Back to the regularly scheduled post…

Almost. What is cuter than a flying…Dodo bird…?! And the Flying Dodo is one of the few craft breweries on the island of Mauritius. So we were super excited to head to Flying Dodo to check out what they had to offer around lunch time one day.

For the second part of our stay on Mauritius, we stayed at the Westin Turtle Bay, which is on the northwest coast of the island. Bagatalle (close-ish to Port Louis) is about a 30 minute drive, depending of course on traffic. Which can be quite bad. Not DC bad, but on a 2-lane interstate, bad enough to spend an hour stuck in traffic, as we learned on our way up to Turtle Bay.

Coming from the pretty undeveloped southwestern tip of Mauritius (where we stayed at the beautiful St. Regis), Bagatelle and Port Louis are significantly more developed and reminds you of a normal bustling city. Flying Dodo is located in a huge shopping center/mall, the first we’d seen in Mauritius. If you need anything, this would be a good place to go to find it. Flying Dodo is located at an outer corner of the mall, and does do on-site brewing.

We arrived early for lunch (since we are early eaters), and while we couldn’t yet order food they happily seated us outside for some beer tastings. Despite the fact that nearly everything in Mauritius is expensive, a flight of beer was about $12, which is pretty comparable to what we’d pay in many places in the States.

And the beer was good. Really good.

We did a full flight (6 tastings) from our choices on the menu. Two blonds, a red ale, a stout, and I believe a sour. They came out in the order in which they should be tasted. The traditional Flying Dodo blond as well as the old style Belgian wit were two of our favorites, though the stout didn’t disappoint either! If you are staying in the area, they also offer 1-L refillable bottles and 5L mini-kegs.

Now, in addition to beer, the Flying Dodo has a great lunch menu, including some excellent pizza! I mean, beer + pizza? Who can refuse.

Since we were in the middle of the ocean on a tropical island, we opted for the seafood pizza, which came complete with a giant (monstrously sized) shrimp and mussels. It was a great addition to a pint of the old style Belgian wit.

Since we were car-less at the hotel, we opted to take a hotel-hired car to and from Bagatelle, which was about $40. Hiring cars isn’t cheap on Mauritius, but neither one of us was really gung-ho about driving in traffic on vacation. Points for relaxing.

I’m not sure how popular Flying Dodo is with travelers–I think many stay in their resorts and don’t spend much time exploring the island. There were a lot of expats and business people from the Bagatelle area who filled up the restaurant for lunch, so we were glad that we got there early enough to get a jump on things. Our server was super knowledgeable and helpful. They also offer free brewery tours (we didn’t do that–we’ve been on a lot of brewery tours and were more interested in tasting…and eating).

All in all, if you are passing through Bagatelle or looking to get away from your resort in Mauritius (or there on business…if only I could be so lucky), Flying Dodo is definitely worth a stop!

You can find the brewery online (they have another restaurant in Port Louis too, called Lambic) at www.flyingdodo.com.

This, this is why. And as she gets older, I have a harder and harder time spending holidays (or, well, pretty much any day) away from her fuzzy little ridiculously demanding personality. Maybe I always had a hard time spending time apart from her. Attachment issues are not just for the dogs, you know. Driving it is. So this year, we took a bit of a different approach: mainly back roads (mostly up route 15), with two planned stops to check out craft breweries in NY and PA. Driving responsibly, of course. Please don’t take a “beer tour” and drive irresponsibly, if I need to say such a thing.

We chose our breweries by those that had animal names. Kidding. Sort of. We chose breweries that were no more than 1 mile off of our planned route (there are surprisingly more fitting this criteria than one would imagine) and then chose those with the best animal names. Note to future brewery owners–your name matters, and bad names mean bad logos and no one likes that. I’m just saying.

