Smuttynose Brewing Company, 105 Towle Farm Road, Hampton, NH, 03842 phone: #603-436-4036   website: Smuttynose.com
Hours: Mon–Thu: 12-7pm | Friday: 12-8pm | Saturday: 11am-8pm | Sunday: 11am-7pm

Experience before you go . . .

It's our last day of our Northeastern Coastal Tour as we head south from Kennebunkport to eventually catch a later flight out of Boston, Logan airport back to Chicago. Wanting to see what the great state of New Hampshire has to offer us craft beer lovers, I exit the highway in route to Smuttynose Brewing Company in Hampton, New Hampshire.....luv the name! Life's an adventure!! Kat and I are in a beautiful part of the country, it's sunny and 80 degrees and we're in search of Smuttynose Island, the third largest of the nine islands that form the Isles of Shoals, a small, rugged archipelago that lies seven miles off the craggy New Hampshire coast. The name Smuttynose appears on nautical charts from the 17th century, but its origins have been lost in time. (Tanks Wikipedia, my friend and yours)! Maybe we'll run into Blackbeard or Calico Jack to spice up our day a little bit.

"Your destination is on the right", as we cross a little bridge taking us to the island. Right there is a 2-ton way cool, huge rock with the Smuttynose signage on it.....park the car on the side of the road and lets go get the front sign selfie....yeah buddy!! The brewery opens at 11:00, looky here it's 11:00.....we're the first sippers of the day and it looks like a new form of brunch. We buy a taster card for $4 which gives you 4-2 oz tastes, sounds perfect! We enter the production room, "this place is huge" and meander to our right and up to the tasting bar. We're greeted by Jeff and Jack, great guys ready to take on the day. Jeff is relatively new but has a grip on the "everything beer" thing like a seasoned professional. Jack is an intern for the summer, studying to be an event planner.....love the passion!! Our first taste is the Finestkind IPA - (6.9%, 73.5 IBU) "if bitter is better, this beers for you", dry hopped, unfiltered thus the haze, very drinkable!

Next we try the Vunderbar Pilsner - (4.9% ,33 IBU) pale gold, Pilsner malt, north american 2- row, acidulated malt, Czech hops and old Bavarian Lager yeast is what makes up this beauty......refreshing, "I think I'll have another"!

Jack says, "I'm leading the first tour of the day, do you both want to join us".......Vunderbar! Jack explained the bottling process which is an engineering marvel that would spin your head around if you watched it too long. Next off to the grain area where the malts and hops are poured into a large mixing vat and then sent to the boil mill vat and next to the sealed mash tun, (Jack said all the filtered grains are collected at this point and a local farmer picks it all up and feeds it to his livestock...good eating) the filtered brew goes into the brew kettle and then to the larger fermenting tanks. Jack said there's only two types of beer, Ales and Lagers.....you can pay the rent on ales because fermentation is a day or two where lagers can take 3-4 weeks to ferment. You can only buy Smuttynose beer on the east coast which is a bummer for us Midwesterners. Great tour Jack!

Back to the tasting bar where we sip the seasonal Cherry Sour (5.2%, 10 IBU) bright, tart and refreshing with a lip smacking finish.....that will wake you up! We finish up with Really Old Brown Dog - Brown Ale ( 11.1% yowser, 34 IBU) full bodied old ale that was laid up to mature thus the name, high alcohol, deep complex fruits notes, mellow and very tasty.

You got to visit Smuttynose! I hear expansion and positive things in the near future so Smuttynose might be coming to a store near you. But in the meantime take a trip and enjoy the beauty of the east coast and the genuine folks that live there.....talk to a local, you'll be amazed at what you'll learn!!

Until next time and remember.........

Go get'cha one!!