Brew Bus

Jack Van Paepeghem of Oxbow Brewing Company and The Maine Brew Bus earns one of six Advanced Cicerone certifications worldwide, and the only one in New England. Jack Van Paepeghem serves up a beer at Oxbow Blending and Bottling in Portland, ME. Portland Press Herald photo Jack Van Paepeghem of Portland is one of six…

Lone Pine Brewing Company is the latest brewery to enter the scene in the Portland area. Their tasting room opens today, but how they got to this point is the focus of today’s post. Sometimes we hear about new breweries that are going to open well before anyone else does. But this marked the first…

Portland’s lodging properties are always looking for options for their guests to enjoy while visiting our city. The Press Hotel is our newest affiliate and a true partner with us. The Press Hotel is a stunning 110-room property at the top of Exchange Street (where it meets Congress) in Downtown Portland. Situated directly across from City…

April brings a long awaited break for school teachers. That occupation is the most common job among our tour guests, so we’ve learned to provide additional tours during those weeks. On every single public tour our Guidance Counselors make everybody feel at home by facilitating introductions. Who are you, where are you from, what do…

Beer Festival season is now in full swing with several events in April. Find out where we have already been and where we are going next this month. After a semi-dormant winter, the time for beer festivals is among us. This month features several appearances for our Road Team, including the first outdoor festival of 2016. Last weekend featured back to back festivals in two Massachusetts cities. Our display and Wheel of Brew Trivia were found at the Brew Woo festival in Worcester and the Craft Beer Fest in Boston. Our Road Team did great work last week at these two events which featured well over 5,000 participants. Special thanks to Craig, Spencer, Becca, Seth, Kevin, Megan, and Becky for helping us at these two big events. Check out where else you can find us this month, with links to…

This week we moved into our new combination warehouse and office space, a major move to streamline our operations. Find out in today’s post how this will move us forward. Since we began three and a half years ago, we have tried to take a true business approach to how we run our operations. Our main focus is promoting our partner businesses: the breweries, wineries, and distilleries producing Maine made craft alcohol. This is much more than a hobby for us, this is evident by the way we have innovated and grown each year. Two years ago we made the decision to custom vinyl wrap our buses using our distinctive green color. Working with Chris Hodges of Blue Planet Graphics, we learned that the sun could fade the bright green base color over time. So we began looking at warehouse space…

Springtime brings our beloved Portland Sea Dogs back on to Hadlock Field and we begin our season of Friday night Sips and Sea Dogs tours! We are now well under 30 days from the start of the minor league baseball season here in Portland. The Portland Sea Dogs are the AA Eastern League affiliate of the Boston Red Sox. The team plays in Portland at Hadlock Field, a picturesque park that is known for great game experience and even better minor league baseball. They open their 2016 season Thursday April 7th in Reading, PA against the Fightin Phils. Then on Thursday April 14th they have their home opener at 6pm against the Hartford Yard Goats. Last year, our Sports Tours team created the Sips and Sea Dogs tour before select Friday night Portland Sea Dogs games. The alcohol tour and…

The Road Team is back at it with several appearances at great craft beer festivals in New England. Find out where we are going and how you can also attend. The next couple of months will be busy ones for us as a company. But we cannot lose sight of the need to have a steady funnel of new customers interested in coming to Portland, Maine to take a tour on one of our buses. Our appearances at beer festivals all over New England does many things for us, but one the most important is for us to connect with people that have never heard of any sort of a brew bus. These folks may be new to enjoying craft beer, as this is a greatly increasing number each and every year. Many times those people turn into guests aboard…

History shows that beer has had waves of American popularity that has always been followed by the market collapsing and massive brewery closures. Will that happen once again, and could it happen in Maine? There are traditional pathways to learning to enjoy craft beer. By and large, Americans still drink macro lagers from large national brands. But more and more people are branching out, and eager to try something different – especially if it is made well in their local area. Ask any professional brewer and they can generally name one or two specific beers that changed their life forever. The flavor of that craft beer or the experience of enjoying it put them on a pathway to becoming a small business owner and producing their own versions of beer that hopefully will change someone else life. While visiting Kinsale, Ireland two…

We have a new Saturday afternoon tour starting later this month designed to visit the latest new breweries opening up in Greater Portland. Check out our Breaking Brews tour. We are very excited that there are several new breweries opening in the Greater Portland area in the next few weeks. This allows us to bring new customers right to the new producers. Our tour guests already are regularly visiting Fore River Brewing Company in South Portland, which opened almost two months ago. Our tours will also be including Mast Landing in Westbrook, Lone Pine in Portland, Dirigo in Biddeford, and Gruit in Portland. We have been working on designing a special tour to bring our guests directly to these new experiences and to taste the newest beers available. And now, that tour is available to book! Pours of Tell Tale Pale Ale at Mast Landing Brewing Company in…