Bullfrog Brewery – www.bullfrogbrewery.com – 229 West Fourth Street, Williamsport, PA

Anyway, Bullfrog is located in Williamsport PA, and is one of the “old standby” craft breweries, established in 1996. It’s really one of the first craft breweries in Pennsylvania. In addition to beer, Bullfrog also serves food, so we opted to have lunch there as well. Williamsport is a cute little town, though it seemed very vacant, with no one downtown. Surprisingly, though, there were lots of people at Bullfrog, making us think it’s a favorite spot of locals (it was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving after all).

In terms of beer Bullfrog has some interesting varieties; their most well known beers are the Flanders-style sour ales, which they also bottle. The flight that we ordered include one of these sour ales, as well as a blueberry beer, a stout, a red ale, and a farmhouse cider. DH loves cider, and this one was no exception. I mainly had a few sips of the blueberry beer and tried the stout, as I was still driving at that point. The blueberry was significantly more sour than expected, but tasty. The stout wasn’t quite stout enough for me, though DH enjoyed it. They didn’t have any of the beers in bottles, so instead we opted to get a bottle of one of their award winning Flanders sour ales, which we haven’t yet opened. Hoping it is delicious! The food was also quite decent–we had seafood mac and cheese as well as a philly cheese steak. Good, but definitely not cheap. Was a bit surprised to see DC-style prices in Pennsylvania.

Roosterfish Brewery – www.roosterfishbrewing.com – 111 North Franklin Street, Watkins Glen, NY

From Bullfrog, we had just a little over 2 hours until we hit Watkins Glen, NY. For those of you that know the Finger Lakes region for wine–craft beer is the new “it” thing, with more and more wineries offering both (not sure how I feel about that), as well as hops farms and farm-based breweries these days. We opted for Roosterfish, since again it was literally on the way (and I mean on the way…we would directly pass it), and well, Roosterfish. We didn’t know that the Roosterfish was actually a type of fish–but thanks to Google, we do now!

Roosterfish started distributing their beer in 2006, and brewing a few years before that. It is New York State’s first farm brewery, meaning that all ingredients are primarily grown in New York. While we both agreed on the merits of the logo, DH was not at all excited to go to Roosterfish, complaining that there were too many pale ales on the menu. We arrived at Roosterfish just in time–they were closing at 5pm, and we had (well, I had, since DH was now driving) time to try a flight of samplers.

To our surprise, there were SO many good beers on the menu! I couldn’t decide what I liked the most–it was a toss up between the cocoa porter and the triple witch. We also tried a hefe, a wildflower wit, and a a different porter (I believe an oatmeal porter). To satisfy, we bought a six pack of the cocoa porter and a growler of the triple witch to share with family. Sparingly.

Still in love with that logo. All in all, this Thanksgiving road trip was a smashing success. Even with two stops, we still managed to reach our destination in less time than the previous two years, puppycakes was thrilled she got to make two stops and have an exploratory walk (she is very good in the car and it was a perfect temp to leave her for just a bit), and we enjoyed seeing two more craft breweries and stopping for lunch at somewhere other than a gas station.

I think this may become a Thanksgiving tradition, to find two good places to eat and/or drink, and make the road trip more of an experience and less of a nightmare. Now, if only we could get Roosterfish in DC. That’d be amazing. I’m still craving more of that cocoa porter…

On to DC Brau….DC Brau is a bit annoying to get to without a car, so if you are visiting the city I’d suggest just grabbing a cab from somewhere in Northeast, DC.  For example, from either H Street NE or the NY Avenue metro station, it’s just a quick hop.  Tours are offered at DC Brau at 2pm, 3pm, and 4pm on Saturdays.  And they are free.  And you get 4…yes 4…free tasting tickets.  You don’t even have to take the tour to get the tasting tickets…you just walk in.  Kids are most welcome to visit the brewery, hang out, and go on the tour (younger kids, not you 18 year olds looking for some underage drinking…you’re going to be out of luck). They even had a band playing while we were there.

