I’ve been keeping pretty close to home recently but managed two recent and memorable beer trips. Last weekend, we went to a perennial favorite in the Willimantic Brewing Company in Willimantic, Connecticut. Located in a renovated post office, it is a quirky environment for a brewpub. Owner and brewer Dave Wollner ups the quirkiness with his unbending dedication to hops. While most New England brewer seem averse to making American-style IPA’s (there are notable exceptions of course), Wollner is one of our biggest hopheads.

He brews more than 20 different IPA’s during the year and puts loads more on his guest taps. For the Jake 180 IPA, Wollner turned over the system to assistant brewer, Jake Matot. The Jake is an unusual IPA in that it employs only two-row Munich and wheat malts. It is hopped with Warrior, Simcoe, and Perle hops. The resulting flavors remain strongly hoppy, but the underlying malts playfully confuse and bedazzle the palate.

Wollner’s own pleasantly sour Willi Whammer ‘06 Barleywine (Jack Daniels aged, 10.4% ABV) and RodenZok (in collaboration with homebrewer Paul Zocco) were also enjoyable.

A few weeks before, we also had the chance to travel to Walpole (not for legal business) to visit the British Beer Company. I’ve heard a lot about this small chain of pubs from readers and industry types but this was my first personal visit. Now, the south shore is not particularly well-known for its dedication to good beer by the BBC is doing a great job countering that. The pub has a very authentic interior created and built in Britain, with lots of nooks throughout the place.

The extensive, written beer list is praiseworthy in its level of detail. The menu even offers a range of vintage and aged beers for purchase. The list is near evenly split between British beers, many hard to find in Boston, and craft beers. The owners seem to have good relationships with craft brewers ranging from Dogfish Head to the Berkshire Brewing Company. The owners also have an innovative employee exchange program with the Newcastle Brewery, where employees can travel to England to learn the pub trade there before returning to the states.I enjoyed a beautiful Ridgeway IPA that was remarkably fresh. The only complaint I have, and it’s a small one, is that the pub appears to employ the controversial, fake cask engines Fuller’s has unfortunately brought to the United States.

A newspaper in North Adams, MA, tucked in the upper left hand corner of the state, is reporting that a few enterprising guys plan to open a new craft brewery there.  The partners, Christopher Post, Allan Duvall, Chris Cuzme and Alex Hall, have applied for a license to open a 15-barrel brewery to be located in a 4,000-square-foot space in Delftree building at 234 Union St.  The team has experience brewing and working at the Chelsea Brewing Co. and Greenpoint Beer Works.  Expect real ale to be a focus of the operation.  Hall is the editor of the Gotham Imbiber and a hardened CAMRA proponent.  He informed the BeerAdvocate readership that the brewery has already ordered 50 firkins.

The guys will go before the local planning board on March 12.  From the article, it appears they will fight the continuing battle against beer ignorance.

“I think it’s a labor of love, more than anything else with these guys,” he said Monday. “They started coming in a year ago, and finally, we thought the proposal was ready. As long as it’s not going to sell beer or have any smells associated with it, then it will be fine.”

The mayor said he was sure any odor issues would be dealt with at the Planning Board meeting.  The mayor in North Adams said of the proposed brewery:

“In no uncertain terms can there be an odor,” he said. “I guess they have ways to prevent that. Seeing all the other breweries don’t have this problem, I don’t think it will be an issue.” 

Best of luck and drop me a line with more details.

Here I am, only a day or two into this Notebook and already I’m set to write about a relatively minor issue that has come up in every day drinking.  It’s the heart of “blogging”, which I had hoped to avoid with this broadly focused feature.  Anyways, I was perusing the selection at Downtown Wine and Spirits here in Somerville yesterday and came across a beer I thoroughly enjoyed last year, the Mendocino Winter Ale.  While I’m not generally drawn to Mendocino products, last year’s Winter Ale was a tightly packed Double IPA smartly priced at around $6.99.  So I grabbed a six-pack and decided I wanted a malty companion, so I also selected the excellent Smuttynose Winter Ale. 

After getting home, I was a bit concerned that I couldn’t see through the bottle for sediment.  My suspicions were confirmed when I poured the beer into a glass and it came out pitch black.  My Double IPA had transformed itself into an oatmeal stout.  By all label appearances, this should have been the Double IPA.  A closer inspection revealed a new neck label that in the world’s tiniest letters noted the beer was an 7-percent ABV oatmeal stout.  Putting aside the issue of why anyone would brew such a ridiculously high-alcohol oatmeal stout, I feel a bit cheated.  The stout is perfectly fine, but I wanted and expected the IPA.  It’s clear that Mendocino is simply reusing leftover main labels and six-packs containers (lamely and vaguely “celebrating over 20 years of brewing excellence) and just adding new, hard to distinguish neck labels.   Shame on them.  I want my DIPA.