I spent a couple of days touring a bunch of CT. breweries. New England Brewing Company, 12% Beer Project, No Worries, Counter Weight, Hog River Brewing.
New Park, Alvarium, Coles Road, Bad Sons, Bad Dog
I was only drinking IPA's, Stouts, and Porters at all the breweries.
New England Brewing Company In Woodbridge- tried their old school standard bearer beers Fuzzy Baby Ducks and G Bot to start out and triple bot pint to close out. Solid stuff and chill place. Zuppardi's pizza truck hit the spot.
Coles Road in Berlin- Fillmore East New England IPA and some stouts were excellent. This place was probably the surprise of the bunch, damn good/excellent.
12% Beer Project in North Haven- this is a flat out destination brewery IMO. Girl serving us was a bit curt and didn't have the type of personality I look for in this business but the beers are some of the best I've had. I would have to look up the pours I had but they were next level craftsmanship brewing, spectacular stouts.
No Worries in Hamden- cool chill place, the beers I tasted were solid but directly coming off of 12% were unspectacular but definitely solid.
Counter Weight in Hamden- same as No Worries, solid.
Alvarium in New Britain- Place was hopping, great facility with a bunch of solid/very good IPA's and porters. They do flights and they were huge five 5 ounce pours in tulip glasses. Nice people working the taps, good crowd of folks and some great softly played 90's hip hop as background music. Cool bartender kept giving me tastes of sours and some other stuff I wouldn't typically order, he said they are expanding another 5,000 square feet. Great place and it was slammed.
New Park- some very good citrusy creamy IPA's, started with small pours of Dreamcloud and something else ended with the DIPA pint.
Bad Sons- Cool place, does flights. Beers were solid if a bit underwhelming but had a very solid/good stout. Great repurposing of an old dye cast factory in the valley and they have a partnership with Roseland which makes the pizzas on site. The pizzas were excellent bar pies and better than anything u can ever get at a brewery.
Hog River in Hartford. Closed out the first night here after a long all day/night of drinking. In an old factory with an axe throwing spot next door and next to the Park Street Market where you can order from a bunch of different restaurants that deliver to the brewery. They do flights and the beers were solid/good but it was the end of the night and was maybe a bit beered out and needed food. Sabrasas food truck was some bomb end of the night bad for you drunk food.
Bad Dog Brewery Torrington, great repurposing of the old Torrington firehouse with a ton of space, they dumped a ton of money into this place and it can fit 350 people. They better step up their beer game because they only had like three beers on tap and the two I tried were poor and served in plastic cups. They know they aren't making adequate beer for the facility because they had some Alvarium and Great Falls on the menu.
I've always complained that Connecticut is a boring state and they were maybe a tad slow on the brewery scene but they are certainly doing it well right now. Some excellent breweries in the state with all sorts of different spaces and vibes. Young, old, kids in strollers, dogs...I had a blast.
www.groupon.com
