Mommy-Tights-on and the Quest for the Holy Grand Prize


Things to note about me… and the number you shall count is three.

  1. Hyper organized when it comes to projects, especially events, trips and activities, and hyper focused on things that interest me.
  2. People often say “we should do X” or “Y looks fun, let’s go there someday” or “we really need to hang out more often” I became tired of these things never actualizing. I want to see X and I just am never going to actually see X unless I stick it in my calendar. Then I have a plan and I end up seeing 85% of what I want to do and see. It does have downsides. I do tend to lose out on spontaneity, but having a 2 year old kinda puts a kibosh on spontaneity.
  3. I’m short, blond, married, have a 2 year old, have extremely long hair, and have a very decidedly not mainstream clothing style.

Aaaand so, when in November of 2018 I made the decision to visit 50 Ct I needed a plan. My problems:

  1. My husband and I each get a weeknight we know in perpetuity in advance that we have free. My husband works Sat and Fri so generally, unless I get child care, I won’t be able to go out those nights.
  2. My husband doesn’t drink. I don’t wanna go alone cause that is sad… and lonely. I love experiencing life, but I like sharing the experience. I needed accomplices
  3. If I were to get 50 breweries in 2019 I would need 4.16 breweries per month. But some months (where we have a lot of family obligations, or travel plans, etc) would be harder to make that goal that others.

If I didn’t have a plan, I would end up going to half a dozen then next November be like… aw man… I really wanted to do that. So, in Dec… I started the planning. Google Sheets is my best friend. I started by creating a line for each brewery with some basic information like their hours, address, do they have food there? Food trucks? Do they list prices? What kinds of beers do they brew. (More on my dislike of IPA in another post) This seems like an easy task. Just go to each website, type in the information

“Mama… want more juice”

Save to the google sheet,

“Mama… want apples.”

then organize each of the breweries by quadrant of the state they are located in.

“Mama… school bus has wheels. Go round.”

True story I have a kid. I know a lot of breweries claim to be kid friendly, and maybe they are, for certain kids, but I get so little “adult time” sans the kiddo that I am really not into my precious adult time being over run by lot of other people’s kiddos running around and generally being disruptive and bored… cause they are at a brewery.

“But” you say “you could bring YOUR kid to the brewery too and then you could enjoy the brewery and not have to worry about child care.” Yes… if by “enjoy” you mean run after a rambunctious 2 year old where everything is new and he doesn’t understand basic concepts like where you can and cannot go. There is not much enjoyment in kicking back and drinking my delicious beer when most of that time I’m leaving my delicious beer and making sure my kid is not destroying, annoying, or exploding. So no… When I want to have fun as an adult I do it without my kid. When I want to have fun as a family we do things WITH my kid and when I want my kid to have fun and experience things I have no interest in I bring him to do that knowing I won’t enjoy it, but it will give him great experiences and broaden him as a human. In conclusion just because a brewery says you can bring your kid doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. Maybe if they are older kids who can sit and read a book or play on an ipad or something, but young active kids, just not. I don’t want to bring my 2 year old to breweries. I won’t have a good time and if the whole point of this endeavor is for me to enjoy myself, child care must be arranged.

Back to the concept of researching all the breweries…

Ok, so right here I feel I should mention that if you own a business, it should be self evident that certain information needs to be on your website. Things like… your address maybe? Or perhaps your hours of operation? (I’m looking at you Cold Creek Brewery in Ellington that doesn’t list hours of operation at all… anywhere…) But, not to single them out exclusively, I was appalled at the lack of information on many brewery’s websites. Some didn’t even  have a website… just a facebook page that didn’t have much information on it. Sheesh there are plenty of free website options. This is the digital age people. I mean look, it took me 20 minutes to set up a blog and I’m not particularly an internet savvy person. Get yourself a web site. Put some basic info on it like operating hours, address, and contact info. Also, listing your hours as 4 to close is NOT as helpful as you think it is… #NotHelpful So then I started making a list of people who would be willing accomplices. Messaging, emailing, phone calling until I had a decent list of willing victims, I mean valued team members. I created a section for each person listing what kinds of beers they liked, What days they were available, How into beer they were and how many breweries they were interested in being apart of, etc. That is where there magic started to happen. I opened my calendar and marked every day I had available for brewery trips. I opened maps and plotted trips. If possible I wanted to do something between breweries and food was necessary and optimizing  breweries that are open on weekdays vs those only open on the precious fri-Sun block that required an extra level of organization by getting child care. I started nailing down dates and soon I had a plan formulating.

