Allagash Brewing

Amber and I spent this past weekend in Portland, Maine, a city that we've both really grown to enjoy after visiting a number of times over the past few years. It's a great small city with a lot going on, food and drink definitely at the top of the list.

In an article that appeared in The Boston Globe on January 14, 2012, Steve Greenlee writes enthusiastically about Allagash Brewing, a spectacular brewery located in Portland, Maine and one which we visited and toured.

"Allagash Brewing Co., just two hours up the road, in Portland, Maine, makes some of America’s best Belgian-style ales, and all manner of them. It brews a strong stable of what one might call 'regular’' Belgian beers - a dubbel, a tripel, and of course its witbier - and packages them in 750-milliliter bottles as well as affordable four-packs of 12-ounce bottles (around $10 each). But Allagash’s premier beers - the more interesting ones - can run far more, from $18 to $23 per 750-milliliter...Pricey? For beer, yes. But when you consider that a bottle of good wine costs about the same, one could argue that these beers are worth it (once in a while, as an extravagance)," explains Greenlee.

Located on Industrial Way in the northwestern corner of the city, Allagash is just down the road from the Maine Beer Company, Rising Tide Brewing Company, Casco Bay Brewing Company, and Bull Jagger Brewing Company. Around the corner is the D.L. Geary Brewing Company. It is, needless to say, one of the most concentrated centers for beer in the United States, all in a city of just over 65,000 people. And this half mile arc doesn't even constitute all of Portland's brewing operations. Shipyard, Peak Organic, and Gritty McDuff's are all located closer to the center of town.

Getting there.

The tasting room. We tasted four Allagash brews before heading on the tour: White, Triple, Curieux, and Odyssey.

Allagash corks in the beautiful bar, which is made of reclaimed wood from a barn that was taken down elsewhere in Maine.

White, which makes up 75% of the brewery's sales.

Triple

Curieux. Aged in oak bourbon barrels, which Allagash gets from Jim Beam.

Odyssey. A dark wheat ale, 1/3 of this beer is aged in oak, and 2/3 of it is aged in stainless steel. Amber and I both liked this one best and picked up a bottle to bring home.

On the tour.

A scene of the brewing operation.

A moose

Curieux, aging in barrels.

Barrels of Coolship 12, one of many wild yeast beers aging at the brewery.

In addition to the various cultured yeasts that the brewers at Allagash use, they also experiment with the wild stuff too, a move that definitely pushes this operation into pretty interesting territory. As was explained during the tour and on the brewery's website, "[a] coolship is a large shallow pan used to cool wort overnight using outside air temperature. During the cooling process, naturally occurring yeast from the air inoculates the wort. In the morning, the cooled wort is transferred into barrels where the fermentation process begins. The beer is then aged for an undetermined amount of time, until we deem it 'ready'".

I had had a few Allagash beers before the visit, had been impressed - had the Allagash Black a few weeks back at a bar near home and thought it was brilliant - and was aware of their place in the upper echelon of America's craft beer world, but the tasting and tour definitely brought Allagash into focus for me.

And, I suppose, that is exactly what it - the tasting and tour, combined - was supposed to do. You visit a brewery, you interact with people who work there, you learn the stories behind the beer, and you walk away with a fuller appreciation and a deeper connection.

Well, it worked. Wonderful beer. Wonderful tour. I'm really looking forward to popping open that Odyssey.