DRAFT Magazine

This summer, Evan Cohan will bike 1,700 miles through New England to visit breweries and chronicle the experience on his website, Beercycling.com.

“How do you improve an amazing beer recipe? You sweat for hours before you drink it, that’s how,” he says.

A Portland resident, Evan has taken Beercycling trips through Belgium and New Zealand with friends. For this trip he’ll make pilgrimages to Unibroue in Chambly, Quebec, Dogfish Head brewery in Milton, DE, and any “tiny, random brewpubs not on my original list” he can find along the way.

And you’re invited too.

“If you live in the area I’m traveling through and feel like joining me for a day, drop me a line,” he says. “The first beer is on me.”

I’m a big travel junkie and have a large passion for photography. It just so happens that there is amazing beer everywhere I want to visit in New England, so it made sense to wrap a beercycling trip around it. It kept growing and growing into the two and a half month monster I’m now set to embark on. I kept finding out about new cities, landmarks, breweries, and friends scattered in that area.

Spending a week off in NYC and going to Coney Island where my family was from a few generations ago. As a kid I heard countless amazing stories from my Grandfather. Now I’ll finally have a visual to go with those epic stories. My great grandfather was an inventor and actually invented the first fortune telling machine (Think of the movie “BIG”) and the first photo booth. True story! (or at least so I’m told.)

EC: Cycling to the Westvletern Trappist Abbey. It was a wet, uncomfortable week on the road, but when we arrived at their cafe and the waitress plopped down a 12, 8, and a Blond, we knew why we had come half way around the world to be there. After a few sips of those inspiring beverages, we felt that we had graduated from beer drinking boys into beer appreciative, manly men. It was a very romantic beer moment.

Other than jumping naked into the North Sea, biggest highlights included our experiences with couchsurfing. We stayed with so many friendly, knowledgeable Belgians, several home brewers and beer nerds like us. There were several occasions where we’d bring a couple of bottles to share with our host, and like clockwork, our host would have the exact proper glassware (logo included) necessary for proper enjoyment. We did lots of cooking, and exchanging of stories during these visits. It was a much more interesting experience then staying at hostels and hotels.

EC: A few years ago I started doing marathons, triathlons, centuries, etc. away from home to feed my growing travel bug. Post-race activities include celebration ales and lagers, and they taste SOOO good after a race! I started visiting micro-breweries and learning about craft beer. It became so much fun to be in random new town discovering amazing, locally made, seasonal beers. Cycling came up as a method to tour breweries not because it’s my favorite workout, but because it’s the one that lets me cover the most ground per day. Beerhiking or Beersurfing would be amazing sports too, but it would be hard to get from brewery to brewery. I skipped normal training and talked some friends into buying tickets to New Zealand and Belgium. Since then I’ve relocated to Portland, OR where we have a wide selection of breweries (40+ in city limits), which makes for some fun weekend tours.

EC: Really hard to beat the great beer cafes of Belgium. Our favorites were the “Kulminator” in Antwerp and “Moder Lambic” in Brussels. The encyclopedia-thick selection of choices, knowledge of the staff, and availability of obscure Belgium beer is not possible anywhere else in the world. The best Belgium beer-style café I’ve seen outside of Belgium is probably Brouwers in Seattle. Cycling-wise, I’m spoiled up here in Portland, OR. Bicycle friendly streets, paths, and educated drivers make it easy to bike anywhere in town. If I had to pick a city with the best balance of bikes and beer, it would be none other than Portland, right here in Beervana. The most fun I’ve had cycling in an international city is probably Budapest, Hungary.

EC: Go big. Set a goal, a timeframe, complete any steps you need, and have a blast. A lot of the other details you can fill in as you go. There are SO many cheap ways to do these types of trips, it’s not as expensive as one might think. Camping, couchsurfing, and hostelling are all great options. On any trip your biggest expense should be food and drinks, and there are lots of ways to keep those costs low.

Or maybe just a local city/state tour is more up your alley? Awesome! Then most of the work is already done. You know the terrain. All you really need is a bike and some feet. Beercycle away J

Have plans. But don’t stick to them. Flexibility can provide for some fun spontaneity. Maybe a local tells you about a better trail to your destination. Go with it. Throw yourself into situations you weren’t prepared for. In Belgium we took a local’s lodging advice and unknowingly slept at a brothel. The techno music at 3 AM was not what we were expecting, but it makes for one hell of a funny story.

Beercycling touring is fun, inexpensive, healthy, suitable for people of all skill levels, and safe. Yes… safe. Have a few beers AFTER your long day on the bike. It’s not a pub crawl. Drink lots of water and pace yourself. Take your time to look around and soak up your surroundings; most people in cars are missing all of it. You get to see scenic areas between point A and point B — or in our case, Pint A and Pint B.

EC: Continue to build a following dedicated to this perfect sport and promote healthy living and awareness for bicycle safety. We want to help arrange meet-ups in our various member cities around the country. The website is continuing to evolve and will include lots of “how to” articles for bicycle touring, reviews of breweries, suggested routes, and contests for merchandise. We also will continue our tradition of doing one long tour every year. In Summer 2011 we are planning to do 2-3 weeks in Colorado. I’m also just getting into home brewing, and am planning to come up with my own recipe on my tour this summer. Perhaps I’ll call it “1,700 mile ale” or “2,700 kilometer lager” in honor of the journey.