The Great American Ale Trail - Christian DeBenedetti [134]
KEY BEER
Marshall Wharf and Allagash are two local brewing companies especially well represented. The Belgian list is deep; the creamy bodied Moinette Blond from the makers of Saison Dupont is an enormously complex but sociable pale ale (even at 8.5% ABV) with yeasty, fruity notes up front and a snappy hop finish.
Belfast
MARSHALL WHARF BREWING CO. & THREE TIDES
2 Pinchy Ln. • Belfast, ME 04915 (207) 338-1707 • marshallwharf.com Established: 2003 (bar) and 2007 (brewery)
SCENE & STORY
Located smack on the pier next to the tugs of Belfast—a fishing village first settled in 1770—the Marshall Wharf brewery was built in the town’s original granary in 2007. A combination patio- and bocce-court-equipped beer bar, seven-barrel brew house with 8-spigot taproom and lobster pound (so you can buy some fresh-caught on summer mornings to take home), and a twelve-tap seasonal beer garden, Marshall Wharf is truly a one-stop affair. Brewing around thirty unusual styles and aging certain brews in Heaven Hill distillery barrels with increasingly assured results—especially in the IIPA, brown, stout, and Baltic Porter genres—founder David Carlson and brewer Danny McGovern have been helping remake coastal Maine’s beer scene for some time. McGovern, the former owner of Lake St. George Brewing Company and brewer for Belfast Bay Brewing Company (and a trained butcher), brought Carlson’s operation a number of interesting recipes. And Carlson’s waterfront Three Tides bar next door (which now serves seventeen Marshall Wharf beers and is sometimes known by locals as the “Lampshade Bar”) had been the first bar in Maine to serve beers from Anchor, Unibroue, and Ayinger on draft.
PHILOSOPHY
Good beer, fresh seafood, and a bocce ball court are the only necessities of life.
KEY BEER
Cant Dog, an Imperial IPA released in 2004, was one of Marshall Wharf’s early beers, and came about when Carlson and McGovern scored a haul of Simcoe hops from an Idaho brewer in distress. It’s a golden amber, 10% ABV hop bomb with such dangerous drinkability that patrons are limited to two per day.
Lovell
EBENEZER’S PUB
44 Allen Rd. • Lovell, ME 04051 • (207) 925-3200 ebenezerspub.net • Established: 2004
SCENE & STORY
One of the country’s most celebrated beer bars, Ebenezer’s—named for a late-eighteenth-century trapper said to have survived a duel with a bear but lost an arm—is located in the attached barn of an old farmhouse on a rural golf course, meaning it will take some planning (and driver’s GPS) to reach. With its screen porch, copper-topped bar, thirty-five taps (about two-thirds Belgian) and more than seven hundred labels in the cellar, it’s a bucket list beer bar with well-regarded food and a reputation for impromptu, eye-popping cellar tours. It’s not just that the list is long, it’s ridiculously deep, varied, and unusual. The location makes it a pilgrimage (and it’s easy to part with a great deal of money here), but those who make the effort are richly rewarded.
PHILOSOPHY
“We may be located in a small Maine town, but we’ve always dreamed big. From day one, it was our goal to build the best beer pub in the world,” says owner Chris Lively, who, with his wife, Jen, is a constant presence in the bar. This translates to cheerful service and a massive selection, care for the beer on hand, and a tradition of over-the-top events and beer dinners.
KEY BEER
The house beer is Black Albert, a resinous, roasty, coal black 13% ABV Russian Imperial Stout brewed by De Struise of Belgium. Lively’s selection of large-format bottles will no doubt be tempting too, especially for groups who make this pilgrimage, and the draft choices are beyond unusual, like a recent tapping of 2006 Cantillon Kriek, a sour Belgian ale aged with whole cherries in oak casks for up to three years before it is released.
BEST of the REST: MAINE
THE LION’S PRIDE
112 Pleasant St. • Brunswick, ME 04101