Well for some reason it seems there are a lots of good breweries around the Great Lakes. I am currently in Michigan stopping by a few of them to sample their more popular brews (popular with the beer geeks at least). At the moment I am taking a break in a cafe in St Joseph, MI waiting for one of the breweries to open. It is a Sunday and they don't open up until 2pm. I mean seriously! I am camping out and I wake up around 6:30 when the sun comes up, I don't need to wait until the afternoon to start drinking. If I've been up for 5 hours I think it's a fine time for a great beer.
I got here by first driving to Indianapolis to stay with Grant, a beer geek friend of mine. He was originally planning to accompany me on my Michigan beer tour, but he had forgotten that the Indy 500 was this weekend and it turns out one of his buddies has pit passes. I can't fault him for choosing that over beer, since his whole family are huge IRL fans. Apparently one of his brothers used to fall asleep listening to Ferrari engine noises. But he did have time on Friday to show me around some breweries near Indy. We hit the Upland Brewery in Bloomington which has a very nice Wheat beer. We had a very nice private tour and saw some detailed workings of a growing brewery. The discussion of the economics was almost more interesting than the brewing. I got some bottles of the Wheat to take to CA and a growler to take to another brewery as a gift. Afterwards, we headed over to Nick's a bar that has some of the best burgers anywhere according to Grant. The burger I had was very good; I am not sure it is the best I've ever had, but I can't recall where I have had one that was better.
Unfortunately, as Grant and I headed back to Indy we found out that there was a medical emergency with his family, so our plans were ditched and I took Grant to the hospital. I got out of town that night so as not to intrude while his family dealt with things (at this point it seems that everything is going to be fine). I drove up to Michigan and camped at a park. I managed to get a ticket for not paying my camping fees, despite having self registered and having the permit properly displayed. I know it was b/c I heard one of the rangers tell the one writing the ticket that I had the permit where it was supposed to be. I guess once he had started writing the ticket he didn't want to waste the paper. Of course since I had paid properly I just had to go to headquarters and hand them the ticket where I was told, "I don't know why they did that." Yeah, me neither.
After the ticket BS was cleared up I went to Kuhnhenn a brewery just outside of Detroit. I was drawn to Kuhnhenn by their relatively unique Raspberry Eisbock a beer that is firmly among the BA top 100. There was no one else in the place when I rolled up and at first I thought it was closed. I made friends with the bar tender and her husband who gifted me with a CD of his bands latest album. Maybe I will write a review of it once I give it a good listen. He also introduced me to one of the owners of the brewery when he came in. To be honest I was surprised to see him in there on a Saturday. I guess I shouldn't have been in since he is an owner of a very small brewery and weekends are busy days. My gift of beer stood me in good stead, because even though he was very busy he found a little time to chat with me and give me a taste of their bourbon barrel aged imperial stout from two years ago. He also fished out a bottle of Barleywine from 2006 too since I was desperate for any bottles of their stuff. I hope they enjoyed the growler of Upland Wheat I left with them. I also tried their Maibock, an excellent German lager, and a beer called Aldebaran, a Beglianesque IPA. They were both very good. The Aldebaran was something totally new to me and very intriguing.
After snatching up some of the other bottles they had available I got in the car and drove over to Grand Rapids to visit the Founders Brewery. They had a much more polished type of bar. Lots of staff, and a ton of space, but for me they didn't know have their best beers on tap and I was a bit bummed. I tried the Imperial Stout and the Rubeaus. The Imperial Stout was good, all that I expected for taste and satisfyingly robust. But I have has lot of good Imperial Stouts and this one had nothing to make it stand out in my mind. The Rubeaus was a raspberry beer that I found very disappointing after trying the New Glarus Raspberry tart. Rubeaus had nothing to recommend it after you got past the nice raspberry scent. It was neither sweet nor sour and it was thin of body with a rather weak berry flavor. They had nothing in bottles there that I had not seen before so I soon retreated to find a place to camp up in north in a National Forest not too far away.
Today, I got up and headed south along the shore of Lake Michigan to got to The Livery and after that I will move on to Three Floyds to go and sample beers, since about all I did at Dark Lord Day in April was to stand in line. Hey, it's 1:30, almost time for the bar to open! Brewery reports coming up next post.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Back on the road!
Whoops I let a good amount of time go by there without posting anything in this space. Hope that didn't bother anyone other than Patrick. In my last post I dropped a big load of text from Maine. Since then I returned to RI for a few day before heading down to Pete's bachelor party in Washington DC. We had an awesome weekend, going rafting on the Potomac, eating big steaks, drinking good beer and going to a Nationals game. It was a damn good time and I think Pete enjoyed it quite a bit.
