Brew pubs in Boston

I finally made it to Boston about 9:30 this evening.  It was touch and go there for a while in Houston while we waited on the taxiway for thunderstorms to clear the area.  For a while I thought it was going to be a repeat of last week’s aborted trip.  At any rate, after renting a car and negotiating the maze of streets, tunnels, construction detours, and poorly-signed freeways and turnpikes in the Boston area, it was 11:00 by the time I got to my hotel in Natick, MA.  Natick isn’t much, but the Hampton Inn there is a decent hotel.  The best part of the hotel is the restaurant and bar:  Owen O’Leary’s.  The food is about what you’d expect in a hotel restaurant, but the bar also serves handcrafted beers that are brewed on the premises.  I had a Golden Ale that was very good:  coppery color, very hoppy, somewhat fruity, and smooth.  After eight hours in airports and airplanes, it was a very welcome surprise.

I try to find brew pubs wherever I travel.  On my trip to Minneapolis, I discovered the Rock Bottom Brewery, which had about a dozen handcrafted beers on the menu.  They offer a sampler special:  for one dollar you get a taste (a shot glass full) of each of their beers.  Their darker beers were good, although they had a little too much chocolate malt for my taste.  But their Kolsch was excellent, as were their other beers.  Rock Bottom is apparently a national chain, with 23 restaurants across the country.  I’ll make a point to visit them whenever I land in one of their cities.