Lake Effect?

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.