Brews & Views Beer Pairing Dinner - A Culinary Experience Like No Other

By: C.L. DeLisle

Great craft beer, scrumptious locally sourced food, good company, and a breathtaking destination combine to form a culinary experience like no other!

Brews & Views pairs carefully selected craft beer, provided by Baxter Brewing, with a delicious, multi-course meal prepared by a talented guest chef to create an unforgettable event. There are countless beer and food pairing events that occur throughout the world, but what is it that makes this event standout from the rest?

“The setting,” said Adam Platz, the Marketing Coordinator at Baxter Brewing. Platz continued, “It’s about being able to have your food, have your beer, and then step outside and you’re at 1900 ft. You’re underneath the stars; you’re looking at the mountains; you can’t really get that anywhere else in New England."

Stratton Brook Hut, the location of Brews & Views, sits in the shadows of some of the tallest mountains in Maine, offering panoramic views of the Bigelow Mountain Range and of Sugarloaf Mountain, the largest ski area east of the Rocky Mountains.

Jess Beer, a resident of Kingfield who attended the event last year, shared one of her most vivid memories from Brews & Views. “While we were drinking delicious beer from Baxter and enjoying dinner, we were also getting these wild panoramic scenes of a thunderstorm rolling over the Bigelows, which really refined the whole evening.”

The word “hut” can be misleading— when travelers arrive to one of the Maine Huts & Trails’ huts for the first time, they’re always stunned by the grandeur of the off-the-grid facilities. Filled with all the needed comfort amenities (hot showers, indoor lavatories, industrial kitchens, drying rooms, large dining areas, libraries, screened-in porches, and cozy bunkrooms), an adventure to one of these eco-lodges is far from roughing it!

Take a Tour of Stratton Brook Hut:

But let’s not forget about what this event is all about: “It’s all about the food and the beer,” said Platz. “High quality food and beer out in the middle of the woods. It’s a five star event— this is as good as you’re going to get.”

The talented guest chef, Jarod Frigon, is back for the fourth year in a row to create a delicious multi-course meal that will send your taste buds spinning. Some of last year’s menu items included: chilled Maine lobster salad, smoked and grilled cauliflower puree with pan seared scallops, tarte ratatouille, pommes soufflés, and strawberry and ricotta galette.

View the Full 2018 Brews & Views Menu:

Beer spoke highly of last year’s menu of food and carefully selected craft beers. “Jarod and Adam did a wonderful job of pairing the food with beer so that the taste of each was really amplified.”

Aside from the fantastic food, Brews & Views offers a very unique experience to interact with and learn about beer in a beautiful setting, which is sure to delight any craft beer enthusiast! “It’s not a superficial tasting event; it’s as in-depth as you want it to be,” said Platz. “We make our head brewers available so that people can have those one-on-one conversations about beer.”

As the summer continues to roll quickly by, we must remember to make the most out of each and every day of warmth and sunshine. Why is it that in this shortest of seasons, summertime, do we always seem to make our fondest memories— the memories that we cherish most dearly and that last the longest? It’s because in these months we dare to venture beyond our comfort zones to places we may not have been before, within the company of both old and new faces. It’s in these unscripted days of summer where memories are born.

Beer shared her favorite memory from last year’s Brews & Views. “Sharing food and beverages within good company. With some faces that I hadn’t met before, some faces that I had met before, mixing and mingling together within a beautiful environment with creative food and beverages.”