Did you know that there is a Trappist brewery just a short drive west of Boston? Chances are, in this modern wild world of breweries everywhere you look, you may not be familiar with the beers produced by St. Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts. But, if you do know about these brewing monks then you certainly know how exceptional the beers from Spencer Trappist Brewery are.
Founded in 1950, St. Joseph’s originally got into the grocery stores with a brand of tasty preserves you’d probably recognize as Trappist Preserves. Years later the monastery began looking into brewing beer along the lines of many of the classic Trappists of Europe primarily based in Belgium.
They’re at it again giant, corporate, conglomerates trying to make a mockery out of great beers with a story behind them. First, it was AB-InBev a couple of years ago during the Super Bowl. Now Beam-Suntory has released a commercial attempting to make craft beer look pretentious, silly, distasteful and ultimately lame. And, just like Budweiser’s disingenuous swipe at smaller breweries known for creativity and flavor, Jim Beam now asks the viewer if they too need something different a break from overly complicated artisanal or foreign beer. “How about a Beam and ginger highball?” the bartender asks, implying a simple, no-nonsense sophistication.
By Colin Hubbell
Special to the Observer-Dispatch
It isn’t often that a brewery chooses the German-style Gose to be its flagship beer. But, when it comes to Lost Nation Brewing in Morrisville, Vermont, there are always pleasant surprises in store. From their relatively obscure location off of VT-100 between Stowe and Johnson their tiny gastropub attached to the 7,000 barrel production brewery offers not only a great beer selection, but also some excellent food to pair it with be it the sliders, or tempeh Reuben both are well worth the short drive from Stowe alone.
Brewing under the mantra of “we who wander are not lost,” a play on Tolkien’s “not all those who wander are lost,” this brewery finds inspiration from classic and lesser-known European ales and lagers, while also giving strong representation to the hazy, but restrained, VT India Pale Ale. While their Mosaic IPA among a slew of other IPA iterations in their portfolio will placate anyone’s hop fix with
Around the globe, and across the span of history, any intrepid explorer can discover countless unique cultural and religious customs inspiring everything from intrigue and excitement to bewilderment. One of the more interesting holiday traditions of western civilization hails from old England where a medieval Christmas included a drinking ritual known as wassail or wassailing.
Some scholars believe it was initially practiced to ensure a good apple harvest, a practice with long roots perhaps reaching as far back as pagan times, while another version of wassailing consisted of going door to door, singing or caroling, and exchanging gifts while trading sips from large, usually wooden, wassail bowls. However, beer writer Randy Mosher argues the custom is really about drinking, not singing.