Sam Adams Brewery Tour

Disregarding the beautiful photos from my Plum Island post, fall in Boston is usually rainy and cold. I always seem to forget this when making plans. Sure enough, a few weeks ago, Colin came to Boston and we intended to spend Saturday kayaking with a Groupon and then get in some end-of-season sailing on Sunday. When we woke up on Saturday morning to a rainstorm and my radiators humming, we knew that wouldn't happen.

Boston has more museums than you can count, but many of them are so expensive that I hate to go--particularly on a rainy Saturday when every mother with a whining toddler and a stroller the size of an SUV has the same idea. Thanks, but no thanks. Most of the other things on my To Do in Boston list - Chinatown, Mount Auburn Cemetery, the Fenway Victory Garden, the Harbor Islands - are fair weather entertainment. Luckily, I have a few that are not: the MIT museum, Isabella Stewart Gardner museum, Taza chocolate factory tour, and Sam Adams brewery tour. This is my account of a rainy day mission to start checking off my list.

Sam Adams brewery tour? Check.

The brewery is about an hour away on the T, so Colin and I planned to leave as soon as we finished lunch. Lunch, however, was another adventure--customer appreciation day at the local small grocery/garden center, Pemberton Farms. By the time we waddled away from the free samples, burgers, and hot dogs, it was 1:30. We speed-waddled to the train in hopes of getting tickets for one of the last tours. And we did. We wandered in just in time for the 2:45 tour, despite the brewery's website warning that Saturday tours often reach capacity by noon.

I immediately loved the tour for two reasons. First, it's free. They check your ID, hand you a "ticket" (a beer bottle label), and let you in. The brewery suggests a $2 donation, but (and this is my second reason) even that goes entirely to charity. One of the organizations the brewery supports is a group that introduces urban children to the environment, so I was more than happy to pay our way.

Let the tour begin! Our "tickets" were bottle labels.

I've only been on one other brewery tour or wine tasting, and that was at the Anheuser-Busch brewery in St. Louis. In comparison to Sam Adams, that tour was practically gold-plated: I remember demonstrational videos, multiple buildings and manufacturing floors, sweet Clydesdales in a gilded stable, and a large tasting room where you could spend all afternoon sipping your three samples. The Sam Adams tour was much, much smaller and less flashy. The brewery here is the original site but no longer manufactures a significant portion of their products. It's a small building with only one or two rooms with any beer-making equipment at all. The tour guides didn't get into the beer-making science as much as I remember from Anheuser-Busch, but they definitely cracked more jokes. (It might have helped that they were carrying pints of beer, and I imagine had been sipping since their shifts started that morning.) My favorite part of this tour was probably when we were encouraged to taste three different types of malted barley and to crush dried hops in our hands for the aroma. I also learned that when Sam Adams beer is made outside of Boston (most of it now is), the local tap water is filtered to exactly the same standard as Boston water. In hindsight, that seems obvious--of course it's impossible to make identical beer using different water--but it just seems so amusing to worry about different levels of nutrients in perfectly good water!

First stop: tasting three different barley malts.

After tasting barley and crushing hops, we were herded into the brewhouse room, where we learned how to brew beer. Unfortunately they don't brew on Saturdays, so there was no action to watch.

Second stop: learning how the original Boston lager is made.

After the brewhouse, it was time for the tasting. This brings up the third reason I loved this tour: your free admission comes with a 7-ounce tasting glass. It's interesting to think that the cost of washing glasses must exceed the cost of buying one for every visitor, but it's a fun souvenir. This tour, unlike the Anheuser-Busch one, continues in the tasting room, where they lead you through the steps of a proper beer tasting. Each glass is printed with one of the steps of a proper tasting; mine reminds me to consider the "mouthfeel."

Third stop: the tasting room, where we are each given a souvenir glass.

What the guides fail to mention as they start the tasting lesson is that you are going to be expected to drink your beer quickly! There would be no lingering over pretzels (there weren't even any) while sipping samples, as at Anheuser-Busch. Nope, they pass out pitchers of beer, starting with the original Sam Adams. Thinking that 7 ounces is kind of teeny, you fill your glass to the brim and start sipping slowly, following their instructions for tasting. (I would share them with you, but I've forgotten them by now, probably because I had to gulp my beer in order to keep up.) After ten minutes or so, the second round of pitchers appeared. I filled my glass only partway that time, but still found myself draining the glass just as Pitcher #3 arrived. Luckily, Pitcher #3 was a chocolate stout that I really didn't like, so when they released us to wander through the gift shop with our still mostly full glasses, I quietly made my way to the bathroom where I dumped mine in the sink.

Colin learns the steps to a proper beer tasting.

In sum: awesome tour, but unless you are a big burly guy (way bigger than Colin), don't fill your glass full. And a note to the tour guides: you should warn visitors that they're going to have to drink 21 ounces of beer in 20 minutes.

You might think that at this point Colin and I were done with beer for the night. But, no! During the tour, they show you these special Sam Adams beer glasses, designed to bring out all the right flavors, etc, etc, and tell you that YOU TOO CAN HAVE ONE FOR FREE if only you buy a Sam Adams beer from their partner bar. Knowing that it would take us at least an hour to get home and another hour to make dinner, Colin and I decided that appetizers, one more beer each, and a free glass sounded like a pretty good Saturday evening.

It was totally worth it. I was expecting a little van to drive us down the street, but instead, the Original Party Trolley of Boston showed up. Colin and I both looked at each other and burst out laughing. "We are way too old for this!" I thought, until I noticed several 50+-year-olds climbing off the trolley. If they could do it, so could we! The party trolley was outfitted with disco balls, colored lights, and dance music, not to mention the driver (during the evenings, a Boston tour guide) who was probably the world's biggest fan of the bar, Tommy Doyle's. I was actually pretty excited when he told us about Doyle's. It's the bar featured in all of the Sam Adams commercials and about a hundred movies set in Boston (the only one I had seen, though, was Mystic River). We hopped onboard and drove two minutes down the street, blasting dance music the whole way. It wasn't even long enough to get through half of one song. I think the driver just plays the same pop song on repeat all day.

Fourth stop: the Original Party Trolley of Boston takes us to Doyle's bar.

Doyle's was pretty crowded for 4:30 on a Saturday (or not if you consider how many trolleys full of people must come through on a Saturday of tours). It was dark, full of wooden booths and old memorabilia, just as I'd expect after watching Mystic River. A couple hours and plenty of onion rings later, Colin and I were both at home with our new Sam Adams beer glasses and a newly checked-off To Do list!

With a tour ticket and purchase of any Sam Adams beer, this super cool glass is mine!