Drinks and Tastings

Aeronaut pours its famously experimental beers inside a cavernous converted factory a short walk from Somerville’s Union Square, and the taproom operates less like a bar than a neighborhood clubhouse with fermentation science underneath. Founded by science-grad-student homebrewers, the brewery keeps a deep draft list running from flagship IPAs to small-batch oddities, plus cider, wine,…

Downeast built its name on cloudy, unfiltered cider, and its East Boston home on Marginal Street puts the taproom right in the middle of the working production floor. Order a flight and you get four pours picked from a rotating list that usually runs a dozen or more flavors deep, sipped with fermentation tanks and…

Chattermark sits under the Tobin Bridge on Terminal Street in Charlestown, turning out whiskey a short hop from the waterfront. The tour walks you through the working production floor, tracing the company’s story along with the nuts and bolts of the craft: the grain going in, the stills, how barrels get picked and aged, and…

Run by brothers Will and Dave Willis, Bully Boy holds the title of Boston’s first craft distillery, working out of Cedric Street in the Newmarket district on the Roxbury side of town. The tour digs into the operation’s origins, walks the production floor, and folds in a bit of Boston’s long, complicated drinking history while…

Trillium’s Fort Point flagship on Thomson Place stacks a taproom and full restaurant, a street-level patio, and — in the warmer months — a roof deck up top with open sky and Seaport views. When the deck is running, it’s one of the better spots in the neighborhood to drink the brewery’s cult-favorite IPAs outdoors,…

Boston Harbor Distillery occupies a restored mid-nineteenth-century industrial building at the Port on the Neponset in Dorchester, and the setting does half the work: brick, beams, and barrels right on the water. Founded by Rhonda Kallman, a co-founder of the Boston Beer Company, it produces Putnam New England whiskey, rum, gin, and Spirit of Boston,…