Every summer my family and I spend a week or two in Maine. We have family there, and it’s a hard year when we don’t hear the ocean crash against the shore. And every year, I drag my cousin-in-law to Allagash in Portland; to be fair, it’s not hard to do.

Allagash specializes in Belgian inspired brews, and they make straight up quality. Their sour program is amazing, the tour is amazing, and they’re connected to their environment and community in a way that I can only emulate.

Also check out their blog. It, too, is amazing. And I want to buy a beer for whoever is in charge of their social media.

There is a long list of things I like about Oxbow. In the interest of brevity and clarity, I will limit myself to three things.

1) The beer is delicious. Whether it’s a clean and crisp pilsner, or (my favorite) their house culture sours, they know what’s up. Process is clean, beers are well balanced, and unique in flavor and presentation.

2) They’re fun. They have a beer where they boil lobsters in with the wort and they turn it into a big lobster bake with the staff, a party that I absolutely want to go to. I’ve also played boardgames outside of the brewery for an afternoon in the sun and it was delightful.

3) They know how to build a place with style. They have a brewery on some pretty bucolic Maine country out in Newcastle, and let me tell you, it’s awesome. Beers to drink, paths to hike, and old boxes of Trivial Pursuit cards to go through. If you go to the blending and bottling place in Portland, there’s poutine!

I associate beer with place, and time, and experience. Of all the beers I’ve had (and there are quite a few, dear reader) the ones that stick out do so because of where I was, what I was doing, who I was with.

The PBR I was drinking the first night I went out with the woman who was to be my wife. Alagash White by the ocean. A Backacre Sour, shared with friends. Sundog, after my first pro canning run. The list does, indeed, go on.

We are so tenuously attached to this world, this experience, strung together on this spinning globe by presence and emotion and feeling. This is given; it is known.

But when you add wonder, you get the kind of stuff that Vasilli makes at Wunderkammer. A soft reflection on how things come to be, and how we can find a way in this world that fits with this world, the making of a larger whole that honors all the individual parts.

So, yeah, this is how I get when I have beer from Wunderkammer.

Four Quarters was my first brewing job in Vermont- this was back in 2016 or so, when they were considerably smaller than they are now. My favorite beers from 4Q are assembled more than they are brewed- each flavor is viewed through the lens of the experience it creates, delicately matched to the other in the brew.

Also, the stouts here are luxurious. Some are barrel aged, some are not, all of them are experiences to be shared, which is one of the reasons I think beer exists.

Like I’ve mentioned before, I used to work at Magic Hat. I had to leave in March, just because 2020 was really getting going and the kids were out of school and my wife is a superintendent and she sure wasn’t going to find herself with more time.

Four months later, Magic Hat left Burlington and Zero Gravity took over the facility. Though I was well into brewing my own thing by then, I was a little chagrined to miss the opportunity to possibly work for a company I’ve admired for years.

Zero Gravity brews some excellent beer. Styles that are less than ordinary (they make a good gruit), styles that are classic and clean and brewed with an obvious eye to quality.

They are careful and deliberate about all they do, and the quality of their product is supported by their commitment.