Sunday in Northampton

Took a drive out west on what could have been the nicest day of the Fall.....truly remarkable.

With a few of the Greeks on board, we toured the Mass Pike and the picaresque town of Northampton, the liberal's liberal. We hit the Northampton Brewery, a decent pub. It looked like they are brewing 7 or 10bbl batches. They were pouring 8 offerings so we got two sets of samplers, getting one of each beer on the table, which was a nice way to do it. All the beers were solid, especially their "lighter" ones. When progressing to the hoppier Pale Ales or the Brown and the Porter, the beers became less than inspiring, but solid, none-the-less. The two critiques I have regarding the beers were: 1) they were all basically the same color. THIS COLOR...for reals. I mean, make your blondes blonde and make your browns brown, for shit's sake. 2) All of the beer styles were very.....umm...traditional in nature (read: generic). I would have liked to have seen at least ONE beer with some interesting ingredients or a new take on a style. In other words, I didn't get the sense of any personality coming from the brewer with this basic a lineup.

The highlight was the Dirty Truth, a beautiful, somewhat new beer bar on Main street. I'd been wanting to try this place since they first opened, and I was definitely impressed. Lots of room, cool lighting, great colors & design in general, and about 40 taps or so. The mac & cheese was straight dope.

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Today I gave notice at my job of the last 7 years...here we go

-'Wrence