My girlfriend and I went to Rehoboth Beach for a beachy weekend recently.
On the way we made the cursory stop in Milton at the Dogfish Head Brewery. This was our first visit to the brewery. Short version: I give the tour a 5/10. For reference, the best brewery tours I’ve ever been on are Cantillion (worldwide) and Sam Adams (stateside). Just a bit longer version: it was hot, it was loud, and we didn’t many interesting parts of the brewery.
Of course some of these complaints are situation. If it wasn’t a Friday in July things may have been different. I did get to see the original Sir Hops-A-Lot and Sam’s original Brew Magic system (pictured). So that was cool. The guide made some interesting comments about r usability and sustainability. For instance, Dogfish gives spent grain to local farmers who feed it to their cows and pigs which is nothing new. However, the beef and pork served at the brewpub is from those same farms. The best part of the tour was the tasting afterwords.
While in Rehoboth, we ate dinner at Brewing and Eats. We have eaten there each time we have been in Rehoboth. Its always good. To drink I had a 75 minute IPA on cask dubbed “Johnny Cask.” I also had “Black and Red” a minty, cherry, stout. Both were good. I give the edge to Johnny. My favorite moment in the pub was witnessing someone come up the the bar and order a Bud Light bottle for “a girl likes Bud Light.” The bartender handled it well.
While the tour was a little disappointing (maybe because you expect a lot from Dogfish) the beer never disappoints. If you are going to be in the area, make a reservation, see the brewery, do a tasting, and get some brewpub exclusives.
Like the Jack Daniel’s Distillery (the last place I visited), Brewery Ommegang is an hour or more from any “city” (Albany or Syracuse). Also like JD, they blame nature for their choice of their out-of-the-way location. The brewery is in the middle of what used to be known as “hop city,” according to our tour guide. This area was once one of the nation’s largest producer of hops. There was scant mention of hops during the rest of the tour. I even asked what variety of hops they use in their beers (Rare Vos is the only of their year-round beers with any hop aroma) but the tour guide could not tell me. The brewery building itself is beautiful. It is long, white, and in the style of a barn with white diamond patterns in the otherwise black roof shingles. It is flanked by several silos, one of which is painted like a Holstein Cow. Kinda cool. To enter you pass under an archway spanned by two dates and the words “Brewery Ommegang.” The two dates represent the date of the first Ommegang (which means “walk about” or something close to that in Dutch) and the date in which the Brewery opened. I’ll let you decide which is which. Our guide talked for a bit about the tradition of Ommegang in Europe. There’s not much more than she told us on Wikipedia but it sounds like a good time to me… 
