Day 53: Several degrees better than bathtub gin

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

There are and will be some days throughout this project on which prior commitments make it impossible for me to get out and visit or do anything. For these days, I have set out to visit the site for that day ahead of time. This is one such entry — I completed it on August 21.

For as much as I've tried to plan ahead, and double-check my destinations' availability on the day I want to visit, sometimes even due diligence results in a big, closed metal grate. The website for Jake Ivory's says they're only open Fridays and Saturdays, but the recorded message I heard when I called indicated Thursdays were OK. And I figured it's more likely that the answering machine is up to date than the website, so we tried it. No go. So the friends that tagged along hoping for what was supposed to be '80s night convinced me to go down the block to Boston Beer Works for a pint.

I dream of a bar where all beers are created equal! And I think I might have found it - not only are all the beers equal (I sampled three of them - the oatmeal stout, the blueberry ale, and the watermelon ale), they're actually created. BBW doesn't roll with anything they didn't brew themselves. The giant brewing tanks line the walls on every side, and the taps all have interesting logos on them representing the homebrews.

They may not be crafted at a big, important brewery, but these were good. As a dark beer enthusiast, I found the oatmeal stout very much to my liking, but I was almost swayed back to the ale side of things by the watermelon ale, a special brew for August.

And the food — we ordered a single plate of nachos to split three ways. The chips, when they arrived, were piled nearly a foot off the plate, and loaded with cheese, olives, peppers, the works. We needed the beer, since the peppers contaminated each and every chip with "hoo boy!" But I'll be back at some point, I'm sure. After all, they sell growlers.