Pink Boots at Portsmouth and Drive to Hopkinton

"I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence, I can reach for; perfection is God's business." ~Michael J. Fox

August 29: Today I brewed at Portsmouth Brewery, the sister brewery to Smuttynose. Tod Mott has been Head Brewer there for four years. I've known Tod ever since I met him at the first Redbone's Northwest Beer Festival, which must be more than 12 or maybe even 15 years ago.

In the photo above, Brewmaster/ Owner Peter Egelston leads a worshipful Teri and Tod in honoring a graduated cylinder and hydrometer full of wort. If ya can't be silly on a blog, where can ya be?

Tod came to Portsmouth with a lot of brewing experience under his belt (and a lot of beer fans who love his beer), so Peter was very happy to bring a brewer of Tod's caliber and reputation on board.

Tod has made some nifty changes to bring Portsmouth Brewery into the modern age.

Portsmouth is a JV Northwest 7-barrel system built and installed in 1991. The brewery is built on two levels, and it's crammed into a pretty tight space. Somehow Tod and his Assistant Brewer, Tyler Jones managed to brew over 1,000 barrels last year, which means four batches per week all summer long.

One of Tod's upgrades is shown below right - a stainless chute for the spent grain. In the photo, recent American Brewers Guild graduate and current Portmouth Intern, Bart Ugorowski, is shown pulling the spent mash.

Photo at left, L to R: Tyler, Bart, Teri and Tod.

Although Portsmouth doesn't have a silo, Tod lessened the heavy grain burden by installing a chain-vey system and lowering the mill half through the floor so the 50-55 lb bags only need to be lifted about knee high. This scenario makes milling and mashing in a lot easier than it used to be.

Still, I say, "Get a silo!" You can read my opinions and dramatization of small efficient (and inefficient) grain handling systems in my 1993 article on Grain Handling here. You'll need Adobe Acrobat to download and read this article.

Portsmouth gifted me a t-shirt and a 22 oz. bottle of Tod's Blueberry Ale, made with real Maine blueberries.

Shortly after lunch I packed up my stuff and followed Tod out to Smuttynose where I revved up the minivan and trailer and followed Tod out to the highway.

Off I drove, heading south toward Hopkinton, Massachusetts, the starting place of the Boston Marathon. That's where my 7th grade friend, Allison lives with her family. Photo above shows Allison and me enjoying her backyard cabana.

Pink Boots at Smuttynose

"Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you can't build on it; it's only for wallowing in." ~Katherine Mansfield

August 27: I followed Tod out to Smuttynose where he loaded up the red pick-up with grain and hops for the week. Everyone here wears a uniform, so I changed into mine.

I worked with Dan Schubert on the brew, J.T. Thompson and Charlie Ireland in the cellar. Judi Keene collected yeast off the 200 barrel IPA fermenters. Executive Brewer Dave Yarrington kept things flowing smoothly. The photo above was taken in front of Smuttynose's colorfully painted horizontal ex-dairy conditioning tanks.

Photo above, L to R: Charlie, J.T., Teri, Judi, Dave and Dan. Missing from photo, Head Brewer
Greg Blanchard.

Dan brewed a couple of batches of Old Brown Dog today. This beer is named after Peter Egelston's beloved dog, Olive, who he got shortly after opening the Portsmouth Brewery. Smuttynose has beautiful photos and artwork on all of their beer labels, which were arranged by the talented JoAnne, Peter's significant other. I didn't get a chance to meet JoAnne, but I sure enjoyed the fruits of her artistic talents.

In the afternoon, when J.T. got off his shift, he joined me in Smutty's tasting room and tasted all their beers with me. I left at about 2:30 pm, in order to blog and go through emails in the afternoon.

This photo at right shows Smutty's employee basketball hoop. I thought it was a clever use for the silo supports.

I've noticed a few trends among breweries in New England so far, but there are plenty of exceptions to these trends: One is that they call 1/6-barrels logs. I like that. In Eugene we call them "one-sixth barrels" or sometimes "cornies." I think calling them "logs" fits the size and shape of these tall, skinny kegs well. Another trend is that many breweries produce predominantly English-style ales instead of lagers like I found in the Midwest, or American-style ales, like we have back home on the West Coast. A third fairly common trend is that New England brewers are less likely to use their own proprietary yeast strain, and more likely to use the Ringwood yeast strain.

Smuttynose gifted me a pink zip hoodie and a 22 oz. bottle of beer.

A Day Off in Portsmouth, NH

"Language exerts hidden power, like a moon on the tides." ~Rita Mae Brown

August 26: Slept in a bit and dug through my load of emails. Found a whole bunch of emails that my computer had sent to my "spam" folder. Oops! Sorry about the late replies.

