Palmer’s Marketing Director, Tiffany visits Maine’s coastline every summer with her family to ride the big waves, eat blueberries, and catch lobsters. This year they visited The Maine Beer Company to chat it up with the locals and did a little goat hiking, cuz why not?
Hi, Tiffany here! Every summer my whole family gets together and visits Maine’s coastline to get together, ride some surfer’s waves, eat blueberries, and catch lobster. We’ve been doing this since I was a child. But I had never heard of The Maine Beer Company. Being a bartender in New York City in a past life, I was curious when I discovered their IPA, Lunch, at Palmer’s and saw it’s impressive World-Class score of 97 out of 100 on the Beer Advocate, I thought, I’d better stop by and check it out!
When entering their open air tasting room, you get the sense that life is good. The bartenders are exceptionally knowledgeable, telling the stories of how each beer came to be. And are willing to let you taste as much as you want before your tasting has even begun 😉 My flight included a tiny beautiful something, a deliciously perfect palette cleansing Pale Ale, with an Outstanding 90 out of 100 Beer Advocate Scoring; and the Black Barn Program No. 33, No. 35, and No. 36.
Stemming from their pilot program, The Black Barn Program was created to challenge the team to brew the highest quality beer, while allowing their brewers to work with new styles/recipes, new ingredients, and new processes. The Black Barn beers are only available in bottles and on draft exclusively in their tap room.
No. 33 Black Ale
A European Dark Lager, or Black Ale. It was a solid beer, with great balance, but somewhat unremarkable.
No. 35 Irish Dry Stout
A dark but smooth and light offering, Black Barn Program no. 35 has aromas of dark chocolate, coffee, dark berries, and moss .
No. 36 Altbier
Worth the trip alone, this Altbier was crisp and easy to drink. Perfect for the fall. In case you didn’t know – the name Alt, the German word for old, can either refer to the old style of brewing ales before the isolation of bottom-fermenting yeasts or the longer aging time needed to cold ferment ale yeasts. So it looks like an ale, features ale yeast and hopped like an ale, but is fermented at cooler temps like a lager.
Not an ale and not a lager, it poured a beautiful and absolutely crystal clear copper. It had a light but close to medium body with a full hearty feel, the carbonation is very present but creamy and smooth. The nose was malt forward; showing toffee, and tastes of slightly toasted rustic bread, and earthy woodsy hops, followed by black tea and some subtle darker fruity vibe from the yeast. This beer is very enjoyable, it’s best part is how well balanced all the flavors were and how drinkable it was. A wonderful altbier.
On my way out, as I was unabashedly taking pictures of everything, and I told the bottle teller that I was from Palmer’s in Connecticut. She handed me a Bottle of No. 36 and said, ‘Thank you for your support!”
P.S. If you’ve got kids, or no kids, I highly recommend then driving around the corner to take a visit to the Wolfe’s Neck Community Center for a Goat Hike. Yep, you heard me right. For an hour, 6 French Alpine goats will lead you through the trails and along the marsh lines (there favorite place to graze), and if nothing else but to walk off all the beer, you’ll get a good laugh! They also have bike and kayak rentals in case you’d like to visit an island or two.
Cheers! See you at Palmer’s!
Tiffany
Mother of 2, Director of Marketing, and thinks she could be a Winner of the Great British Baking Show.
Tiffany joined Palmer’s in the Spring of 2022 as the new Marketing Director with a background in retail e-commerce digital marketing & design and has already learned a TON about the local ins and outs of a 100 year legacy and just how much Palmer’s is weaved into the very fabrication of the Town of Darien.