Mid-Day IPA

Mid-Day IPA
1 pint glass, $3.75, 4.8% ABV

Purchased at Cambridge House Brew Pub, Granby

middayWhile the idea of having a beer in the middle of the day sounds good on paper, at the ripe old age of 41 – and being a full-time employed father of two – it doesn’t usually work out so well. Even on the weekends.

I get tired. Or I want more and can’t have more. Either way, it’s a delicate situation.

However, I am rather enjoying this new wave of “session” beers that are popping up all over the beer spectrum. (Heck, we now have a brewery in Connecticut, DuVig in Branford, dedicated solely to the production of session (low-alcohol) beers.) And brewers are putting much more effort into making these beers taste good.

It’s funny when you think about the Bud and Coors and Natural and Keystone Lights of the world; they are more or less session beers (close enough), but they are not delicious. So leave it to the brewpubs and craft breweries of the world to make GOOD beers that are low in alcohol.
CHB Says:

Citrusy Golden ale. Lower alcohol for any time of the day!

This was a good effort. It went down easy and tasted like a diet IPA. Or an IPA Light. Or, I guess Cambridge House would prefer I call it a Session IPA. The hops were present, just not in abundance. The citrus was there, just not super juicy. In other words, yeah, drinking this out in the sun in the summer would be no problem at all.

And that’s what the Connecticut Beer Trail thing does. They organize bus tours for people to travel together every few months to a pre-determined set of breweries and brewpubs around the state (and Rhode Island on occasion). In the middle of the day.

Scroll up to my beer pictures again. See that guy sitting in the blue shirt? That’s Bryon Turner, the guy who runs the whole operation. The other guy in the blue shirt is filming him – and you can’t see the woman, Hilary Russo, interviewing him. It was fascinating for me to overhear the production… anonymously in the corner.

CaptureI’m a total creeper. (That’s me under the red arrow!)

I am not a Beer Trail “Trailblazer,” mostly because I like to blaze my own trails. I have never liked organized group travel at all. And while I think what Turner does is pretty cool; promoting our local breweries and exposing new folks to the experience, I’m still not quite settled on the behind-the-scenes economics of it all.

Like, for a brewery or restaurant to be “on the trail,” they have to pay a fee. I have no idea what that fee is, and I’m sure it’s not much, but in an effort to have “rules” on CTMQ, I purposely don’t “do” the trails that require buy-in. Even if, as in this case, I support the general effort.

Anyway, Turner’s answers to Russo’s questions were on point. He was humble and really did a good job promoting the still-nascent industry. Seemed like a good dude.

The final video, which contains a few inaccuracies but nothing too ridiculous, is produced pretty well. In it, Russo travels from Cambridge House to Relic and then on to Hooker. It’s sort of funny to think that Broad Brook, Back East, Olde Burnside, City Steam, Top Shelf, Shebeen and Firefly were all within her radius too… What a fancy li’l industry we’ve created here, eh?

Anyway, I enjoyed my Mid-Day IPA while watching a (sorta) TV show get made. Here are the relevant links:

The full episode
Hilary Russo’s blog about her first CT beer adventure
CT Beer Trail

What I learned from that video: Mark is more of a foodie than I had known. Hooker’s barreling program is larger than I knew. Brew Masters hate the term “Brew Master” as much as I hate “blogger” or being called “CTMQ” or whatever. (Which makes me like Mark and all the other brew masters all the more.)

Overall Rating: B
Rating vs. Similar style: B

Cambridge House Brew Pub
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