After the BP I rolled back up to RI and attended a kick-ass beer tasting at Track 84, RI's best Beer Bar. The highlights were Portsmouth Kate The Great, Founder's Breakfast Stout, Noggonne Dark Horizon and by far the best a 6 year old home brewed Barleywine. I brought some decent stuff myself and it was much appreciated by those who attended, but maybe not quite as much as those I mentioned.
Since then I have hung around the house not doing all that much. Trying to figure out what to do and where to go when I leave. I got to watch a lot of playoff basketball, which was awesome, especially in HD. IN the last couple days I went back up to ME with a truckload of stuff for Sarah. It was mostly stuff she and Brett wanted but Mom decided to fill it up with a lot of Sarah's stuff that Mom wanted out of her house now that Sarah had a house of her own.
This trip of course allowed Sarah and I to stop by The Portsmouth Brewery. This stop over was particularly awesome b/c I was able to get a couple pints of the cask ale that Tyler had warned me to look out for a couple weeks previously. It was a scotch
ale that they had oaked in Lagavulin casks. Ooo my, that was delicious.
And now I am in RI getting packed up and ready to head west again. So, until I go to some interesting places and take some interesting picture here are a couple tid bits to get everyone back on the blog train.
Miles from SF to RI: 3910
Miles since (ME and DC): 852
Total miles since March 1st: 12751
And now some pictures of Lilly, my sister's cute but goofy-looking dog.
After the BP I rolled back up to RI and attended a kick-ass beer tasting at Track 84, RI's best Beer Bar. The highlights were Portsmouth Kate The Great, Founder's Breakfast Stout, Noggonne Dark Horizon and by far the best a 6 year old home brewed Barleywine. I brought some decent stuff myself and it was much appreciated by those who attended, but maybe not quite as much as those I mentioned.
Since then I have hung around the house not doing all that much. Trying to figure out what to do and where to go when I leave. I got to watch a lot of playoff basketball, which was awesome, especially in HD. IN the last couple days I went back up to ME with a truckload of stuff for Sarah. It was mostly stuff she and Brett wanted but Mom decided to fill it up with a lot of Sarah's stuff that Mom wanted out of her house now that Sarah had a house of her own.
This trip of course allowed Sarah and I to stop by The Portsmouth Brewery. This stop over was particularly awesome b/c I was able to get a couple pints of the cask ale that Tyler had warned me to look out for a couple weeks previously. It was a scotch
ale that they had oaked in Lagavulin casks. Ooo my, that was delicious.
And now I am in RI getting packed up and ready to head west again. So, until I go to some interesting places and take some interesting picture here are a couple tid bits to get everyone back on the blog train.
Miles from SF to RI: 3910
Miles since (ME and DC): 852
Total miles since March 1st: 12751
And now some pictures of Lilly, my sister's cute but goofy-looking dog.
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Zoom...
East Coast, baby! 3910 miles after I left Palo Alto, I arrived at my parents house in Warwick, RI. Good Ol' Rhody. It was kind of epic unloading all the beer from the car but I managed with some help from Mom. That evening my parents and I headed over to Track 84 the local (and awesome) beer bar. I love this bar, they don't have the best beer and it's not the greatest atmosphere, and I sure could use some buffalo wing while I am there, but they do have some really good beer on 18 taps and the selection changes on a weekly basis. And on top of that the beer is pretty cheap 4-5 dollars a glass. Mom enjoyed a Kasteel Rouge (a sweet black cherry flavored beer). Dad had one of his favorites the Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier, and I had the Stone Imperial Russian Stout and the Rouge Chocolate Stout. The Stone IRS was quite good, certainly not my favorite Russian Imperial but high quality for sure, and the Chocolate Stout was somewhat disappointing - a bit thin in the body and the chocolate was not very evident.
The next day (April 30th) was my mom's birthday. I went up to Lincoln Woods for some bouldering and had an enjoyable afternoon despite not sending anything new. Later that evening we had Mom's meal of choice which was pizza, and a nice big chocolate cake from Gregg's (a Rhode Island favorite).
The next day I drove up to Portland to visit my sister and the other folks in that area that know. I also had some beer to deliver to Chris up at Ebenezer's Pub. On the drive up I stopped in Portsmouth to visit the Portsmouth Brewery and have a drink of whatever they had on cask. It runs out that what they had was a brown ale that they had oaked in some port barrels. These were the same barrels that they had used to oak their Kate the Great Russian Imperial Stout which is up to #2 on the Beer Advocate top 100 list. That evening, I went out in the Old Port section of Portland with Sarah and Brett and her roommate Addy. We enjoyed a decent band at some bar and then picked up a tasty pizza on the way home.
