Now Featuring Tour Options Seven Days a Week!

Although we have guests in Southern Maine all year long, there is certainly an increase of visitors between June and October. So naturally we have increased our tour options to accommodate all those thirsty folks.

Only a couple of years ago, we wondered if we might be able to do some weekday tours during the summer. We started off very small, with a one tour offering on Tuesday, and another on Thursday.

Our original white board from the fall of 2014 is still hanging in our office.

We would take the bus down early in the morning and park it on Commercial Street, and would talk to people walking by and encourage them to join us later that day for a tour. For a while, we didn’t even put these tours on our reservation website, we just put them together based on the interested folks passing by.

This is one of the first times we set up on Commercial Street, from June of 2013

The tour that we designed was great for the traveler who might be in Portland for just one day, it departed late in the morning and visited one brewery, one winery, and one distillery. The guests would return back in the afternoon with time to shop in the Old Port, or to maybe find the perfect lobster roll.

A look at our limited weekday tour options from July of 2014.

Ultimately these tours were great for guests aboard large cruise ships who visit Portland in the late summer and early fall. But we learned early on that there were a lot of people passing through Portland any day of the week on their way to fish on Moosehead Lake, hike Mount Katahdin, or camp in Acadia National Park.

Awaiting guests from a visiting cruise ship.

We learned that we could do more, so last year we designed a schedule that would have those weekday tours (now called Best of Portland) available more often. We tried to take Mondays off, but soon learned that that wasn’t always feasible either. We ended up running many tours on our so called “day off.”

Dave Patterson leading a tour group in the summer of 2014.

This year we have started to unveil our Summer/Fall schedule of tours. Already on our website you can see that starting on Wednesday June 1st we have tours available seven days a week for the first time ever!

Monday through Thursday features tours with morning departures called the Best of Portland. These tours still feature popular stops to include one winery, one distillery, along with one brewery.

Those same weekday afternoons we have a new all-beer tour called Taste the Town. Featuring some of the up-and-coming breweries of the area, guests will visit three different producers of the suds that have put Portland on the map.

Looking for more options on the weekends? Look for the return of the Friday edition of the Beast of the yEast tour and some new options on Sundays coming soon!

Our Saturday tours are currently fully booked 4 – 6 weeks in advance, so if you are planning on hopping on board during our busiest day of the week make sure you make your reservation over a month before your preferred date.

There are many new places for us to visit, some of which can be seen on our Breaking Brews tour which is currently running each Saturday afternoon. Want to know more about this tour, check out a previous post about the tour design and the stops.

Also look for our future tours to visit Hardshore Distilling Company, Dirigo Brewing Company,Cellardoor Winery at the Point, Foulmouthed Brewing, Stroudwater Distilling, and more!

But we are not done, more itineraries to more breweries, wineries, and distilleries are coming soon. Keep an eye on www.themainebrewbus.com and plan your Beercation to Portland, Maine soon!

Don Littlefield is the General Manager of The Maine Brew Bus. He enjoyed a Firestone Walker Double Jack while preparing this post, a national brewery which is newly available in Maine. Twitter: @BeerinME