With over 1,450 breweries operating in America, the majority of which are smaller craft breweries, you would think the US market would be overflowing with good beer and that maybe we'd be bored with it already. But that is not the case.

The bigger breweries (the minority) tend to edge the competition (the majority) out of bars and stores leaving Americans with slim pickin's when it comes to good beer. But in a beautiful revolution, the craft brewery is fighting back. Among many other fantastic breweries, Harpoon Brewery has become one of the biggest fighters.

I recently had a chance to visit Harpoon at their Boston location (they also have one in Windsor, Vermont) and discovered quite a bit about the beer and the craft.

When Harpoon received their permit to brew and package beer from the Commonwealth in Massachusetts in 1987, they were the first to do so in 25 years and actually hold permit #1. They opened their first brewery in Boston and later another in Vermont.

The brewery is situated along the Boston Inner Harbor and not far from the Hatch Memorial Shell where the Boston Pops hold their fireworks show and concert each July 4th. The exterior appears a little more industrial than the rest of the surroundings but the Harpoon seal adorns the gate in front -- a good sign that we were in the right place.

We arrived at the brewery around 1:30PM on a Sunday afternoon only to see a sign posted on the door, telling us that the day's tours had been sold out. But a kindly tour guide saw our disappointed faces as we approached and added a 2:30 tour -- just for us ... and the rest of the people who showed up too late for the other tours.

We waited for the tour to begin in Harpoon's tap room and gift shop. One of the first things we noticed as we walked in was a wall covered with a huge collection of beer cans, including classic '80s cans and even the generic "Light Beer" can you used to see in TV shows.

The tour started and two tour guides led us through the brewing process, first introducing us to the basic Harpoon ingredients. We examined a few containers of hops, barley and wheat, took a look into a few of their tanks then tasted some "green beer" -- this is beer that has not been filtered after fermentation. The beer we sampled was the brewery's own IPA but, because of the fermentation process, it came to us at a temperature much lower than the typical serving temperature (which is around 40° F).

From the fermentation tanks, we traveled on to the bottling area and then to the end of the beer journey -- the store room or "Beer Heaven." Cases of Harpoon stood in stacks all around us and we tilted our heads upward to see all of it -- an awe-inspiring sight for any beer lover.



Once the tour ended (it took about half an hour), the guides poured us samples of several Harpoon beers back in the tap room/gift shop area. As we left, we had a growler filled with Harpoon's UFO Hefeweizen and took it home with us.

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