The Twin Cities beer scene exploded last week with Surly Brewing Company’s announcement that it wants to build a new brewery. According to Surly, this wouldn’t be just any brewery. It wants to build what it’s calling a “destination brewery”; a two-story structure that would include a 100,000-barrel capacity brewery, a 250 seat restaurant, a [...]
I’m going to make a confession that may seem to some like a heresy. I don’t care about the Ratebeer Top 100 lists. In fact, although I have been writing for the Hoppress blog on Ratebeer for over a year, I really never look at the Ratebeer ratings pages. Nor do I look at Beer [...]
Saturday was the first ever St. Cloud Craft Beer Expo. St. Cloud, Minnesota is a medium-sized city about an hour-and-a-quarter northwest of the Twin Cities. While the Minneapolis and St. Paul see a number of great beer fests through the year, this was one of the first to take place in St. Cloud. No one [...]
The Rock Bottom brewpub chain has a big secret. It’s an open secret, but something that most people, even many beer nerds, don’t know. I myself was unaware of this secret until a ten-minute talking-down from the brewer at the Chicago location corrected my misconception of the chain. The secret is this: There are no [...]
A year ago on New Year’s Day I began listing all of the beers I drank each day. It would have been a fascinating list to look at today, but by mid February it became clear to me that the task was too herculean for me to keep up with. Even looking back to the [...]
Continuing my survey of Twin Cities brewpubs I’ll take on St. Paul and the surrounding metro. Great Waters Brewing Co. Located in the heart of downtown, Great Waters Brewing Co. is the only brewpub in St. Paul. It is within easy walking distance of many St. Paul attractions including the Science and Children’s Museums, the [...]
Some time ago I started a series of write-ups on the Twin Cities beer scene. I started with metro-area beer stores and never came back to the theme. So here I go with the next installment: Twin Cities Brewpubs. I’ll start on the Minneapolis side of the Mississippi River. Minneapolis Town Hall Brewery The Town [...]
I grew up in St. Louis and remember well when the Schlafly Taproom opened its doors in the early 1990s. My first visit to the brewpub, in what was then a sketchy part of downtown, was my first brewpub experience. It was an exciting breath of fresh air in a town dominated by Anheuser-Busch. I [...]
I travel a lot on business. My last trip was to Hartford, Connecticut, where I had the pleasure of dining and drinking at the City Steam Brewery Café. City Steam occupies the brooding yet beautiful Cheney Building in the heart of downtown Hartford. Opened in 1877, the building once housed the largest department store in [...]
On Sunday, Twin Cities sour beer fans fêted the funk at the third annual Where the Wild Beers Are event. Organized by Jeff Halverson and Tim Stendahl, this acid-drenched celebration of wild beers happens every fall in Minneapolis and Brooklyn. The Minneapolis fest happens on the deck of Stub & Herb’s, a Dinkytown neighborhood beer [...]
