Brewery tours in the Blue Ridge Mts…

Well, the weather gods were spot on! We had no sooner loaded up the last of the round bales  in the barn when the predicted 4:00 pm rains found us in the Shenandoah Valley. Fortunately for us we had properly timed the completion of this haying event. After cleaning up it was time to venture into the town of Woodstock, Virginia with our friends to celebrate the conclusion of haying. We always enjoy visiting Woodstock as it is a very friendly, quaint and scenic town so it was a real treat to revisit.

We talked about leaving Monday but our friends urged us to stay a bit longer as they wanted to take us on a beer sampling tour. How could we have possible turned that down? So after helping to get the final count of bales and putting the haying equipment away we cleaned up and hit the road for a brewery tour….

First stop was the Blue Mountain Brewery in Afton, Virginia. This is a really nice brewery in a very pristine setting in the Blue Ridge Mountains. They have a large assortment of crafted beers and also serve many of the local vineyard wines as well. We really liked this place and thoroughly enjoyed their beer. Two of our favorite crafted beers were the Full Nelson Pale Ale and the Kolsch 151 German Styled Ale. Since they also serve food we had a really great hot pretzel which complimented our beverages perfectly.

Since our friend had several pizza places at one time in nearby Charlottesville he drove us over to see the University of Virginia and we stopped at the South Street Brewery where I had a a very tasty Pale Ale called J P Ale and real good Lager called Liberation Lager. We can see why Sherry and David of In the Direction of Our Dreams blog land fame kept their farm here. Had we not been with friends we would have tried to find their home in the hills.

On the way back to Toms Brook, Virginia we made one more stop at a brewery in Harrisonburg, Virginia called 3 Brothers Brewing. We discovered while chatting with one of the 3 Brothers this is a relatively new operation since he decided after a stint in the Navy that brewing beer was his calling. It was interesting to hear that utilizing his engineering background he remodeled and transformed in an old Coca Cola in building their brewery.  Here the star beer to me was the Hoptimization IPA. As it was getting late we started heading back to the farm and were treated to a very nice sunset. A great way to end a fabulous day…

The next day we were talked into staying yet another night (and why not since it is really beautiful here). As it turns out we are now planning a different route to Niagara since our house batteries are finally on their last legs. So we will head to the Pittsburg area to find a Sam’s to buy new batteries for the coach. Finding parks around Pittsburg will be a task of the day...