Category: Beer

Reviews of Howie’s & Pom’s

| Posted in Reviews, Beer

The Press Herald has published a bar review of Howie’s,

While I wasn’t sure what I was getting into when I ventured outside the popular Old Port bar area of Portland, I’m glad I gave Howie’s a shot. It’s a fun little place if you’re looking to venture from the Old Port crowds.

and a review of Pom’s.

On a cold day, one of my favorite comfort foods is any kind of noodle soup, or noodles in broth. So I went for lunch the other day at Pom’s Thai Taste Restaurant & Noodle House in Portland in search of some warm comfort.

I found it, plus a little extra kick.

Today’s paper also includes a report on the sour and wild beer tasting that recently took place at the Bier Cellar.

The Flemish red ale Duchesse de Bourgogne from Brouwerij Verhaeghe is a classic for the style, with almost no carbonation and a rich flavor. It is a blend of 8- and 18-month-old beers, aged in oak casks, with just a bit of sourness. It was one of my favorites of the line-up.

 

 

Reviews of Micucci and Bonobo, Portland Beer Week

| Posted in Reviews, Beer

Today’s Press Herald includes a review of Micucci’s,

I’m already a regular customer of Micucci’s, especially the bakery/cafe part, where Stephen Lanzalotta’s Sicilian slab pizza is doled out to a long line of salivating customers jockeying for position. Lanzalotta’s pizza makes all the pleasure centers in your brain light up like a pinball machine until you want to cry for your mama.

as well as a bar review of Bonobo,

The pizza is the real star of this bar, with a thin crust and creative toppings to satisfy adventurous taste buds. The pies measure about 13 inches and come with a promise that no nitrates, hormones or antibiotics were used in the meats.

and a report from last week’s Portland Beer Week.

Reviews of Amigo’s & Vaughan Street

| Posted in Reviews, Beer

The Press Herald has published a review of Vaughan Street Variety,

First, the positives: The breakfast sandwich was very good, and for $2.50, it felt like a bargain. I ordered it on an English muffin, which was lightly toasted. The egg was cooked thoroughly, without a runny yolk. The bacon was crisp and plentiful, and the white American cheese was drippy and gooey. It came tightly wrapped in tinfoil, and emitted steam when I unfolded it back home. Perfect.

as well as a bar review of Amigo’s and a report from last weekend’s Maine Brewers Festival.

Maine Brewers Festival

| Posted in Beer

Both the Maine Sunday Telegram and the Bangor Daily News have published reports on the Maine Brewers Festival.

Healy and 4,999 other beer enthusiasts — tickets were limited to 5,000 — downed samples from about 15 Maine craft breweries at the Portland Expo. The 19th annual festival drew a mixture of beer connoisseurs, hobby brewers and people looking for a fun time with friends.

Attendees received tickets to sample up to a dozen 4-ounce glasses, choosing from 100 varieties of beer.

 

Boston Globe: The Holy Donut & 2 Dark Beers

| Posted in Beer, Profiles

The Boston Globe has published a profile of The Holy Donut,

This is a typical Saturday morning for the 5-month-old shop in Portland’s Deering Oaks neighborhood, even though Kellis and her staff, several of whom are family members (she co-owns the business with her father, Allen), have continuously ramped up production since they opened. Nowadays, they turn out roughly 1,200 doughnuts a day in at least a dozen different flavors: plain wide rings dredged with cinnamon-sugar or dripping with maple, lemon, vanilla, or “mojito” lime glaze; sweet potato doughnuts laced with ginger; best-selling dark-chocolate doughnuts flecked with coarse sea salt.

and has highlighted a pair of dark beers from Maine Beer Co. and Peaks,

Thick pine and citrus flavors hit your tongue first, but they’re balanced by a smoky backbone. There’s sweet caramel in here, too, but the hops never go away. They remind you of their presence from start to finish. This is a truly exceptional beer.

Bar Review of Yosaku & Preview of Maine Brewers Festival

| Posted in Reviews, Beer

The Press Herald has published a bar review of Yosaku,

I was so caught up watching them, I forgot to even look at the bar menu before our waitress came around. While Yosaku offers a full selection of white and red wines, its true specialty is a range of sake selections. If you’re a fan of sake, you could spend anywhere between $5 for a small carafe of Ozeki Hot Sake up to $40 for Komatsu Tatewaki “Samurai” Taru Sake.

and a preview of the Maine Brewers Festival.

The festival is not officially part of Portland Beer Week, which runs Nov. 4-11. But it could be viewed as an aperitif, and a lot of the same organizations are involved in both events.

Portland Beer Week & VitaminSea

| Posted in Beer, Profiles

The Food & Dining section in today’s Press Herald includes an article about Portland Beer Week. Portland Beer Week is is taking place November 4-11.

The inaugural year of beer week was well received, but in a lot of ways, beer lovers say, it was kind of like Restaurant Week with beer as an add-on. This year Stevens, who owns The Thirsty Pig on Exchange Street, and her fellow beer geeks have structured an impressive line-up that is overflowing with nearly 60 events. And they did it all in barely two months.

Also in today’s paper is a profile of VitaminSea, a company that sells energy bars and other products that are made with seaweed.

Right now, company founders Tom and Kelly Roth have reached capacity with the number of SeaCrunch bars they can make in the licensed commercial kitchen in their Buxton home. They’re currently churning out about 1,000 bars a week of the mixture made from almonds, sesame seeds, dried cranberries, kelp and maple syrup. Yet, sales of the bars keep growing and the company plans to introduce two new flavors in the coming weeks, Blueberry (with dried blueberries and dark chocolate) and S’mores (with milk chocolate and marshmallows).

Baxter Brewing

| Posted in Beer

MaineBiz has published an article about Baxter Brewing and its founder Luke Livingston.

Two years in, Luke Livingston is doubling down on Baxter Brewing Co.

By 2014, he plans to nearly triple staff, quadruple production and brew around the clock to reach new markets across New England. A $2.5-million expansion to start this year will max out the company’s Bates Mill brewery in Lewiston, allowing the can-only facility to produce over 1 million gallons of beer.

New Wave of Maine Brewers

| Posted in Beer

Today’s Press Herald includes a feature story about the new batch of beer brewers (Maine Beer Co, Oxbow, Rising Tide, Bull Jagger, etc) and  related ventures (Novare Res, Bier Cellar, etc.).

The late 1980s and early 1990s brought Geary’s, Gritty McDuff’s and Shipyard, now the granddaddies of the industry in Maine even though they’re still much smaller than “big beer.”

The growth of the industry has paved the way for more competitors and more specialization. A second wave of “beer geeks” is brewing small batches at home or in tiny rented spaces, using unconventional ingredients to develop a diversity of flavors that could only be dreamed of two decades ago.