While the pandemic slowed us down, it didn’t stop us from finally crossing the finish line. After five years, thousands of miles and more tasting flights than I can count, we have officially visited the last stop on our Maine Beer Trail map.

On a chilly fall weekend, we drove up to Sheepscot Valley Brewing Company  in Whitefield and enjoyed a final round of craft beers. Other than the bottles of hand sanitizer and readily available masks, it was similar to the many other stops we made along the trail. It’s always fun to see what creative flavors Maine brewers have on tap. For this stop, I enjoyed their Mad Goose, a Belgian Pale Ale, while my husband drank a Pemaquid which is a Scottish Ale.

It was a quiet yet appropriate end to a multi-year adventure. 

Getting to each stop on the trail often took planning as there are breweries located all over the state. While some are close many others are not. Planning our visits was part of the fun. We even organized a few vacations around brewery stops, and spent many weekends mapping out plans to incorporate a brewery visit or two. 

While working our way through the Maine Beer trail, we explored new areas of Maine that we may not have made it to otherwise. We spent time hiking and enjoying each area before visiting the local brewery and getting our stamp or initials on the corresponding line of our map to make our visit official.

We may have completed the beer trail but we’re not done with our brewery visits. We followed the trail using a paper map. The nature of the map meant that as soon as we started, it was out of date with new breweries opening and others closing. We added a few breweries newer than our map to our journey to replace a few that closed before we got there but it was hard to keep up with all the changes.

Recently the Maine Beer Trail went digital. It will be better equipped to keep up with the ongoing changes to local breweries. Many of the breweries on their digital list are ones we haven’t gotten to yet and others are old favorites. Either way, more adventure awaits.

After returning home from Sheepscot Valley Brewing Company, I reinforced our tattered little map with extra tape so that it would hold together in the mail and sent it off to the Maine Brewer’s Guild to claim our prize pack. But, it was never about the prize at the end of the trail. It was always about the journey and the memories we made along the way. 

Have you ever completed a beer trail. Was it fun?