I found myself in distinct lack of an important thing, namely, a passport. Jan was fast approaching and I needed the all important passport to get stamped. The brewers guild was not particularly helpful as they had a downloadable passport but it was for 2018. I was only a couple of weeks away from 2018 being history so it didn’t do me much good. I emailed the president of the Brewers Guild, Phil Pappas. To his credit, he did answer my email a few weeks later, but his reply was unsatisfactory. “Just use the 2018 passport. We are going to print new ones in Feb.” Meh…This was unsatisfactory. I couldn’t wait a whole month to start my adventure. Note I did say I needed 4.16 breweries a month.. That puts me way behind. So I started my own. Also, why would you start the 2019 year in Feb? *raises an eyebrow of incredulity* I got a plain piece of printer paper. Wrote the name of the brewery I was visiting each day and asked them to stamp it and sign it. Notes on the responses I’ve gotten in the individual posts about the breweries.

I decided to blog this journey and give some facts, tidbits, information, and opinions on the various breweries I visit. I’m vain enough to hope that at least a few people would be interested in following along. If you are one, please stick through for the ride. I plan on writing a post for every brewery I visit with information on their hours, the vibe there, if they offer food or local food that I had that was good… or bad. What kinds of food trucks were there. Was it crowded. Was there parking? Etc I hope you stick around for the ride!

The Year of Beer

After attending the Real Art Ways event in late 2018, I decided that 2019 would be the Year of Beer for EB. Note, that EB is me. I did the RI brewery passport in 2018 coupled with a year membership to the Newport Preservation Society. I would make the trip from Hartford Ct once a month to tour a Newport Mansion and then go to a brewery. I have a pint glass and one can of Revival Brewery’s Pinky Swear left in my fridge to prove it. I think there is also a limited edition hot chocolate stout down in my basement on the wine rack too, but that is beside the point. I enjoyed my mingling of tourism and beer drinking so when I went to Real Art Ways to watch the Brewmaster movie there was no twisting of my arm to embark on a new adventure. There was an event with half a dozen local Ct breweries giving out little samples of beers and talking up the Ct Brewery guild and the beer passport. As I had finished Rhode Island and aside from 2 breweries there that I LOVED (one of which sadly has closed and the Revival brewery which I will probably make an effort to visit when I’m in the state again on other business) I didn’t have much incentive to loyalty to the Ocean State.

I decided that night that 2019 would be the year of beer. I spoke with someone from the Ct Brewers guild who said they, like RI, had prize tiers for going to X# of breweries. I was, at first, very excited until I heard what they were.

