Blog in the USA

Our annual trip across the pond started last Saturday, where we had an overnight stay at JFK. Bottled beer only at our hotel, but at least it was Sierra Nevada.

We drove down, past Asbury Park, to Galloway, New Jersey, and shopped for beers at the local liquor store - NJ still has prohibition so far as normal, supermarket outlets are concerned. The most local beer we could find there was from Victory Brewing of Pennsylvania (http://www.victorybeer.com/). A variety pack was the order of the day and we were pretty pleased with the results. Their Hop Ticket Session IPA was probably the pick of the bunch.

One mistake we did make was picking up a new (to me, anyway) beer from one of my favourite breweries, Sierra Nevada, but I didn't notice that Hoptimum was 10.4%. Too strong and overhopped was our opinion.

On a day trip to nearby Atlantic City, we popped in to the Tun Tavern, sister outlet to the historical original in Philadlephia (http://www.tuntavern.com/tun-tavern-history.html), where the founders of independence used to meet. We had the sampler tray to start with - of course:

Reading USA Today, I spotted the following article about Stone Brewery's plans to move in to Germany:

Not quite coals to Newcastle, but pretty close. Note the planned tie-ups with Brewdog and the local Victory Brewing referred to above.

We did a wine tasting at a local specialist restaurant, who also had an interesting beer and cheese menu:

On a day trip to Philadelphia, we didn't get much chance to sample the local beer scene, although we did notice the aforementioned Victory beers were prominent, as was the oldest brewery in USA, also Pennsylvania based - Yuengling (http://www.yuengling.com/).

Our last beer experience on the East Coast was at a mini beer tasting - bottled, of course - this afternoon. Five breweries featured - Victory and Yuengling, naturally, plus Magic Hat, Flying Fish and the ubiquitous Sam Adams:

Sam's Rebel IPA was the winner for me.

Next stop Oregon. More to follow.