Plan Bee Farm Brewery: Your Next Beer-Fueled Road Trip
Today, we take a trip to Plan Bee Farm Brewery in Poughkeepsie with our new guest blogger and in-house beer enthusiast, my husband, Pete:
If you're looking for a small detour between NYC and that Catskills, and you have a love for unique sour beers and farmhouse ales, be sure to plan a stop at Plan Bee Farm Brewery.
Plan Bee was started by former Captain Lawrence brewery employee Evan Watson and his wife Emily in 2013. The farm brewery moved to its current home, a 25-acre farm located at 115 Underhill Road in Poughkeepsie, NY (Just over the Hudson from New Paltz), in 2015. Plan Bee is known for their farmhouse ales and sour beers, including easy drinking offerings like the zesty Farmstand Ale and the slightly funky flagship Barn Beer. They also offer more adventurous and seriously impressive options like the cherry and bourbon sour KärnL or the boozy tropical vanilla concoction, Royal Jelly. Every brew uses 100% New York State-sourced ingredients, most of which are grown right on their farm.
The bottles -- 750ml offerings with color-coded wax tops -- are a sight to behold. The company's iconic bee logo, which greets you at the bottom of the dirt road to the farm, is emblazoned on every bottle and serves as a guarantee of quality. We've yet to taste a single Plan Bee brew that wasn't worth the trip to the farm.
One catch -- the farm itself is only open for bottle purchases (from a makeshift wooden shop in front of a large barn used for brewing) on Saturdays from noon to 5. They do close on a few holidays so its worth checking the Farmstand section of the Plan Bee site before planning a visit.
If you're interested in getting the full experience, Plan Bee also offers memberships to the Hive, a beer-centric CSA that offers members the opportunity to purchase either 6 or 12 bottles a month (at $15 per bottle). Purchases can either be picked up at the farm or from the brewers themselves when they make a monthly trip to a rotation series of craft beer bars in NYC. But keep an eye on what you are ordering... a recent trip to the farm to pick up beers filled our trunk with 25 bottles -- an unexpectedly large haul, but not something we're really going to complain about.
Beer road-trip bonus: If you travel an hour south of Plan Bee towards NYC, you'll come to Peekskill Brewing where you can load up on more beers and feel like you've really accomplished a full day of beer-hunting without having to drive all the way to VT!