  1. At 10 Breweries you get a bottle Opener. um ok… but like most craft breweries don’t actually sell bottles or cans. The big thing is growlers (I’ll have a whole post on my opinions about growlers later). So…. a bottle opener that I can’t really use for the products at all but the most commercial of CT breweries? hrm…
  2. At 15 breweries you get a hat and sticker. So, some people might really like this sticker craze that breweries seem to have, but what am I going to do with a sticker except to stick it in my junk drawer because I feel like I should have a use for it but don’t. Maybe I’d feel differently if I had some kind of use for it, but I frankly don’t. I suppose that a hat would be nice for the people who wear hats. Don’t wanna be sexist here but I feel strongly that the ct brewers guild hat appeals to a very gendered market. It clearly would serve me no purpose. I have 2+feet of hair that is meticulously coiffed on top of my diminutive head. I don’t wear hats because A of all they rarely fit my tiny little head. B of all they wouldn’t fit OVER my massive hair braids pinned to my tiny head. C of all it would smush down my frontal hair poof that my otherwise long hair would look “Little House on the Prairie” without. Gee Pa, I would wear this brewery sunbonnet to shade my face from getting freckles, but there are so many reasons why not.
  3. At 25 breweries you get a brewery guild T shirt. I’m hazarding a guess that this too is a men’s style t-shirt with a crew neck. If it were a baby doll style t-shirt with a V neck I might be interested, but men’s t-shirts are NOT flattering on my body type. Frankly they aren’t that flattering on most women’s body types. We gots curves… Even if they aren’t in the places we want them to be.

So, my curmudgeonly and sardonic view of these prizes aside, I’m sure someone would be thrilled by them. If you are one of these marketed at folks, then there is no shame! I speak forked tongued not to dissuade you from finding joy in your trinkets. More that I feel the marketing strategy is not particularly creative… not particularly useful, and definitely not marketed to me.. It seems to be very decidedly marketed to 20-30 something hipsters, bros, and young male professions who still haven’t gotten over the college thrill of a free booze related t-shirt. No judgement if you too thrill at the free booze related t-shirt marketing gimmick. There are internet algorithms that market to me in ways that I find both fascinating and disturbing… Yes internet I DO in fact really want that book on graveyard symbolism but find it intensely odd that you choose to show it to me as I search for toddler swim trunks! Rambling on aside… I’m not judgy or finger pointy at those who want their trucker hat, bottle opener, and college booze advertisement shirt. I’m more mildly annoyed that the Ct brewers guild had decidedly chosen that they don’t want to be more appealing to the lady folk. It’s a combination of “what is cheap and easy to get for prizes” and general uncreative thinking when it comes to marketing for a larger, more diverse audience than 20-30 something men. But EB if you wanna be so complainy… they what do you have to offer for a better idea? Well… I’m glad you asked! Things that would thrill me? hrm. well for starters offer the t-shirts in both men’s and women’s sizing Yes baby girl t-shirts do cost more, but so worth it. Pint glasses are fun! Beer drinkers often collect them. A Ct Brewers guild official growler (empty) would be fun. Having a BIG ASS poster at the Ct brew fest that lists off names of people who have completed certain tiers. People love to feel like they are special. Put their name on a giant ass poster that they can point at when they go to beer fest and then post on ALL of their social media. If that doesn’t sound like creative free symbiotic marketing and reward. I don’t know what does! Jewelry… a cheap necklace pendant that says something pithy like “I like my beer craft” or “I support local breweries”. Or post (if they agree) their achievement on FB at 10 breweries. Linking them. Again… they get the 10 seconds of fame and lots of likes and in return all of the friends on FB see the Ct brewers guild. Symbotic reward marketing again… those jelly bracelets can be fun! a free downloadable phone background… (again symbiotic marketing rewards) I could keep going all day. If you would like to hire me… feel free. Will some of them work? others not… of course, but the point is some creative thinking in your marketing strategy to reach and appeal a larger more diverse audience will only benefit the guild and the brewers of Ct.

5. Ah… but then… The grand prize! Get 50 brewery stamps and you get yourself a VIP ticket to the next year’s Ct Craft Beer Fest. *tire screech… tilt down sunglasses.* “Color me interested” Sitting at home, reading over the Ct Brewer’s guild website I chortle delightedly at the idea of an earned VIP ticket, and ever the completionist, I loudly said… to no one in particular, “BEER CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!”


My husband looked up from whatever he was doing and said “Say what?” My two year old son piped up, “Mama noisy.”

Indeed men of my household… indeed.