Is Brew Hiking a year round activity? We weren’t sure. We enjoyed excellent weather for our brew hikes in October and November, but would December cooperate? Available daylight hours matter. On our first hike, we arrived at our final brewery after dark. It wasn’t really an issue for us on that hike. But keeping safety in mind, adding ‘after dark’ to the recreation of drinking and walking isn’t a plus. So with daylight getting shorter, and weather getting colder, we had to wonder, is brew hiking a year round activity.
Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
Hikers are innately curious. If you want to find out if a December brew hike is doable, you do it and find out! But before you do it, you plan it, and options are available to create a winter friendly brew hike.
What options you ask? Well, the number of breweries on your hike, clearly. The minimum requirement of a brew hike, is having at least two breweries to hike between (a loop course from one brewery back to itself isn’t a brew hike, it’s a brew walkabout, often worthy, but very different). Not every location that is blessed with a brewery is so lucky to have others within walking distance. Yet brew hiking requires such fortunate abundance to craft a multi stop hike as we’ve enjoyed thus far. Still, two is enough, especially when the weather is cold and daylight is short.
Lorton, Virginia, has two breweries that are 1.3 miles apart from each other. So it was on like Donkey Kong!
Google maps let us know the path was relatively flat, and Google street view revealed that it was a mix of fine sidewalks and passably wide shoulders. Given this short distance, we even decided to forgo recruiting a spousal shuttle driver. We would park at the second brewery, hike to the first, and then turnaround and hike back to the second (the first part we considered as akin to walking into a trailhead, a precursor to the actual hike, but I’m hairsplitting).
A holiday season hike must also take other factors into account, such as, will an ‘Ugly Christmas Sweater Party’ be taking place at the first brewery, or will a holiday themed photo op await at the second! And after a few hikes, it shouldn’t surprise if others want to join you. Such was the case for us on this hike.
This wasn’t a particularly ‘scenic’ hike, unless heavy traffic, industrial tank farms, and single lost gloves on the roadside are your idea of scenery. But hey, not everything’s the AT! Take in the sights, such as they are, and know there’s beer waiting for you at the finish!
But check out the pictures. They reveal the third essential element of a successful brew hike. The first two we’ve mentioned, two or more breweries within walking distance, and bold hikers with a yearn to explore, but also, thirdly, friends with whom you enjoy walking and talking and drinking good beers. If you have those three things, then you can enjoy a fun brew hike any time of year!
1.3 miles to…
