>by Paul Marko

Sitting in a Portland, Maine old-school craft beer pub that opened WAY before anyone ever uttered the words “gastro pub.” The place is rollicking with classic alt-rock blasting over the din and rabble. It’s a Monday night and the local flannels and hoodies are getting tight on $2.50 PBR’s. Love Vigilantes. Sweet Jane. Fake Plastic Trees. This is the soundtrack, not the craft beer names - although they undoubtedly will be soon. (Perhaps we should ask Alanis if any of this is enough to be considered irony.) But to stop the digression, let’s dissect this week’s beer, shall we? Pour me a Maine Peeper, Mr. Bartender! Go local or go home, right? This brewery’s “great lost beer” sits beautifully behind it’s more heralded IPA’s known as Lunch and Dinner. Peeper pours hazy and golden yellow. A light, hoppy aroma of grass and citrus opens up to bites of crackery malts that begins bready at first but quickly gives way to a burst of hop flavor that defines the concept of balance. Maine’s ads simply state “Do what’s right.” Sometimes this means hitting the old comfortable bar and enjoying what’s damn good and not waiting in line for the “best.” Whatever the hell that happens to be for you. Right here, right now, it’s a damn fine American Pale Ale. I’ll have an order of fries and another Peeper please...and back up that PBR tall boy, will ya?

>by Chris Groves Certified Cicerone ®

It was April of 2003. Southern Tier Brewing had just hit our [Consumer’s Beverages] shelves and I was in heaven. Porter, Mild and IPA in their distinct Purple, Red and Green baskets, glowing in the reach in windows. Harvest Ale came that fall followed by Pilsner and Hop Sun the following spring season. The draw to this locally made beer was something indescribable, I just wanted to be around it; a part of it. The best I could do was to be on the front lines, working in a beer store and selling it. If I wasn’t hooked by beer, I would still be a mediocre guitar player driving in a van somewhere across the country playing for 0 to 8.5 people a night. Only now am I realizing the impact that first sight and taste of Southern Tier had on me. Their IPA was what did it. That regular availability of the bold, pine and citrus laden beer for what I remember was $6.69 a 6-pack did something to me (besides the obvious). It drew me in and sunk its claws in deep. It was just last week that I was at Southern Tier for a work meeting, having an IPA and taking photos of the outside of the brewery when it hit me a little bit. This beer and this place is definitive reward for risk. No one had a clue what the future held. Do yourself a favor, have a Southern Tier and say a little thanks. #thinknydrinkny