What are the must-visit places for the craft-beer obsessed visitor?

TIA

On Sun, 3 Jun 2007 17:42:07 +0100, Tim >
wrote:

>What are the must-visit places for the craft-beer obsessed visitor?

DC isn't such a great place for brewpubs. There are some reasonable
chains, such as Gordon Biersch and Capital Brewing. The Brickskeller
has hundreds of beers to choose from, and RFD has about 30 on tap.

The best destination for craft beer was the Old Dominion Brewery in
Ashburn, Virginia. However, the family-owned firm was recently sold.
I don't know how, if at all, it has changed.


Dav Vandenbroucke
davanden at cox dot net

Hands down the Brewer's Art brewpub in Baltimore. It has great
Belgian-styled beers--better than anything I've had on domestic draft, and
more celebratory that you can get in bottle. I avoid dubbels because they
tend to be simple and sweet-like (I usually prefer hoppy-styled tripel
thingies like Piraat), but their Resurrection is so dry and flavorful and
sublime, that it is worth an entire journey (to use the vocabulary of the
Michelin green guides). The tripel is nice too. Not only that, but the
Mount Vernon neighborhood that it resides in is one of the most interesting
(setting-wise and architectually) places I've been in the last year or so in
the U.S.. Baltimore has been a cheap destination on the carrier that I
pile up miles on (NW), so I went there last fall, and then decided to fly to
BWI and stay nearby to visit DC this Spring. I lasted about 3 hours in D.C.
with the immense walking distances and bombastic monuments and
ueber-pervasive security presence bordering dull downtown concrete and all
these homeless before high-tailing it back to Baltimore, which has far more
character, really. The markets are great, and you can get oysters and crab
cakes up and down. Baltimore is a great city to visit if you like (and
can tolerate) incredible architectural variety and in-flux cultural
diversity sometimes mixed together with nervous-making socio-economic
factors--if you relax and wander to worthwhile spots, it is really a feast
for the eye. The Brewer's Art can be your reward at the end of the day
(and if you need to pick up some off-licence, there is a really curious but
well-supplied mini-market in a souterrain a couple blocks south of the
Brewer's Art).
http://www.thebrewersart.com/housebeer.html

On Mon, 4 Jun 2007 3:33:22 +0100, Douglas W Hoyt wrote
(in message >):

> Baltimore is a great city to visit if you like (and
> can tolerate) incredible architectural variety and in-flux cultural
> diversity sometimes

I love this idea of tolerating incredible architectural variety! It's
a very US thing to say (I'm a Brit, btw) - having been to some
desparately ugly US cities (all rectangular boxes in grey and biege)
with huge urban sprawl, Baltimore sounds delightful. Bring it on!

Keep 'em coming!

>>>>>Baltimore sounds delightful. Bring it on!

For beer? Brewer's Art, period. The Mount Vernon neighborhood where it
sits is not spectacular, but that is a GOOD thing by typical touristic
standards where spectacle is the goal, and where subtle charms don't count.
But it is beyond subtle charm, it is strong and vivid and unique.

For beer, the other place to go and hang is the Fell's Point neighborhood.
It is brushed up with pubs and restaurants in a dense, Covent Garden sort of
way, with a few cobblestones in between, and the only real way to get there
by transport is to take the overpriced water taxi ($8 for a day pass) from
the not-to-miss but still corporately Disneyesque massive Inner Harbor--(the
Inner Harbor is where most tourists go and NEVER venture from--it has every
chain store that can afford a station there--plus some good crab cakes here
and there; and some interesting usurped ancient architecture, and a great
1800's ship that is really worth touring in the bay). Fell's Point, a
10-minute water taxi ride from the inner harbor, has lots of beer places
that cater to a semi-yuppie, semi-college, semi-beer-knowledgable crowd, but
it has a yuppified commercial heart. A few minutes walk north of there and
you get into a quarter with loads of Mexican places, and loads of latino
people. It feels a bit wilder, with more police presence, but you might get
a better meal there for much less. You can actually walk (like I did) from
the Inner Harbor, through the old Italy neighborhood (characterized
by...loads of Italian restaurants) into the latino neighborhood north of
Fells Point, and then down to Fells Point, but it is not that rich
(architectually) a stroll, though it is revealing.

But a nice daytime trek from the downtown/Inner Harbor neighborhood is to
walk south from the harbor to the Federal Hill neighborhood
http://www.livebaltimore.com/nb/list/fedhill/ , with its tight, small, brick
row houses that have been gentrified to expensive homes and small
businesses, with an ultimate view to chowing down on seafood at the Cross
Street Market at 1065 S. Charles St. where there area also boutiquey pubs
(with sometimes good beer!) sprouting up in the immediate vicinity.

Another nice, offbeat trip is to take light rail to the Woodbury station and
walk (or take the Hampden Shuttle Bug) into the Hampden commercial strip--a
casual, semi-hippie-ish very neighborhoody place. But the WALK from the
light rail to the station, though twisting and uphill, includes some
memorable semi-row-housed streets that are like nothing I've ever seen. I
think it was W. 37th street with it's sloping curve of stuck-together houses
into the valley that sticks in my mind like no other simple residential
street I've ever seen. Physical geography meets practical civic
architecture in the most enchanting of ways--and the more you hop on light
rail and go from place to place around Baltimore, the more curves and
delapidation and enchantment you will find.

Even taking the city bus (I think it is the #1 or #10 but be sure to check),
from downtown to Fort McHenry, site of the Star Spangled Banner (though
really not seriously threatened by the British fleet) is a GREAT
experience--rambling row houses on wide open streets to an historic fort
with great views--it's nice!!!

Yahoo has this decent page on Baltimore neighborhoods (and crab
cakes--though they cost more than a farthing; my local Trader Joes has
GREAT crab cakes at really reasonable prices):
http://travel.yahoo.com/p-travelguid...nts_and_bars-i