enlarge Courtesy Sea Dog Brewing

Sea Dog Brewing Co., owned by Fred Forsley and Alan Pugsley, recently opened this branch in South Portland.

enlarge 2004 Press Herald file

Alan Puglsley first came to Maine to provide brewing expertise for D.L. Geary Brewing Co, Maine first microbrewery.

enlarge 2007 Press Herald file

Gritty McDuff’s on Fore Street in Portland was Maine’s first brew pub, and it maintains its standards. It has won the Maine Sunday Telegram reader poll as best bar since 2003.

MAINE BREW PUBS

SOUTHERN MAINE

FEDERAL JACK'S Restaurant & Brew Pub, 8 Western Ave., Kennebunk. 967-4322 Federaljacks.com

GRITTY MCDUFF'S Brew Pub, 396 Fore St., Portland, 772-2739; Lower Main Street, Freeport, 865-4321 and 68 Main St., Auburn, 376-2739. Grittys.com

INN ON PEAKS ISLAND, 33 Island Ave., Peaks Island; 766-5100. Innonpeaks.com

RUN OF THE MILL, 100 Main St., Saco, 571-9648. Myspace.com/ runofthemillbrewpub

SEA DOG Brewing Company, 125 Western Ave., South Portland, 871-7000 and 1 Main St., Topsham, 725-0162. Seadogbrewing.com

SEBAGO Brewing Company, 201 Southborough Drive, Scarborough, 874-2337; 164 Middle St., Portland, 775-2337; and 29 Elm St., Gorham, 839-2337. Sebagobrewing.com

SHIPYARD Brew Pub in Eliot, 28 Levesque Drive (Route 236), Eliot, 686-2026. Shipyardbrewpub.com

DOWN EAST

ATLANTIC BREWING Company, 15 Knox Road, Bar Harbor, 288-2337. Atlanticbrewing.com

MARSHALL WHARF Brewery and the Three Tides Waterfront Bar, 2 Pinchy Lane, Belfast, 338-1707. 3tides.com

MAINE COAST Brewing Company/Jack Russell's Restaurant, 102 Eden St., Bar Harbor, 288-5214. Bhmaine.com

INLAND

BRAY'S BREW PUB, Routes 305 and 32, Naples, 693-6806. braysbrewpub.com

KENNEBEC RIVER BREWERY, Route 201, The Forks, 663-4466. northernoutdoors.com

THE LIBERAL CUP Public House and Brewery, 115 Water St., Hallowell, 623-2739. Theliberalcup.com

SEA DOG Brewing Company, 26 Front St., Bangor, 947-8004. Seadogbrewing.com

SHIPYARD Brew Haus at Sunday River, 824-5138 and Shipyard Brew Haus at Sugarloaf, 237-6837. Shipyardbrewhaus.com. Both open only during the ski season

Mainers enjoy a little self-improvement in their pastimes, like spending time at a brew pub. Fortunately, the state's thriving brew pubs and their local beers are worth devoted studies.

It's fun to learn about beer.

Terms like cask-conditioned, Ringwood yeast and specific gravity come up in conversation with brewers quickly enough. The cask-conditioned beers known as real ales are naturally fermented and pumped by hand from the cellar into the glass at the bar.

If you can get to Bray's Brew Pub in Naples on Aug. 1, for instance, when every beer they have ever made will be on tap, you could try cask-conditioned Pleasant Mountain Porter, hand-pumped from its barrel into your glass.

Bray's Brew Pub is one of more than 20 brew pubs in Maine. Two large new brew pubs, an offshoot of Shipyard Brewing Co. in South Portland and a new Scarborough Sebago Brewing Co., have just opened up, and their owners are confident Mainers and its visitors will help them succeed.

And all this enterprise has prepared a wealth of choices to imbibe, from the warm reddish brown of Sebago Brewing Company's Runabout Red with its caramel tang, to the smooth, mild golden glitter of The Liberal Cup's Bug Lager, made in Hallowell and in Saco at Run of the Mill.

History

First on the scene in 1988, Gritty McDuff's of Portland, with outposts in Freeport and Auburn, regales its loyalists with Original Pub Style Pale Ale, the mother of all Maine ale.

Or is that sister?

According to David Geary, owner of D.L. Geary Brewing Company, the brewers at Gritty McDuff's trained at his brewing company, which was incorporated in 1982 and began producing its famous Geary Pale Ale in December 1986. Geary said his brewers learned the English brewing system alongside master brewer Alan Pugsley.

Pugsley is now a partner and co-owner, with Fred Forsley, of Shipyard Brewing Co. and eight brew pubs, including three Sea Dog Brewing Company brew pubs in Topsham, Bangor and now South Portland.

Pugsley brought to Maine a strain of English yeast called Ringwood from Ringwood Brewery in Hampshire, England, a yeast that his mentor, Peter Austin, had brought from a Yorkshire brewery. Pugsley also recreated in Maine what he calls the original Peter Austin brick kettle brewing system.

Other Maine brewers and a trade magazine call Pugsley the Johnny Appleseed of microbreweries. After Gritty McDuff's arrived on the scene, Pugsley oversaw the creation of Federal Jack's along the Kennebunk River in Kennebunk, open in 1992.

Head brewer Mike Haley, who has been working at Federal Jack's for 11 years, said "We brew 1,100 barrels of beer a year, which works out to 34,100 gallons."

One summer beer found in every brew pub in Maine is a wheat beer, and Haley's version, called Sirius, is filtered, "with a clean, crisp flavor." Haley said he is also perfecting a new beer made with fruit – possibly peach and grapefruit, which should be on tap later this summer.

Specific gravity, by the way, is a measure of the sugar in beer. Every recipe starts with its own specific gravity, Haley said, and as the yeast ferments the sugar level drops, raising the alcohol content. How much sugar is left in the beer affects the beer's body and smoothness.

Haley said his beers are moderate in alcohol, so patrons can enjoy more than one. The classic ale Old Thumper is highest in alcohol here, at 5.8 percent, Haley said, and begins fermentation at a higher specific gravity but ends with a lower, producing its somewhat dry taste.

The Brew Pub Trifecta

Incredibly, Federal Jack's Brew Pub opened in 1992 without a kitchen. A next-door caf used to be the source of a sandwich – the pub owners let their customers bring in food.

"It was three years into it before we established a kitchen," Pugsley said. "Five years into it before we really had good food, good...