Allagash Brewery Tour

October 11th - 3pm to 4pm

Initial Notes: This brewery is beautiful on the outside. There is a huge walk way with beautiful wooden archways leading into the brewery and it is really well taken care of. Which was a bit surprising because the area it is located is set back from a kind of empty street. The entry room where they sell all their merchandise is equally beautiful with stained wood floors and tables. Almost everything is made of all wooden bourbon barrels which is super cool and the bar is really nice and there are four beers on tap which you get to taste at the end of the tour. The actual brewing area is insanely huge and intense. The guys working just blare metal music which is pretty funny. It was really interesting to see how they brew beer and the learn about the process.

Reaction: Zack loves craft beers and anything and everything to do with the process of brewing beer, so naturally we had to go to the Allagash Brewing Company tour they do pretty much every day of the week. The drive there was interesting because while it is in Portland it is not in the city. It is out on some back road in a little neighborhood that does not seem like it should be home to one of the biggest breweries in the state of Maine.

Allagash Brewing Company started in 1995. It was a one man operation on the outskirts of Portland, Maine started and operated by Rob Tod. Rob Tod had worked in brewing companies before and had visited Germany for a while and realized there was a lack of good Belgian beer in the United States. So, Tod felt that the United States needed to have a wider selection of Belgian beers and started a fifteen barrel brewhouse that he used to create his first beer, Allagash White, modeled after traditional white Belgian beers. He sold his first batch in the summer of 1995, but as we learned on the tour it did not do well for many, many years. Over the last several years, Allagash has become one of the most popular brewing companies in the entire United States and Allagash White is its most well-known and best selling beer. They have six year round beers in its portfolio, seven yearly releases, and numerous one-offs and keg only releases. One of the rarer beers on tap while we were doing our tour is called Curieux and is a beer that is aged in old bourbon barrels Tod gets from a friend who works at a bourbon making company. It ended up, personally, being the only beer I enjoyed at the end of the tour. I’m not much of a beer person, but I am a bourbon/whiskey/scotch person, so it was a perfect beer for me!

Allagash Brewing Company started as New England’s ONLY original Belgian-Style brewery and over many years of hard work has turned into one of the most well-known and respected breweries in the country. What I find so interesting and exemplifies the ideals of Maine is the fact Rob Tod started this as a one man operation. He had a very tough beginning and did not find success for many years after starting the company. Maine is a state that has had very rough beginnings and has had to work insanely hard for the things it has and needs. Maine is not a state where one can be lazy and not try. I know this doesn’t completely relate to the beer industry, but Tod exemplifies the hardworking, humble attitude of a Mainer when it came to getting his company going and off the ground in the face of literally no success for a lot of years.

Not only does the start of the company relate to Maine’s ideals and identity, the company itself is bringing very positive attention to the state! Who would think one of the most well-known and best selling beers would have started in Portland, Maine? The beer industry and food industry as well is a booming thing in Maine, Portland especially. Craft beer stores and brewing stores can be found all throughout Portland and the community is thriving. Mainers are people who create things for themselves and this feeds into the idea that Mainers are individualistic and capable of surviving on their own without the help of “people from away”.