There’s a lot of beer in Maine, and a lot of people brewing it. Lewiston-Auburn has Baxter Brewing and Gritty McDuff’s, Bethel has the Shipyard Brew Haus, and Portland has many more. In fact, for adventurous drinkers, Maine-brewed refreshment can be found across the state from The Forks to Eliot to Bar Harbor . . . if you know where to go.

That’s where the Maine Beer Trail comes in.

The beer trail, a project by the Maine Brewers’ Guild and the Maine Restaurant Association, has been around more than two years, but the latest incarnation offers incentives for visitors who reach several breweries.

Visit five breweries and send in your trail map to get a baseball hat. Ten visits gets you a T-shirt. Visiting all of them gets you a prize pack with a variety of Maine brewery merchandise.

Luke Livingston, president of the Baxter Brewing Co. in Lewiston, said he sees tourists with the Maine Beer Trail map all the time. One recent couple, he said, was on a four-day trip to hit every brewery in the state.

There are two types of destinations: package breweries and brew pubs. Most package breweries have a tour, gift shop and free samples. Brew pubs are restaurants with beer brewed on premise, often unavailable in stores. Most brew pubs sell a sampler of all the beers on tap in tiny glasses.

There’s a brew pub for beer lovers of all stripes. English-style pubs like Gritty’s (Auburn, Freeport, Portland), The Liberal Cup (Hallowell, and owner of Run of the Mill Public House in Saco) and Sea Dog (South Portland, Bangor, Topsham) offer hearty food in a cozy atmosphere with hearty English beers to match.

Sebago Brewing Co. (Portland, Gorham, Scarborough, Kennebunk) is more modern, serving up clean, American-style ales.

Other brew pubs are one-of-a-kind. Marshall Wharf in Belfast offers a tapas menu and 17 beers at the Three Tides, the restaurant next door. With a deck and patio over Belfast Bay, even the beer-averse will find a lot to love.

Michael Bray is the brewer at Bray’s Brew Pub & Eatery, a Naples bar popular with both year-round and seasonal residents in the Sebago Lakes Region. Many of his beers defy traditional styles, like a deliciously creamy oatmeal pale ale and the killer Mt. Olympus Special Ale, probably best described as a brown IPA.

Bray said the effect of the beer trail has been noticeable. “It’s helped bring in a few extra folks that wouldn’t necessarily know we existed,” he said.

For more out-of-the-way breweries, the map is a lot more helpful. At the Oak Pond Brewery in Skowhegan, “We do probably get somebody in every day who’s on the beer trail,” co-founder Nancy Chandler said. “Sometimes more than that.” She said about half are from out of state.

“We are a very small brewery, and we are in the middle of nowhere,” she said, so the map helps direct people. Oak Pond is the only brewery in Maine that brews more lagers than ales. Lagering is a time-consuming process, especially for strong, heavy lagers like the seasonal Storyteller Doppelbock.

Package breweries can be pretty similar. A tour guide explains how beer is made, pointing out the equipment used in each step. They’d get pretty boring if not for the samples.

At the Allagash Brewing tour in Portland, they’re wise enough to give you a sample before the tour. Allagash has a huge following outside of Maine. On a recent tour, most of the license plates in the parking lot were from Massachusetts.

What sets Allagash apart is the barrel room. Barrel aging is common for wine, but is rare for beer — especially in Maine. Allagash ages its Tripel Reserve in Jim Beam barrels. After several weeks, the beer comes out as Curieux, a stronger beer with a big bourbon flavor.

The Allagash brewery is located in an industrial park in Portland that’s also home to Geary’s Brewing Co., the Maine Beer Co. and Rising Tide Brewing.

You can’t beat that for efficiency, but unlike Allagash, the others only give tours by appointment, so hitting all four in one day would require a lot of foresight, a little luck and a willing designated driver. (How about that friend who doesn’t like “dark beer” and owes you a favor?)

For a unique experience, there’s Sheepscot Valley Brewing on Hollywood Boulevard, a dirt road in Whitefield. The beer only comes in half-gallon screw-top growlers, and the brewery is only open for about two hours a week.

The beer is worth both the hour-long drive from Lewiston and tweaking your schedule, however. Brewer Steve Gorrill brews a malty Scottish ale and an even maltier creation called Damariscotta Double Brown Ale. Both are must-trys and hard to find outside of the small brewery.

The Brewers’ Guild is receiving feedback on the trail maps in the mail now, according to Tami Kennedy, spokeswoman for the guild and communications director for Shipyard Brewing Co. (headquartered in Portland, with a handful of pubs statewide including Sunday River and Sugarloaf).

No one has visited all the breweries so far, that they are aware of, she said, but many have received hats and T-shirts for five visits and 10 visits, and most are tourists. “I would say 90 percent of the people we’ve received forms back from are from out of state,” Kennedy said.

The Maine Beer Trail wasn’t designed for people to hit every brewery, she said. It was made so people can find the breweries in the region. “Pretty much no matter where you are in Maine, you can find a local brewery.”

Just remember to take them one at a time.

treaves@sunjournal.com

Tap some new trail members

Want to try out Maine’s newest breweries before they even get on the next reprint of the Maine Beer Trail map?

The Maine Brewers’ Guild has one new member and one prospective member who appear headed for the next map this fall:

Belfast Bay Brewing at 100 Searsport Ave., Belfast

According to the guild, it is a small, seasonal operation, so it’s best to call before going. Their bottled beer — Belfast Bay Lobster Ale and McGovern’s Oatmeal Stout — is contract brewed at Shipyard in Portland. Reach them at http://www.belfastbaybrewing.com/maine.html and 207-338-4216.

Boothbay Craft Brewery at the Boothbay Resort, 301 Adams Pond Road, Boothbay

This new brewery was recently in touch with the Maine Brewers’ Guild. It is located at the Boothbay Resort. Also best to call in advance of a trip. Reach them at http://www.boothbaycraftbrewery.com and at 207-798-1651.

Go off-trail

And if you want to be a renegade and visit reportedly the only Maine brewer NOT in the Guild, and, therefore, not on the trail map, schuss over to Sunday River Brewing Co., 29 Sunday River Road, Bethel. For July 4th, Jamaican Stout is currently on tap. Don’t ask. http://www.sundayriverbrewpub.com/