Chip the Beer Guy Rock 107 – Long Trail Harvest Ale

Today’s show was brought to us courtesy of Samsonite and the TSA.  Gone are the days of 100lb checked baggage, let alone free baggage, and gone are the days of liquids in your carry-on luggage.  Unfortunately even with a dedicated beer-suitcase like Chip’s, the 2nd bag fees have become more and more expensive.  I think it’s a great idea that Chip has depending on where you’re traveling, but don’1t forget the mybeerbuzz alternative methods.

1. Ship your beer.  Assuming you’re in one place for some period of time and it’s not a 3rd world country, you can UPS or Fedex a box home much cheaper than paying luggage fees or overweight luggage fees.  Yes you do have to seek out packaging materials sometimes, but many breweries and beer shops will pack & ship and the UPS store does exist in other countries.
2. The 2nd alternative, and my favorite is to simply bring the beer home in your belly.  It’s free and you can simply describe the beers to your friends and have it all to yourself.  More beer for me and more beer-jealousy for you!

Today’s beer of the week was Long Trail Harvest Ale.  We’ve seen quite a bit or marketing in our area for Long Trail lately.  It used to be a difficult beer to find, but now there are suddenly Long Trail beers everywhere.  I suspect the distribution changed or increased, but one of our local distributors is actually pushing out brochures to encourage people to buy it.  I’ve not tried their Harvest Ale, and I’ll admit I was expecting it to be a hoppy (hop Harvest) ale like Weyerbacher and Sierra Nevada are selling…but to my surprise it’s an English-style brown ale.  I’m not sure what exactly they’re harvesting in Vermont to make this, but it sounded like an interesting session beer.  In any case, welcome back Chip and great show guys…..Cheers!