Pretty Things Beer and Ale Project!

I went to a Meet the Brewer event for a really interesting brewery that is based out of Somerville, Mass. The brewer is from Yorkshire, England and know lives is a suburb of Boston. Here is the interesting part. They call them selves a "gypsy brewery" because they don't actually own a brewery. They contract brew everything at whatever location is available to them. They have very creative minds when it comes to brewing beer. they also have really cool artwork on their products and web page.

The event was held in Springfield at a old place called Smith's billiards. The building Smith's is located in was featured on the show Ghost Hunters. I didn't get the talk to the brewer that night because we got to the tasting a little late. Josh Cohen, proprietor of Moe's Tavern, made the trip out. Moe's is one of the best bars in the country and happens to be located in Lee, Massachusetts.

I first tried the Pretty Things, Our Finest Regards, which was a barleywine style ale. This was one of the most robust and full beers I have had in years. It had a sweetness like you would expect from a barleywine but was not over sweet. It had a nice blend with with the other ingredients. It had a good bite but not too strong. All in all this was a well balanced beer. I don't know much about the alcohol content since it was not listed. I'm sure it was in 8-9% range as many barleywines tend to be. I would drink this everyday if I could.

They also had a beer called Pretty Things, St. Botolph's Town Rustic Dark Ale. This was really good too. It was kind of like a dry brown ale. They use malts from Yorkshire that  are still made by hand. The beer is fermented in the traditional english fashion of open squares and with two strains of yeast which gives it that rustic flavor they talk about.

This brewery is so creative and the brewer is so talented that I would not hesitate to try their beer. Everything I have tried from them has been amazing. Click on this link to check out the webpage Pretty Things Webpage

Pretty things is also on Facebook and you can follow them on twitter at @prettybeer

This snow is killing me!

So I just finished shoveling the massive amount of snow that we got in western Massachusetts. I have good neighbors and we help each other out with the shoveling/snowthrowing. My neighbor Tom always hides beers in the snow for much needed beer breaks. Yesterday we shared some Geary's beers. For those that don't know, Geary's is a brewery from Portland, Maine. They are pretty good. The best of the mix pack I bought was the London Porter. It has a slight smokey flavor and the malt is not to sweet, which is a nice blend of flavors. I am not a big fan of overly sweet beers.

What I really wanted to write about today was the 14.2 mile run I completed this past weekend. A few weeks ago I told everyone that I had a goal to run to and from all the surrounding towns from my house. I also mentioned that I had run to Granville but rather then do a round trip i tried to run to the center of town and got a ride back. The road to Granville is about 9 miles from my house and goes mostly up a mountain.

Well this past weekend I decided that I would run the round trip to the Granville town line and back. That had mapped out to about a 10 mile run. When I got to the town line I felt so good, despite the steep incline, that I decided I was going to go a little further. I decided to make my new turnaround the Cobble Mountain reservoir access road. This added about 2.5 miles to the trip.

The run was on a snowy country road, which was fairly quiet with traffic. I only saw a car every couple of minutes. At the town line is a cool old school town line marker and is located at a summit point on the mountain located at an apple orchard.

There are some really amazing views on this route. I was still feeling pretty good when I was on the way back that I decided that I wanted to push myself a bit. So I took a left turn on Northwest Road in Westfield. This is a very windy and hilly road and added about 1.5 to 2 miles to the route. About a quarter mile after the turn and about 9 miles in to the run my feet began to ache. I noticed they were soaking wet which probably explains why they were starting to hurt. I immediately thought that I made a mistake adding on to this run. I am the king of overdoing it.

I stopped and walked a little bit while trying to stretch my feet. I noticed it was starting to get dark and i took a picture of the nice view from where I was. As you can see from the picture on the bottom left the sky was starting to get dark and i still had 5 miles to go and no reflectors.

I started running again and really had to push myself to keep going. I didn't want to be stuck on a dark country road at night without any type of reflector or a sidewalk to run on. After about 11 miles I was finally starting to feel better, and now there were sidewalks to run. The road was much more busy so the sidewalks were a necessity; however, many people had not shoveled their sidewalks so running became a little bit slow and more challenging.

I pushed through and finally after over 2 hours I was a half mile from home. This is about the point that I pick up my pace significantly and come to a near sprint but I had nothing left for energy. I made an unspectacular finish but I was ecstatic because I just finished another leg of my goal and ran further than I have ever run.

I am officially half way done with running to all the surrounding towns. The remaining towns will all be long challenging runs, but with the exception of one on them, none will be remotely as challenging to the incline of this run.

As a relatively new blogger, I wonder if people are enjoying these posts. I would love feedback if I am leaving out the parts of my adventures that people are most interested in. Feel free to email or post a comment to let me know what you think.