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The Maine Brew Bus is a proud partner of the Portland, Maine Chapter of the United States Bartenders’ Guild. We specialize in providing a literal vehicle to assist in their professional development. In Portland, we are lucky to have a very active chapter of the United States Bartenders’ Guild (USBG). The USBG was started in California in 1948, and now has spread to be active in over 50 cities nationwide. Our Chapter in Portland was formed just a year ago, and was officially chartered in March, 2015. Now with over 80 members from our vibrant bars and restaurants, the Portland Chapter of the USBG has established an impressive program mix of formal training sessions, special events, social gatherings, and educational outings – such as what we are able to provide them on The Maine Brew Bus. Our monthly Industry Education Tours for…

In order to let more people know about tours on The Maine Brew Bus, we like to bring our show on the road.  Every year we travel around New England and display at over two dozen beer festivals. People attending beer festivals have already traveled a bit to spend a little money and drink a lot of beer. These are definitely our kind of people! Our display at the recent Harvest on the Harbor Marketplace event in Portland. Our Wheel of Brew Trivia is an effective technique to get people to stop by to talk to us – even though we do not have any beer! The Wheel helps show our educational component to people. We work to convince guests to consider traveling to Portland, Maine for their next Beercation getaway. We also encourage them to check out our tours as…

A one-day snapshot looking at exactly where Maine Brew Bus guests travel from to visit Portland, Maine On Saturday January 2, 2016 we ran five different tours that visited 15 different producers. With 66 seats available on those different tours, we had reservations that filled 62 seats. That means we were 94% full on the second day of the year. Obviously this was part of a holiday weekend filled with revelry, but we were still impressed at our bookings this early in January. We were interested in learning more, so we took a closer look.  Here is the breakdown for that first Saturday: Massachusetts Maine New Hampshire Connecticut Georgia Rhode Island California Kentucky Pennsylvania Scotland, UK On this particular day, two entire full tours had zero guests who reported that the lived in Maine. Also, 55% of our guests were from…

The local website Beer This Week recently ran an end-of-year survey for what people think were the Top 25 beers in Maine for 2015.  This is certainly a popularity contest, it’s after all a list of favorite beers as voted on by over 2,000 Maine beer drinkers.  Here is the list: The folks at Beer This Week found these facts about the results: 13 beers are new to this list from last year 8 of the top 10 are hoppy beers Only 2 stouts are on the list Allagash has 3 “sour” beers on the list whereas last year there was only 1 sour In reviewing the list, we discovered our own facts about the breweries and the beers: 16 different breweries are represented with beers on this list, many with more than one Maine Brew Bus tours visit 11…

Ever since our first review on June 24, 2013, we have been steadily collecting amazing reviews on TripAdvisor. The volume of reviews, as well as the ratings and comments themselves, have helped us to receive the TripAdvisor Certificate of Excellence for both 2014 and 2015. This week, our 400th review came from shan_knight1169 of Trescott,…