Bad Martha

I listen to a number of podcasts - not all of them beer podcasts - and I like when podcasts end with the hosts giving recommendations, which may or may not relate to the podcasts.  Slate's Culture Gabfest host, Stephan Metcalf, in what sometimes seems like a troll, gives hyper-local recommendations of restaurants, stores, and attractions near his Hudson Valley home, which most listeners will never get to experience*.  I feel Metcalfian with this about Bad Martha's Farmer's Brewery, a small brewery and tasting room on Martha's Vineyard, about as far away and as hard to get to from San Diego as any brewery in the United States.

I spent some time on Martha's Vineyard this summer and frequented Bad Martha's Farmer's Brewery.  Located in Edgartown, it is Martha's Vineyard's only craft brewery**.  The brewery and the outdoor extension of its tasting room abut a nursery, the boundaries blurred, resulting in scores of potted plants, trees, pergola climbing hop vines, and blooming flowers, all sharing space with chairs and tables and tasting room games.  It's a near perfect place to enjoy Bad Martha's fine beers.

Over several visits I sampled a number of Bad Martha's beers.  Being in New England, I had to try the Baby Beluga New England IPA (pictured below).  This beer weighed in at just over 5% abv, and its damp, fruity flavor and malty sweetness stood up to the Vineyard's humid summer evenings.  Like most NEIPAs, I found no overt flavors bursting out of Baby Beluga, but I certainly enjoyed it.  The pale ale, another 5% abv beer, had a sharper bitter grip than the NEIPA, but it sold out early in my stay.  I found Bad Martha's Cap Codder the most interesting beer.  It is a 4% abv blond ale brewed with fruit, which to me tasted of berries and lemon, along with floral notes.  It is a fine beer for sipping on a warm summer evening after a thunderstorm, while sitting among the plants in a nursery.  Most of Bad Martha's beers were less than 6% abv, with many below 5% abv, which played into the brewery's on vacation, family and friends clientele. 

Bad Martha is the kind of brewery you want to visit multiple times. The brewery-nursery idea is excellent, and the ambience of Bad Martha added to its beers.  I am not sure how this space works in January, but with some space heaters I think a quick beer in the garden would be fine, at least I'd be up for one, but I think I'd order Bad Martha's oyster stout instead of its fruity Cap Codder.

* Stephen Metcalf once recommended Suarez Family Brewing so he's not trolling.
**  There is another brewery on Martha's Vineyard, Offshore Ale, but I was told it contract brews its beers somewhere on mainland Massachusetts, making Bad Martha the only brewery brewing beer on Martha's Vineyard.