By Harley Zipori. Sometimes fate has a way of changing things for the better. On the day before I left the Boston area my wife and I took a trip out to Cape Ann, just to the north of Boston. Cape Ann has a number of scenic towns, many of them former and even current fishing ports.
Our visit took us to Gloucester, Massachusetts, a historic fishing village near the eastern end of Cape Ann made even more famous in the movie “A Perfect Storm” in 2000.
As we wandered the main street of Gloucester that runs along the port looking for a place to eat, I spotted the Cape Ann brew pub/restaurant. My research had shown that such a brewery existed but I did not want to spend our limited time that day to chase it down. I left it to fate.
Stopping in the restaurant and sitting at a table overlooking the water, I ordered a Belgian Saison Beer and some food for lunch. I asked the hostess if it was possible to see the brewery and she sent over the restaurant manager. When he heard that I was from Israel, he told me that there was an Israeli brewer working at the brewery. A couple minutes later Amit arrives at our table and we start to talk. The brewing community in Israel is pretty small and even though we had never formally met, we knew all the same people and had even participated at last year’s Samuel Adams Longshot competition. He was quite happy to meet people from Israel and even speak Hebrew again. He showed me around the brewery and gave me a taste of a few of their beers. All in all a very successful visit.
The Cape Ann Brewery was founded by Jeremy Goldberg in 2004 and has since expanded to include the Brewpub Restaurant and distribution of both kegs and bottles up and down the eastern seaboard of the US. They produce a large number of beers according to their website. Like most craft breweries, some of these are seasonal beers so the selection available at the pub at any given time is not the full range. But there was a large number available on tap that day and I did manage to taste a few.
The only one I actually had a glass of was the Fisherman’s Sunrise Saison, a Belgian style Saison style beer that originates in the French speaking part of Belgium. This beer is brewed with rhubarb and strawberries giving it a slightly pink tinge and refreshing fruit notes to the taste and aroma. This was nicely matched to the malt and hopped just right so as not to overpower the subtle flavors. Considering you can get overpowering fruit flavors in beer just using certain varieties of hops, there was nothing in this beer that shouted “FRUIT”, unlike the Belgian Kriek cherry beers that have an overwhelming cherry flavor.
Other beers I tasted were their IPA, an English style bitter and their Fisherman’s Pumpkin Stout. The latter is a nicely balanced stout with only the slightest hint of pumpkin and related spices. Of course in a stout, even a slight hint of flavor means it has to be noticeable above the already strong flavors of roasted barley and dark malts. I also tasted Bubba’s Brew, a smoked beer that doesn’t even appear on the website master beer list.
Overall, I had a good impression of the brewery. They are operating in fairly small premises crammed with tanks and kettles and seem to be working at full capacity. Their bottled beer is brewed at another facility. The restaurant was nice, overlooking the water. The food was good and the atmosphere friendly. Is anyone in Tel Aviv or surrounding environs getting the hint here?
You can see the current list of beers brewed by Cape Ann at their website.
In case you missed my previous blog about my visit to the Samuel Adams brewery, you can click on this link to see it.
I have more to write about relating to my trip and without giving anything away, I managed to get to this years’s Longshot beer festival so keep visiting the site to check for updates or send me a mail at maof.beer@gmail.com and I’ll add you to my mailing list for blog updates.
