Free beer tastes better: Samuel Adams Brewery tour

A splendid way to spend a dreary winter day: at the Samuel Adams Brewery in the Jamaica Plain (JP) neighborhood of Boston.

The tour (the details of which are in a hard-to-find place on the brewery’s website) was jolly (dare I say “hoppin’?”)

Our small group followed a beer-wielding guide through the brewery’s fragrant chambers. Yes, employees get to drink beer on the job (part of the reason it’s voted one of the top places to work in the photo above, I presume).

It was very hands-on: we crumbled the hops in our hands and smelled them in one room, gazed hungrily at the beer-filled tanks in the next and, the best part, eventually tried the beers for ourselves in a tasting room at the end of the tour.

Tours are free, but a $2 donation for charity is recommended at the beginning of the tour. Bring some cash, otherwise you’ll feel like Scrooge walking past the collection barrel empty-handed (especially since you get free beer at the end).

Our tour guide taught us how to properly taste beer: visual appraisal, aroma, flavor and by just asking yourself if you like it. A few rowdy people at our table seemed very familiar with the curriculum already (hmmmmm) — but truth be told, the place is so laid-back, it seems like most come for a visit whenever they fancy some free tastings.

The tasting glasses were sweet (and free) souvenirs for an already sweet tour experience. You can buy the other three — each is printed with a different rule about tasting beer — in the set in the gift shop.

Emily and I loved the free postcards you can send, postage-paid, to friends and family about your rad experience at the brewery. Ours got a little goofy since we had to mention that our experience was very Asian: drinking three glasses of beer (no matter that they were tiny ones) in 20 minutes is not necessarily always an easy task.

Have you ever been to the Sam Adams brewery? Or others around the country? Which are the good ones?

Leave a comment below and give us the scoop.