Tag: lake george

Can’t Let The Vacation Go

I went on vacation recently. I drink a lot of beer on vacation.

This wasn’t an intense vacation or anything, it was meant to be relaxing. We ended up at Lake George, NY, mostly just to chill. Our room was by the lake, and somehow I had acquired some beer from Treehouse Brewing in Saratoga Springs, and Wayward Path Brewing in Schoharie along the way. How’d I end up at a few breweries on vacation? That doesn’t seem like me…

Vacations like this are meant to be enjoyed with beer, and cocktails, and everything else. I enjoyed a beer in the afternoon after kayaking. I enjoyed a beer with dinner. I enjoyed a Lucky Duck cocktail by the pool that came with a little plastic duck in it, as well as a Shark Bite cocktail by the beachside that came with a gummy shark…and I asked for a little plastic duck for that one too, because the shark needed to eat. I drank an ESB while I did an Escape The Crate box with my family.

Another thing I do on vacation that I should also do more at home, is read. I make a point to NOT scroll as much, to NOT get frustrated by the Mets, to NOT dither away time just meandering across websites. I get my Kindle out, pre-loaded with new books, and I sit at the pool, outside the room, at the beach, and just read and drink, drink and read. I started, and finished, Platform Decay, the 8th book of the Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells, and then continued on to get about halfway through The Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard.

Reinvigorated in both my reading during the day habit, and my beer habit, I went outside last night to fight the mosquitos and just relax with a book and a beer. I finished The Hands of the Emperor, and I finished a Double Nectaron Daydream by Other Half.

The orange cloud label of the beer describes it as an 8.5% Double Dry Hopped Imperial Oat Cream India Pale Ale. If you’ve had any Other Half, you probably have a good idea what this one tasted like, and that it didn’t disappoint. Neither did the book btw, which was a bit long and very character-heavy with less action, but I really enjoyed it. This, however, is a beer blog not a book blog, so let’s talk about the Nectaron hop.

That’s what is highlighted by this beer. Nectaron is a New Zealand hop and pretty new. It makes this beer pop with tropical flavors, passion fruit, peach, pineapple, etc. Lots of light orangey type aromas and then similar flavors that sink into that pillow cloud Other Half is so good at. Dryer than others, but with that full-bodied Oat/cream mouthfeel that gives you that sweet sticky mouthfeel like biting into a juicy peach. It goes down real easy too, keeping pace with my reading as I was finishing the book on my patio, the sun setting, the lights coming on, the sounds of the August night filling the air.

If I hadn’t finished the book I might’ve gone back inside to get a second.

Ceetar may still write up his trips to those two breweries, both of which are worth a visit. Feel free to follow and/or ask on BlueSky, or Untappd.

Lake George’s Brewery

One brewery dominates the beer scene in Lake George.

I spent Labor Day weekend in Lake George, which is a lake upstate New York that’s a popular getaway in the region. It’s a small summer town in the Adirondack Mountains, much like many lake or beach type communities across the country, and as such is prone to much of the same cliches and ‘Disneyified’ downtown featured elsewhere. Fudge, funny t-shirts, arcades, mini-golf, etc. At least it avoids the costumed characters begging for tips that litter places like Times Square and the Las Vegas Strip.

It’s not a beer destination, but there is beer. The town isn’t big and while it’s not super far from Albany, it’s still pretty rural. There’s access to plenty of beer, and let’s not forget that Vermont is very very close, but one brewery dominates the landscape in Lake George and that’s Adirondack Brewery, brewed right there in town.

Seemingly every restaurant has a few Adirondack taps, and it’s one of the beers you can reliably find at Stewart’s, one of the gas station convenience store chains prevalent in upstate New York. It’s a nice experience to have a brewery well integrated into a town life. Like a cozy companion wherever you go.

It was late when we first arrived, as we’d all worked that day. Our first meal was at a BBQ joint a short five minute walk away that could seat us right away. The first beer of the vacation is a lot of pressure; can it deliver?  I opted for Adirondack Brewing’s Lake George IPA (Wave #5) to pair with a sampler of various forms of meat. It hit the spot.

photo by CeetarAs is proper for any vacation, we stopped at a convenience store on the way back for snacks and drinks, and beer, to have in the hotel room. We stopped at the aforementioned Stewart’s; Ice cream for the kids, beer for us. I picked up a six-pack of Adirondack Bear Naked Amber. A good, shareable, easy-drinking beer. I opened the first one sitting outside an electric fire the hotel has while sitting in, fittingly, an Adirondack chair.

photo by Ceetar

Later on that weekend we found ourselves at a themed restaurant that featured hats for the kids with Moose Antlers. We were downtown waiting to see the fireworks, it was the unofficial end to summer, looking forward to fall. What better beer to celebrate that with than the NYS Oktoberfest?

My favorite of the bunch was the Bear Naked Amber Ale. I’m glad that’s the one I had a six-pack of that made its way back home with me. My only regret was that we never actually made it to the Adirondack brewpub itself.

photo by Ceetar

It pours a beautiful copper color.

It’s got some nice caramel notes, but plenty of estery/fruity notes, specifically cherry.

It’s a scrumptious tasting beer, with some light biscuity notes. It’s on the sweeter side but it’s balanced nicely by hops with some nice spicy bite to them. Like you’d get if you made that biscuit was made with some rye or other non-wheat grain.

The mouth feel is slick; it coats the tongue and leaves that dry stickiness that has you begging for another sip.

Overall this is a well-done and delicious amber ale, on the malty end of the fairly wide spectrum, and a good companion to a wide variety of drinking circumstances.

Follow BarleyProse on Twitter and me on Untappd. You can email me at beer@ceetar.com. I’ve been drinking Oktoberfest almost non-stop since that first one.