2026-05-29 Aspire Brewing, Scotchtown, NY
We’re on our way to stay a few days in Salem (Witch City), MA to visit Sandy’s cousin, spend time with Bill’s sister and her husband who will drive up from Hingham. We’ll also be joined for lunch on Sunday by family friends from Acton.
We stayed this night at Aspire Brewing, a Harvest Host, in Scotchtown, NY. This place turned out to be HUGE. Occupying an entire large building in a kind of strip mall, it is totally modern and new. There are both full service and self serve sides of the house. The place featured indoor corn hole and axe throwing. Seating was at bars, large tables and arrangements of leather chairs and sofas.
Service was good as was the upscale bar food and beer. They even had gluten free tortellini for Sandy while Bill made due with wings and sautéed veggies. There were plenty of leftovers!
2026-05-30 Taylor Brooke Brewery & Winery, Woodstock, CT
Another day, another Harvest Host brew pub. Casual travelers are unlikely to stumble onto Taylor Brooke’s operation. It’s in a rural area about ten miles east of I-84 and five miles south of the Massachusetts border. We were impressed with the lovely homes we passed on the drive in.
The winery and brewery occupy separate facilities on the same hillside. Vineyards extend uphill from the winery while the brewery sits lower on the hillside. They each feature tasting rooms with both indoor and outdoor seating. Neither has a kitchen but the brewery often has food trucks and live entertainment. No food trucks while we were there but they do allow you to carry in your own food. AND, they had trivia the night we were there!
A drive around the area found us at Roseland Park on the shores of a lovely lake with gazebos, a newly paved walking path and a Little League field.
Returning to WAWA we made a dinner of last night’s leftovers plus fresh broccoli. Then, back at the brewery we participated in the trivia competition. The format of the game is much different than how we play back home. We score on the honor system. Not here. But that may be that here they offer cash prizes. In any event, we managed a middle of the road score among a field of nine teams. Since many of the teams had eight or so players, we felt pretty good about our performance.