In honor of the State Of The Union address tonight I thought it would be appropriate to review a local beer from a brewery that makes me proud to be from the great state of Massachusetts, and also invokes the history of this great nation.  Mayflower Brewing was founded in 2007 “by a tenth great grandson of John Alden, beer barrel cooper on board the Mayflower…”, and is located in Plymouth MA, where the pilgrims landed and about a half hour from where I’m writing this review.  This brewery has been putting out hi-caliber stuff since its inception, and I’ll be reviewing it all in the future.  Confined to the New England market for now, the quality of their beverages will undoubtedly gain them the notoriety they deserve.

Now on the Mayflower, everyone drank beer.   It didn’t spoil, and was a good source of carbohydrates (I’m paraphrasing from their site, btw).  In addition, the sailors were given a ration of a gallon (!) a day.  The original destination was supposed to be further south, somewhere along the Hudson, but for some reason they veered off course and ended up in MA….. Hmmm, I wonder why?  Mayflowers site says something about ‘Treacherous seas’ and the ‘Polluck Rip’, which may be entirely correct, but I’d like to think that maybe the ol’ El Cap-i-tan was a little too sauced to shoot the stars that night and passed out b/c he elected to drink his whole daily gallon.  When he woke up, there was a finger of land in the distance (Provincetown MA), and he just said “Fuck it, let’s land here.  I pissed myself last night and have no clean clothes.  Oh and all of you stink wicked bad, we gotta get off this tiny-ass boat” Seriously, the replica that’s moored on the Plymouth waterfront is about the size of a Chevy Suburban, and they had 102 people travel from England on that thing!  Good gravy, aside from the filth and disease I bet there was some wild fornicating going on.  Lucky for us the fornicating and beer sustained them, or else we wouldn’t be here talking today, now would we?

Enough history, let’s get to the brew!  Today, I am sampling their Porter (5.5% ABV).  It pours a fragrant black with some chesnut brown around the edges, and fills the glass to the top with a nice frothy tan head. After a minute the head settles down to just a sheen of beige and stays there.  I smell chocolatey roasted goodness, and also some nuttiness in there.  If I strain my nose I can get a little of the hop character too.  It smells great, so how does it taste?   Awesome.  After taking a sip there is a full-bodied, roasty/malty flavor and an almost woody mid-palate suggestion.   The back end is very pronounced as well with subtle cedar taking over the sinus/taste balance.  The hop profile is there through the whole thing too, but to the aft of the flavor experience.  It’s just calmly floating there, riding the current of deliciousness.  SO GOOD.  Man, what a lively and complex beer.  I wanna make dirty boat love to it, I wanna discover new worlds with it, I want to give it to congress and pass health care with it!  The possibilities are endless!  If you can get this beer, buy it immediately and raise a glass to your forefathers in salute!  Mayflower Porter makes it easy to remember why this country is great.  Pour some hard work, passion and the right ingredients into an idea and wonderful things can happen.  It’s the American way.  This is my favorite Porter.  Well done Mayflower, looks like ancestry counts for something after all eh?  Awesomeness scale?  I would  travel for sixty-five days in squalor on a dinghy with Lindsay Lohan if there was a six pack of this waiting for me at the end of the journey.  Dirty boat sex indeed.

9.5. Black gold.  This beer kicks ass six ways from Sunday.  If you can get it, get it.  If you can’t?  Well then, sucks to be you.   Don’t worry though, I’m confident that Mayflower Brewing will break free just like the pilgrims did, so hopefully you won’t have to wait very long.

Check em’ out here:  http://mayflowerbrewing.com/