In addition to this lovely event of the past two years known as "The Pandemic", my Dad passed away and the business I've been working for the past 12 years was acquired. I had to take a breather from a lot of things - although enjoying many great (and some not so great) beers was not one of them!
Joy and I - and some of the folks from our Pandemic Pod - still visited breweries but certainly not as frequently as in years past. The upside to the pandemic is that the availability of beers from out of state greatly increased as brewers fought to stay afloat and somehow state legislatures supported them with changes to distribution limitations.
We've seen an amazing increase in Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine breweries' products available here in Connecticut. I even saw some Heady Topper and Focal Banger from The Alchemist in a specialty beer cave in Long Beach CA while visiting my grandmother! Amazing!
For those of you who don't know about our October Brew Crew tradition, we typically choose a week in October, we pick a state in the continental US and do a bunch of recon on the top 30 breweries in that state. Some of us are on the east coast and some on the west so it's not a small endeavor to get together for these. We never make it to all 30 but we sure as hell give it a try! We do a lot of sight-seeing and learning about the state while enjoying their most talented brewers. My Dad's health was failing in 2019 and he opted not to join us for our Oregon trip. We got a call from my Mom on the morning of the third day of our trip and had to abandon our adventure to fly back across the country to be by Dad's bedside as he passed.
We've missed the last two years due to the pandemic but we're planning our next October Brew Crew Adventure for October of 2022. We'll don our masks, grab our pretzels, prep our palates and keep you posted!
Cheers,
Christopher
