November 21, 2011
Mediocre tour - watched a lame video and saw the bottling line. The gift shop is big, but I think Shipyard should spend less time making t shirts and more time trying to improve the quality their product. Enough with the ringwood yeast!

August 25, 2011
Located close to town, their gift shop almost feels like a cheesy tourist shop -- there’s a handful of Maine-related trinkets along side the complete array of their beers (I bought 7 22 oz’ers). Again, wish they had a tasting room (Maine standard).

August 22, 2011
Big warehouse-looking building on the edge of downtown Portland with a couple giant Shipyard signs on the sides and a keg at the top of the flagpole- nice touch. You enter in the ground level into the store, which has a good selection of Shipyard bottles, merch, and sodas. The tour is basically just a video and a peek at the bottling line, followed by a tasting. Would have liked it if only the tasting was available without the "tour". That Maine law sucks. Staff is friendly here.

July 25, 2011
Went for the tour on a hot Saturday in July. They show you a movie that is a bit of propaganda for Shipyard, but what else would it be? It was fairly informative and not bad. I don’t know if it was the fact that they are very busy in the brewhouse, but you only get to see the bottling line in the brewery. You do get a nice selection of their beers as part of the tasting at the end, which included one of the Puglsey signature series. They also had their sodas available in the gift shop for tasting. Very large gift shop with a large selection of Shipyard stuff. The tour/gift shop staff was very nice and helpful. Beers available for sale also.

October 22, 2010
Typical brewery tour with a group tasting at the end. I would definitely recommend this if you’re going on a beer tour of Portland.

September 25, 2010 [ Updated October 1, 2010 ]
First time at an Iron Hill. Very nice. Impressive menu and a huge selection of beers. I went for samples while we all read the menu. I went with the Octoberfest and the Jager Schnitzel and they were both great! Service was fast and friendly. I would go back anytime.

July 17, 2010
Just a bit off the beaten path in downtown Portland. Unfortunately (or fortunately after reading a few other reviews) we missed the video at the beginning of the tour. So basically we moved along to the bottling line, listened to about 5 minutes of dull commentary, then headed to the tasting room. I believe we had 5-6 free samples. All were pretty sub-par. However, this place has the largest gift shop of any brewery I’ve visited! There were easily 30 different t-shirts and plenty of glasses with different Shipyard labels. I’ve never seen this much brewery memorabilia before.

July 12, 2010
Visited in April 2010. Well stocked shop in the front, leading into a tasting room with video presentation. Didn’t get to do the tour as they had a party coming in a little later but the guy in the shop was friendly and, after showing us the short video, dispensed the free samples. Plus he threw in some free snacks and invited us to the Summer Ale launch party that evening. And Alan Pugsley popped in to say hello. Six regular beers available on tap. Nothing special but it saved me buying a couple of them elsewhere. Job done. A pleasant enough way to while away an hour or so.

April 23, 2010
Has a cool vibe inside the store. The factory itself is small, but everything else is pretty cool.

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.