d bought a share in BrewDog a couple of years ago during the second Equity For…
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A Round of Christmas Ales (& Others)
For 2019, with the full range of American craft beers within reach, I determined to taste a representative lineup of the Christmas and other seasonal ales and stouts put forth on the East Coast. Unlike the disappointment of pumpkin ales, the festive holiday brews by and large satisfied and delighted me. My favorite amongst them?…
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Moving In
It’s a feature well known that when you move into a new place, for every box you carry in and unpack, you drink a beer. Okay, maybe that was true in my college days–or was that just the price extracted by my erstwhile friends for hauling around my stuff? The stuff has multiplied, and we…
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Northern Neck Burgers
It’s the afternoon of the Saturday before the time change, and it’s a calm, cool day, with a bright sun that warms us only a little bit as we sit at a picnic table outside NN Burger in Tappahannock. The pups are leashed up and watching the boys play cornhole. You can tell it’s all…
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Gone Fishin’
Sometimes you need a break…a real Saturday morning evoking your childhood–complete with a bowl of Lucky Charms, sleeping in, and watching cartoons. Okay, so I didn’t do any of those things last Saturday, but I did walk over to the neighbor’s dock, where my love was tying a swivel to the line on a second…
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Make-A-Wish
We’re always up for a charitable way to mix philanthropy and beer (or wine), so when my friend Lori put it out there that she planned to hike 28.something crazy miles to raise funds for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, we asked, “Great. Where’s the beer?” She answered, “Down in Greensboro, you silly kids.” Actually, she and…