Brew Bus

Our Road Team is on the go next weekend with two simultaneous events in two states. The Rhode Island Brew Fest is in Pawtucket, and the America On Tap series makes a stop in Portland. Our second appearance at the Rhode Island Brew Fest will be next Saturday January 30th. With and afternoon and an evening session, this festival at the historic Pawtucket Armory showcases craft beers from Rhode Island and Southern New England. The event is completely sold out, and the building is also maxed out with breweries and vendors. Our RI Road Team will feature Craig, Megan, Becky, and myself. Stop by and say hi if you have already scored a ticket! At our last Rhode Island Brew Fest, the band King Friday rocked out while rocking our hats. Back in Portland, we will also be set up…

A hearty cheers as Craig Lanzillotti joins the Maine Brew Bus team as our very first Road Team lead. Find out more about his important role in promoting our tours throughout New England. But first, some background… We learned very early on how important it was to market our business out of state. With so many people coming across state lines simply for the great Maine beer and other craft alcohol, it only made sense to travel to where they live and let them know about tours on The Maine Brew Bus. Over the past couple of years we have attended dozens of beer festivals, travel shows, and food and beverage events in all New England states. We haven’t ignored Maine either, appearing in 10 different events all over our home state. Our Road Team with our display at an…

Visitors really depend on the local knowledge of their hotel staff once they arrive in Portland. So we recently took hotel guest services employees out for a Lodging Familiarization Tour.  The modern traveler relies on a number of research tools before visiting a new city. Google research leads to Best of and Top Ten lists, TripAdvisor reviews help verify popular restaurants and attractions, comprehensive lists are made, and then a battle plan of where to go is created. Think back to the last new place you visited. Who were first local people you actually interacted with? Did they give you the insider scoop about the real places to check out? It might have been your hotel courtesy van driver from the airport or train station, the valet who parked your car that you drove to town, the nice folks who greeted…

The Maine Brew Bus is pleased to welcome Jack Van Paepeghem to our faculty in the position of Curriculum Coordinator. Learn more about Jack and what he can share with all of us. Jack behind the bar at Oxbow Blending and Bottling. Heather Steeves photo for MaineToday.com Our faculty has a new team member, Jack Van Paepeghem of Portland. Jack joins us to serve in the key position of Curriculum Coordinator. In this role, Jack will help improve the level of beer education among our own team members, the hospitality industry, and the general public. We pride ourselves that our theme is education focused brewery tours and more. Our founder Zach was a teacher for a long time.  We use converted school buses on our tours, and we use the term “Guidance Counselor” to describe our guides. On our tours you going to…

The Maine Brew Bus was featured this week on the website Business Insider. Ride along with video editor Stephen Parkhurst on a recent Beast of the yEast tour. Maine native Stephen Parkhurst is a video editor for the popular website Business Insider. He contacted us in December with an idea, he was coming back to town for a weekend and wanted to jump on one of our tours and film a video as part of a series on Portland, Maine. Of course we were all for it! We set him up with our popular Beast of the yEast tour which features our partners Maine Mead Works, Bunker Brewing Company, Rising Tide Brewing Company, and Oxbow Blending and Bottling. As most of our tours do, it begins and ends at the Craft Beer Cellar in Portland. We also used some connections…

We try to hire team members that are in constant pursuit of learning more about craft beer. In the process, our staff are often unknowingly “auditioning” to work in the industry. See what some of our past faculty are brewing and doing in craft beer. Some of our staff came to us with a pretty good knowledge of the local scene, but not really about brewing beer. Some had relocated to Portland, and had a really good background in brewing but nothing lined up quite yet in Portland. Then there is Bob, who had neither local knowledge or a beer brewing background. We like to mention Bob because he solicited a job from us (one that didn’t actually exist with us at the time) while he was still living in California. He had a plan to leave his profession as a…

One of the first beer festivals of the year is scheduled this Saturday at the Cross Insurance Center in Bangor. Join us for either session of Bangor On Tap.  The beginning of the year is traditionally not a busy time for beer festivals in Maine. The potentially dicey weather and cold temperatures has meant that craft beer loving Mainers stay pretty close to home in January. But last year, Townsquare Media brought to Maine a beer festival called America On Tap. The company, which owns a number of Maine media outlets including popular radio stations, was able to promote the event to an interested and younger demographic than your typical beer festival. Premiering in Portland during a snowstorm with a capacity crowd, the event helped bridge the gap for people looking to enjoy some new craft beers even during the…

South Portland’s first brewery in over ten years opens this week. See behind the scenes of the Fore River Brewing Company. One of the benefits of operating The Maine Brew Bus is being able to be part of the inside track when new breweries open up in Maine. Often we are written right into the business plan, and it’s safe to say that we already have plans to include new breweries on our tours well before they open. A look at the spacious tasting room and large bar at Fore River Brewing Company in South Portland. Such is the case with Fore River Brewing Company which opens to the public Thursday afternoon. I first became aware of Fore River Brewing almost two years ago when something floated across social media indicating that a new brewery was coming soon. We found…

We’re sorry if you were hoping to go on a tour today. We are taking time this afternoon to thank our staff with a post-holiday gathering. Like many service and hospitality related businesses, we are too busy leading up to the holidays to properly take time and thank our staff for their hard work. We did have a small laser tag outing in December, but not everyone was able to make that. The team did find out that laser tag is also hard work! So we are not running tours today, instead we are all gathering at a jungle hideaway for good cheer and great beer! We will even have a couple of new team members joining us, good people you will learn more about in the coming weeks. There may be a report about the party, then again there…

Driving our buses is not like driving a car. There are 14 people that are depending on our driver to operate safely while they have fun on a tour. Learn more about our driver safety programs. Many people have “some experience” driving a larger vehicle. Maybe it was grandpa’s station wagon, that 15-P van during college activities or AmeriCorps service, or the U-Haul that was used to move across town or across the country. When we ask our prospective employees if they have a comfort level driving our buses, it is a serious question. Not everybody wants to have that responsibility. And we absolutely want to know that up front. Each tour is staffed with two employees, one as a guide and one who’s sole job is to drive the tour safely. Although we often have employees that are dually-trained as…