The Barrington Brewery (part 1)

After making our way to Thomaston CT, we spent a few fabulous days with Gene & Mo and the girls. ...though we only got to see Lizzie for a few hours one night.

So the story goes: I asked Gene to take Jami and I on some hikes. Visiting from Chicago, we really wanted to spend some time outdoors. One of Gene's favorites is Monument Mountain. Mo took the day off because she wanted to do some Christmas shopping for the girls and spend more time with us.
We pack in to the car, and after visiting the outlet mall, we go looking for a "Packie" near the trailhead. ("Packie" is NewEnglander for: package store). ....one of my favorite things about hiking with Gene is the inclusion of trail beverages. After a bit of a search, we loaded the backpacks with some Nukies and two dessert beers for the summit.

There's another story about Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne being wine-o buddies in some caves in the area. It is purported that from the summit of Monument Mountain, Melville found an inspiration in the form of a large rock formation that looked like a whale... You can wiki-wander for that story yourself; I digress.

I never did see Melville's inspiration on this trip to the summit. Clouds rolled in, and completely obscured the su... ...err, moon. Um, yeah, we took our sweet ass time finding trail sodas and enjoying our dessert beers at the summit that the sun set on us. Fearful of losing the little light we did have before the forecast-ed blizzard started, we picked up and headed back down to the car. Again, we took our time but this was largely because Mo had her knee repaired a few months earlier; the last thing we wanted was for her to injure herself. Thankfully, the closest we came to injury was when Gene was pointing out a safe spot to climb down.....and immediately wiped out! Hearing the crash of the bottle he had in his hand, I feared the worst, but there was no blood - just wounded pride. (and yes, we did clean up all the glass we could; all we left were footprints)

Despite our "reckless hiking" we had several good laughs on the trail back to the car, where we loaded back up... and headed for the next brewery on our impromptu tour!
The Barrington Brewery!

Situated in Great Barrington MA, this brewery boasts using solar power to brew it's tasty beverages.

They had an interesting beer list, and let you build flights from whatever was on the menu.

I'm kicking myself now for not keeping better note about what I tasted!

Something else I really liked, was their mug club. I fell in love with this idea at Sam Choy's Big Aloha Brewery in Honolulu, and I'm definitely going to put it to use when I open my own brewpub.