November 1, 2009
Not far from the busy part of Portland, but still not worth the detour. Nice gift shop with a surprisingly large array of Shipyard related products. If the Shipyard logo can be glued to something they do it and they sell it. I don’t know how often they give the tour because we were “lucky” enough to bike in front of that place and decided to stop just when a tour started. We took the tour. It is free but even at that price it is not worth it. You sit in a room for a good 20 minutes and watch a propaganda “Shipyard Invented Beer” video. Then you move to the tour, which is basically watching the noisy bottling line for 20 minutes. You really don’t see anything else than the bottling line. Then you go to the pleasant tasting room to sample 6 Shipyard products. Staff is friendly, everything is free but it is just so uninteresting. The only good thing I got out of it was asking questions about their contracted brews and having them say that it has nothing to do with the real brews (different yeast, different malts, contracting staff not involved in the brewing, etc.). Just not worth it. Don’t waste your time at Shipyard, go and take the Allagash tour, that one is worth it.

April 4, 2009
tour is good fun and the sample room is even better. go check it out.

February 13, 2009
A good tour and the tastings were good too. Movie about Shipyard was informative.

January 28, 2009
i showed up a little late so i missed the brewery tour, but just in time for the tasting!!!. huge gift shop!

September 26, 2008
sorry, meant to review the Shipyard Brewpub in Eliot, have not toured here as yet.

July 3, 2008 [ Updated September 5, 2008 ]
Quite a good tour of a fairly interesting brewery. We had to wait a while in the shop, which was probably the best stocked brewery shop I’ve been in, some nice t-shirts and the like. The tour was fairly informative and our guide seemed to know his stuff. The tasting room (the main attraction of any brewery tour, let’s not kid ourselves) was good fun, we had a good chat with our guide and some of the other people on the tour, the beer was fairly good, nothing mind blowing, though, the Brewer’s Choice IPA was probably the best of the seven beers they had on offer. Worth while tour.

June 5, 2008
Lackluster tour and mediocre beer. It’s a cool building, and I would have loved to learn more about it, but the promotional video that starts the tour and the bored guide who keeps telling you how bad he wants to go home don’t do much to inspire questions. Our guide explained the bottling line. That was it all we saw of the brewery. Six taps made for a nice tasting variety, but we found the beers to be about as inspiring as our guide. A little more enthusiasm, genuine interest and a little less tacky salesmanship would have gone a long way to make the experience worthwhile. Sorry to be so harsh on this place, but they’re not trying, and that bothered us.

May 5, 2008
Great tour, great gift shop, great tasting session. The intro video did a nice job of laying the ground work for the tour. We had a chance to sample about 8 different beers. This is well worth the visit.

June 8, 2007
This place was a true disappointment. The tour guide knew less than my son about beer. It was like he read his speech .They have you watch a video before the tour I guess to make up for the fact the tour guide was just a store clerk. They had only 4 beers to sample but you could buy tons of different ones in their store out front hopefully the get there act together because it was an interesting video but the tour left a lot to be desired

April 5, 2006
My favorate Maine Brewery. They offer tours where they let you actually go in and watch the beer being made and actually touch the tanks...etc. Also let you taste the hops. Tour guides offer tours even when your the only one and if your 21 they let you taste their beers and describe each one for you. They love to chat beer and know A TON. A great place to visit, and they have a great gift store where you can get their beer and sea dogs for cheeper than the store, and also have very cheep souveneers and great shirts.