Harpoon Brewery...take 3

So some of you may know that I have been trying to go to the Harpoon Brewery for some time now (basically since I turned 21 in January). I got turned away two previous times because they had sold out for the day. But I was given a free pass for two tour tickets on one of those failed attempts. Well, you know what they say, third time's the charm.

Yesterday I finally went and got there in time to make a tour. Overall, the experience was awesome I couldn't ask for anything better. I got in for free because of my pass I had. Normally the tour is just 5 bucks for a ticket so either way it is well worth it.

Basically you get your ticket head up some stairs to the gift shop/tasting area and then the tour starts out on the brew deck. You go out to the deck show your ID get a tasting glass (which you get to keep) and right away it gets filled with some fresh Harpoon UFO. Next there is an introduction, a crash course in brewing and he explains a few of the more important pieces of equipment (mash, boiler, whirlpool, etc). After the brewing process is explained you go down to the lower level where the fermentation tanks are. By this time everyone is about done with their first beer and so while the fermentation process is being explained they go around and pour some of the beer that has been fermenting for a while so we get a taste of unfinished beer. From there we moved on to the area where filtration and kegging happens. A quick stop at the bottler and finally the warehouse where there is literally wall to wall cases of beer. It's kind of like heaven.

Of course after that part was all finished there was about a half hour left over for tasting. So you go back up to the tasting room and get your drink on. Basically you have free range on everything they have on tap at the time. It was great.

A couple of highlights and fun facts about Harpoon:

Tasting area/Store

Fermentation Tank

Current Keg machine (1keg/min)

Warehouse...aka Heaven

Oyster Stout!

-Oyster Stout: This was basically what sparked my motivation to make it out there this week. They had just finished their 36th offering of the 100 Barrel Series. (Read about it here) But the beer was freakin' delicious. I was so happy I finally got to sample it. **side note: It did not taste like oysters. The idea behind the oysters being added to the beer is that they have minerals in them that bring out certain characteristics and flavors of the stout and really make it pop** I definitely recommend it to all. I walked away with three 22oz. bottles.
-Keg situation: Currently the brewery seems to be doing a bit of expansion. One piece of equipment they recently got, but still have to assemble, is a new keg machine. Right now their current one spits out one new keg about every minute. This equates out to about 500-600 a day. It hasn't been keeping up with their demand so they bought a new toy which will do about a keg every 15 seconds...wow they quadrupled their production of kegs. Sweet mother.
-Because of the Prohibition: many breweries were shut down for a 13 year period when alcohol was made illegal in the US and then after it was made legal again there was a 25 year period where no brewing went on in Massachusetts. Cue Harpoon 1986 brewing licence #001 in MA. The state had reset the numbers and so officially Harpoon was the first production brewery in MA post prohibition.
-Last fun fact: It may seem like a crap ton of beer that they have in their warehouse when you are standing there but the fact is their stock is pretty much an infinitesimal amount in the large scheme of things. Americans drink so much beer that their entire Boston warehouse only accounts for a fraction of a quarter of a percent of the total beer consumed in America daily. And if they were the only available beer to be drank in American the would sell out their entire stock in 3 minutes. Wow. 

There is loads more to talk about but honestly who really wants to listen to me when you can go and pay 5 bucks and have your own memorable experience. It's a great thing to do if you find yourself up early enough on a weekend (tours usually sell out by 2pm but run from 11:30am-5pm every half hour), or if you have someone visiting from out of town and are looking for something fun to do. For more info check out Harpoons website.

Cheers!