The next day Brett and I headed up to Ebenezer's to deliver the beer I had brought from California for Chris.What followed was an awesome afternoon for beer drinking and hanging out with Chris who is aways a great story teller. I also discovered that Chris is a big sports fan which is great because I have lots to say about just about any sport and it appears that he does too. I am not sure how much I should say about the beer that was had, partly because Chris served up some stuff that is not for general consumption, and partly because we had enough that I am not sure I remember exactly what all we drank. The one thing I remember very well was the BBB a sour belgian barleywine. Somehow that beer hit my taste buds just right. A little sour, a little complex and malty with a nice full body.
Brett and I managed to sober up and drive home (although I had a bit of a hangover, I think. The oncoming headlights were very bright.) Once we got back we watched the end of the Celtics/Hawks game 6 which was a lot of fun b/c the Hawks once again managed to pull out a win at home in a very loud arena. (I am currently watching game 7.) Sarah was off at work, she works nights at the hospital, and sleeps during the day after a work night.
On Saturday, I lazed around the house until around 4 when I drove over to visit my college buddy Brett. We went out for some damn good wings at a local place and then headed over to a bar called the Great Lost Bear for some pretty good beer. I had the Allagash Four on cask, followed by a St Bernadus 12, a Gouden Carlous Classic and a Duchesse De Bourgogne. The Duchesse was much better on tap last night than when I had some out of a bottle with Josh and Jon before I left LA. This was sweeter and lightly tart, while the one out of the bottle was almost vinegary. I think the Duchesse is highly variable which is why there are so many up and down reviews on BA.com. (I have had it out of the bottle before and it was excellent.)
Brett (CB) and I headed back to his place and watched Hitman, a truly awful movie. Brett fell asleep and I was unable to wake him up to say goodbye.
I am not sure what is on tap for today but Sarah is not working tonight so we'll go do something fun I bet. Okay, I have basketball to watch and hopefully pancakes to eat courtesy of Addy.
The next day (April 30th) was my mom's birthday. I went up to Lincoln Woods for some bouldering and had an enjoyable afternoon despite not sending anything new. Later that evening we had Mom's meal of choice which was pizza, and a nice big chocolate cake from Gregg's (a Rhode Island favorite).
The next day I drove up to Portland to visit my sister and the other folks in that area that know. I also had some beer to deliver to Chris up at Ebenezer's Pub. On the drive up I stopped in Portsmouth to visit the Portsmouth Brewery and have a drink of whatever they had on cask. It runs out that what they had was a brown ale that they had oaked in some port barrels. These were the same barrels that they had used to oak their Kate the Great Russian Imperial Stout which is up to #2 on the Beer Advocate top 100 list. That evening, I went out in the Old Port section of Portland with Sarah and Brett and her roommate Addy. We enjoyed a decent band at some bar and then picked up a tasty pizza on the way home.
The next day Brett and I headed up to Ebenezer's to deliver the beer I had brought from California for Chris.What followed was an awesome afternoon for beer drinking and hanging out with Chris who is aways a great story teller. I also discovered that Chris is a big sports fan which is great because I have lots to say about just about any sport and it appears that he does too. I am not sure how much I should say about the beer that was had, partly because Chris served up some stuff that is not for general consumption, and partly because we had enough that I am not sure I remember exactly what all we drank. The one thing I remember very well was the BBB a sour belgian barleywine. Somehow that beer hit my taste buds just right. A little sour, a little complex and malty with a nice full body.
Brett and I managed to sober up and drive home (although I had a bit of a hangover, I think. The oncoming headlights were very bright.) Once we got back we watched the end of the Celtics/Hawks game 6 which was a lot of fun b/c the Hawks once again managed to pull out a win at home in a very loud arena. (I am currently watching game 7.) Sarah was off at work, she works nights at the hospital, and sleeps during the day after a work night.
On Saturday, I lazed around the house until around 4 when I drove over to visit my college buddy Brett. We went out for some damn good wings at a local place and then headed over to a bar called the Great Lost Bear for some pretty good beer. I had the Allagash Four on cask, followed by a St Bernadus 12, a Gouden Carlous Classic and a Duchesse De Bourgogne. The Duchesse was much better on tap last night than when I had some out of a bottle with Josh and Jon before I left LA. This was sweeter and lightly tart, while the one out of the bottle was almost vinegary. I think the Duchesse is highly variable which is why there are so many up and down reviews on BA.com. (I have had it out of the bottle before and it was excellent.)
Brett (CB) and I headed back to his place and watched Hitman, a truly awful movie. Brett fell asleep and I was unable to wake him up to say goodbye.
I am not sure what is on tap for today but Sarah is not working tonight so we'll go do something fun I bet. Okay, I have basketball to watch and hopefully pancakes to eat courtesy of Addy.
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