Over at the DG, I write about my recent day trip to the charming town of Chatham, and some of the things I wished I'd done. Such as: visit Chatham Brewing.

Here's an excerpt:

Saturday marked my first trip to the Columbia County town of Chatham.

The ostensible purpose of the trip was catching the film 'We Need To Talk About Kevin' at the Chatham Film Festival, which I wrote about yesterday (click here). But the trip also served as an introduction to the charms of Chatham.

Unfortunately, my timing was off, and I kept missing out on Chatham’s various charms.

For instance: I’ve long wanted to visit Chatham Brewing, which is literally down an alley and is only open on Saturdays. I first read about the brewery on All Over Albany, and was immediately intrigued: a semi-secret brewery that fills growlers out of a space about the size of a two-car garage sounded like a place I absolutely had to visit. Chatham Brewing is typically open from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturdays, but last weekend they appeared to have expanded their hours to accommodate the film festival crowd, and had even placed a sign out on the sidewalk directing people down the alley. As soon as I saw the sign I thought, 'I wish I brought my growler.' And because I was rushing to a movie, I didn’t have time to stop at the brewery, which was closed by the time I emerged from the theater. So I will have to go back to Chatham.

However, I did have a chance to try Chatham Brewing’s I.P.A. at the Peint O Gwrw, a pub in downtown Chatham, and it was pretty good.

Peint O Gwrw was also an interesting stop, because in addition to a fine beer menu, they also serve three kinds of absinthe. I’ve only tried one kind of absinthe, the French-made Lucid, and thought it would be interesting to sample the other two kinds available at Peint O Gwrw. There was some discussion of having an absinthe nightcap, but I decided that drinking absinthe at night when I planned to drive back to Albany was a bad idea. So, again, my timing was off, and I am going to have to return to Chatham to visit the brewery and drink absinthe.

Click here to read the whole thing.