The tour is short, sweet, and to-the-point, but really interesting.  DC Brau is a small operation, and just recently leased another 10,000 square feet of space (in addition to the approximate 10,000 they have now). I’d guess they probably have about 10-12 fermenters, though I didn’t stand there and count them.  Yes, the brewery has that weird, sort of gross, fermented grain smell–but just remember the deliciousness that eventually comes from fermented grain!  DC Brau uses two different kinds of yeast which they source–a American strain and a Belgian strain.  Because of the UV light infiltration into bottles, DC Brau still only offers cans. You can also fill growlers at the brewery.

Fermenters

Carbon Dioxide Bubbling Out from the Fermenting Process

Cans Awaiting Beer

As for the tastings…they had about 8 beers available to try, with healthy sample sizes.  I think there were two other IPAs, but considering my general lack of affinity for IPAs, I have no idea what they were.  Sorry for all the IPA fans out there.

– The Public (American Pale Ale)
– The Citizen (Belgian Style Pale)
– El Hefe Speaks (a Hefeweizen)
– The Tradition (Golden Ale)
– Daughters of Poseidon (Black Oyster IPA)
– Natas (Belgian Style Imperial Porter)

The Natas was absolutely delicious…probably the best of the bunch.  El Hefe was also a great hefeweizen, one of the best DC-brewed hefeweizens I’ve had.  I’d definitely go buy either one of these in the store. I didn’t try The Public, but The Citizen, The Tradition, and the Daughters of Poseidon were all really good too. I probably wouldn’t go buy a six-pack, but I definitely would order it on draft.

We had a great experience at DC Brau, and wouldn’t hesitate to return, particularly if we had beer-drinking visitors.  It’s a friendly, local establishment with some excellent beers. What more could you ask for, really?

Anyway, I went to Richmond on Saturday to visit a good friend.  I was really impressed by the food and drink scene–not so much by the impossibly horrible traffic getting down there from DC on a Saturday. I mean, yea I know I live in a major metropolitan area known for terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad traffic, but I really don’t sit in traffic that much. Well, I got my full yearly dose yesterday.  I had no idea that 90 miles could take 4 hours, but guess what, it can!

Sigh.  But I have to say that the company and the beer (and the tacos) really made up for it.  Let’s first start with the three breweries.

I really wanted to go to Isley Brewing Company to try a peanut butter chocolate porter, but alas, it was no longer on the menu.  Instead, there was a Hefeweizen, a Blueberry Hefeweizen, a Farmhouse Ale, an IPA, a Red Ale, and a Oatmeal Porter. I’m such a fan of both porter and hefeweizen, I decided to get a flight to try them all out.

Let’s go from best to worst.  The Oatmeal Porter, dark and delicious, was my favorite (it’s the one on the far right in the picture…oh wait, it’s already gone!). There was no weird porter aftertaste.  It did seem to have just a bit of an almost coffee taste, but it was really subtle (6.6% alcohol). Then we had the Blueberry Hefeweizen, which was delightfully fruity smelling, but very down-to-earth to drink.  No super sweetness, just a light blueberry note along with the Hefeweizen (5.2%). The regular Hefeweizen was my third favorite–it was good, but without the blueberry, it was just a little bit too light and boring for me (5.2%). I did drink it before the blueberry though, just to ensure that it wasn’t overshadowed. It was anyway.  As for the other three: the Red Ale (5%) was eh, fine, but I don’t know if I would order it again. There was nothing wrong with it, and it was tasty, but it wasn’t nearly up to par with the hefe’s or porter.  And the IPA (7.5%) and the Farmhouse Ale (4.75%)? Ugh. I dislike IPA’s generally across the board, so this one did not impress. Same with the Farmhouse…bitter, weirdly like too many orange peels and not enough anything else. But 3/6 isn’t bad, particularly as I had no expectations to love the ales in the first place.

Ardent Craft Ales