Day 3

Day 3
It’s a few minutes after 2:00 pm on the seventh day of our trip and I slowing falling behind blogging. We just left New Glarus Brewing Company, by far the largest brewery we’ve stopped at. But as this is day three’s post, I’ll rewind back a few days. After a good night of drunk sleep on day two, we wake up and drive to Ommegang Brewery. Coming into the brewery was quite a spectacle. You enter under a large arch with the name of the brewery and drive straight through a split in the brewery before parking along the backside of the brewery. After parking, we jump out of the car eager to get our drink on.

I make a quick pit stop in the bathroom and meet Matt, Ben, and Andrew in the tasting room. As I arrive there, the three of them are already a few samples ahead of me. So I do my best to catch up and sample beers quickly. I sample quite a few beers including the three philosophers, Wit Beer, Chocolate Raspberry, and the Lambic. I take some great video of the tasting room and gift shop at Ommegang. I also had a stirring revelation about one of the beers offered in the tasting room.
Before visiting Ommegang, I thought that I hadn’t tried any of the beers, but now I stand corrected. I saw a bottle of Fin de Mar I picked up a bottle of this same beer at a local liquor establishment back home near Chicago. I make the connection that I had tried some of the beers from this brewery until the dazzling and a bit trippy artwork on the Fin de Mar jumped out at me. On our initial drive into Ommegang, we saw a sign for a brewery in Coopertown. While walking to the car, we decide that yet another unscheduled brewery can only make the trip better.

Ben uses his Iphone to look up the address for the brewery, and Matt punches the address into his GPS. On a quick side note, Matt’s GPS has been an essential on this trip across the United States. But it did lead us into quite a frustrating drive trying to get to Erie Brewing company. But you’ll have to read the day four post to figure out what happened to us. To get back on track, we type in the address and begin driving from Ommegang to Cooperstown brewery. The estimated time of arrival is four minutes so we presume that the brewery is just up the road. A couple of miles later, we arrive at the brewery which is much smaller in comparison to Ommegang. Matt notices and points out a still from the last century. We enter into the brewery, which consists of a small gift shop which doubles as a tasting room and the brewing facility. The head brewer is very open and lets me record our tasting and some questions.

We discover that the brewery sells locally and in a few places in the state of New York. While the beer is sold only locally in the United States, the beer is heavily distributed into Japan. We continue sampling and all agree that the Pride of Milford is our favorite beer. We all throw in for a communal six pack of the Pride of Milford. Ben enjoys it so much that he picks up another six pack for his neighbor back in Texas. Personally, my favorite part about the Cooperstown brewery is the bathroom. I know that sounds kind of weird but let me explain.

The inside of the bathroom is lined with beer bottles, mostly the traditional twelve ounce ones. But there are a few larger twenty-two ounce bottles. Immediately, I recognize a few beers but many of the bottles are not familiar to me. I took a pretty good video of the bathroom and bottle collection that lines the wall, so I’ll try and put that online sometime at the end of Beercation. We just pulled off at a rest stop in Iowa, so I’m going to put up what I have been writing about day three and finish the rest with a second posting. But don’t worry, I’m going to knock out another day or two in writing today. I just found out that this blog is 6th on google searching Beercation. We're moving up in life.