Met Portsmouth Brewery's Head Brewer, Tod Mott, and his wife Galen in the pub in the afternoon. We tried a bunch of Tod's beers and had some really nice appetizers, including maple and bacon wrapped scallops. (Photo above, L to R: Teri, Tod and Galen.)

Then I followed Tod and Galen in the brewery's red pick-up truck to their home in rural Maine. We sat outside and admired the country twilight and enjoyed cocktails and appetizers. Then we moved to the screened-in porch for a lovely simple dinner of Italian sausages with grilled peppers and onions.

I got lost on the way back to Portsmouth. The country roads in Maine don't always have road signs or names. After several miles I turned around and luckily was able to find Tod and Galen's house again. Then I followed Tod to the highway, and it was all clear sailing from there back to the brewpub.

Drive: Falmouth, ME to Portsmouth, NH

"Vigorous let us be in attaining our ends, and mild in our method of attainment." ~Lord Newborough

August 25: I enjoyed breakfast with the Leavitt family and their friends this morning. Then I blogged until about 4:30 pm. Once my laptop battery ran out of juice in my trailer, I went hunting in Pete's antique empty house to find a 3-prong outlet. Found one upstairs in the boy's bedroom. Sat on a little red step-stool and used a regular-sized stool for my table. Blogged until my butt hurt sitting on the tiny hard wooden step-stool. Then sat on a pillow. Each time I blog, I have to be creative about how I connect to the Internet and where I set up my "desk."

Drove to Portsmouth, New Hampshire to the Smuttynose Brewing Co. Brewmaster/ Owner Peter Egelston met me there and I packed an overnight bag and left my van-trailer behind for three nights.

Peter lent me Smuttynose/Portsmouth Brewing's red pick-up truck and I followed Peter into the picturesque old town section of Portsmouth. Peter is also the Brewmaster/ Owner of Smuttynose's sister brewery, the Portsmouth Brewing Co. The brewery owns the building, and they use the second floor apartment as an office. Lucky for me they have a spare bedroom there that Peter lent to me for three nights.

Photo above shows Peter and me enjoying dinner and a pint at Portsmouth Brewing Co. I was hankering for a hamburger and Peter tried the daily special, which was wild boar chops with a wild mushroom demi-glace and roasted pears. Portsmouth Brewery has a really creative menu.

Afterwards Peter walked with me around town so I could get my bearings. Portsmouth is bordered on the north by a river, and beyond that river is Maine.

Drive: Bar Harbor, ME to Manchester, NH

"Do something. If it doesn't work, do something else. No idea is too crazy." ~Jim Hightower

August 21: Blogged and worked on photos at Jon's brother's house in the morning while Jon took the van to get the oil and transmission fluid changed and checked the air in the tires. The trip has been a bit fast-paced for me to do that while driving between breweries. Jon picked up big chunky lobster salad sandwiches for lunch on his way home.

After lunch we headed south toward Highway 1 down the Maine coast. The photo at left above shows the new (left) and old (right) bridges over the Penobscot River in Bucksport, Maine. We didn't stop at the observatory because we had a long drive ahead of us.

Drove across bridges in many small Maine towns. Our view often looked like photo below right.
Then we determined we had enough time to stop for a nice dinner at a brewpub, so we pulled off the highway at Portsmouth, New Hampshire and looked for the Portsmouth Brewing Company.

At the beginning of this drive I'd finally set up my laptop facing the driver (Jon), running my DeLorme GPS software that I haven't had much luck running. We used that to find the Portsmouth Brewing Co. That sure helped as we arrived just as it was getting dark.

Portsmouth is a super cute old historic-looking town, so there were not a lot of parking places available. Luckily it was Tuesday and not a weekend, and we finally found two metered parking spots on the street where we could park our van-trailer combo.

At the pub Jon ordered the vegetable salad sandwich and I ordered the beef and chorizo chili, both good. We shared a nine-beer sampler set (photo left) and agreed that our favorite was the IPA. I will be spending a day here with brewer Tod Mott next Tuesday. Tod is a friend of mine and it is no surprise to me that he would make a well-balanced Pacific Northwest-style IPA.

Jon and I wished we could spend more time exploring quaint, cute Portsmouth, but it was dark and we still had to get to the Super 8 Motel in Manchester, New Hampshire. The photo below right was taken with no flash. The church's white tower was all lit up.

We used the GPS software to navigate our way out of town. It's not perfect, but it works OK. Mostly Jon used it to look at where our GPS location was on the plotted line to our destination. We parked the van-trailer in the Super 8 parking lot and brought a bottle of Ommegeddon up to the room to share. This motel is five minutes from Manchester Airport and they have a free airport shuttle, which Jon will take tomorrow morning.