A couple of weeks ago I was up in Boston for a work related conference. Having only ever been to the city for a few hours previously, to visit the aquarium with friends and our kids, I hadn't really had much chance to sample the various beery delights that the city has to offer. With a total of four nights in the city, sans famille, I drew up a list of places that I definitely wanted to try, and if you've followed Fuggled long enough you will know that list was dominated by the lager brewers of the world.
One of the things about going to conferences though, especially when several of your vendors are also at the event, is that it can be tricky to find some time to yourself in order to sit with a beer or three and just chill out. Due to the vagaries of flight timetables and conference workshops I wanted to attend, I actually ended up in Boston the evening before the conference started. Having checked into my hotel in the Seaport area of the city, I headed to the first place on the list to visit, Notch Brewing in Brighton.
I've enjoyed several Notch beers in the last few years, but never had the opportunity to get to one of their two venues, and I chose Brighton simply because it was way cheaper than Salem to get to. Having been dropped off by my Uber driver and wandered past the trellis tables and benches in the courtyard, I already knew which beer would be my first, their 10° Czech style pale lager...
What a thing of absolute beauty eh? Obviously poured from a Lukr tap, and while I get pissy with the whole "traditional" and "proper" nonsense that gets spouted about Lukr taps, as if the 50 odd years since the original side pull taps were ripped out in a fit of "modernity" never happened, beer poured this way is a delight. So naturally I had several, and didn't take notes. With a fair few desítky happily sloshing around in my system, it was time to jump across the border to Germany.
Whilst not exactly rare back in Czechia, a 12° tmavé is always a nice sessionable treat as opposed to the heavily, and more common 14°. It hits many of the same high notes as its stronger variants, well toasted rustic bread, without tipping over into the world of burnt toast, a very pleasant dry finish, and just plain tasty. All it all it rounded out a wonderful session, enjoying the more temperate weather of Massachusetts when compared to Virginia, where the joys of the hot humid summer are already making themselves known.
As I was researching breweries and pubs I wanted to visit while I was in Boston, somehow I had overlooked the fact that right behind my hotel was the Fort Point location of Trillium Brewing. When I perused their beer menu online, I noted that they had an eponymous Pilsner, brewed in the German style rather than the Czech, so naturally when I popped in after a company dinner on the first night of the conference itself, my choice was easy.
At 4.7% it is a touch lower in alcohol than many other German style pilsner, but it more than made up for it in the aroma and flavour departments, with a lovely floral hop aroma and crackery dry malt finish that just insists on another, and another, and ok then another. What I hadn't noticed, tucked away on the opposite side of the menu was a helles lager called Central Artery.
This is the beer that had me coming back to Trillium each night I was in Boston, it was just the perfect helles lager, and as I have mentioned before, poroper lager isn't fizzy and this was far from being a sea of bubbles. As a counterpoint to the crackery dryness of the Pilsner, Central Artery has a pillowy soft maltiness that put in my mind of a lightly toasted biscuit/savory scone, finished with a firm, though unobtrusive clean hop bite, that makes helles one of my favourite styles - make a good helles and you have a fan for life in me.
Talking of making a good helles, I enjoyed several pints of "Worker's Pint" helles at Democracy Brewing over dinner one night, though didn't take any pictures, come on folks, I was at dinner with clients and taking pictures of your booze really isn't a good look in that context. The beer itself though was very nice.
It was just a flying visit for work, so I couldn't really go deep into the breweries in Boston, but just skimming the surface has me keeping an eye out for future conferences that are relevant so I can get back and try more, and finish every evening again at Trillium over pints of Central Artery.
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