So is that like an 8bbl brewhouse equivalent?

The three smaller tanks are 8.5 bbl and the two large ones are 17bbl. The mash kettle and lauter tun are both 8.5, so I guess the answer to your question is "yes."

I'm going on a Wisconsin brewery tour that will end in St. Paul/Minneapolis Wed-Saturday with a friend.

Our lineup is (in likely order)

Day 1
Milwaukee Area
St. Francis Brewery
Lakefront Brewery
Stonefly
Sprecher
Maidson Area
Capitol
Ale Asylum

Day 2
Headed North
Corner Pub
Sand Creek Brewery
Northwoods Brewpub
Das Bierhaus

Day 3
Dave's Brew Farm in Wisconsin, then to Minny/St. Paul to likely:

Town Hall, Summit, Great Waters, Herkimer probably

---

Any ideas for improvement, suggestions or experiences at these places?

Been to Tyranena or what have you already, so not stopping there. May stop at New Glarus on the way back, it's a little bit out of the way for the way up there, schedule wise.

Herkimer and Great Waters have never impressed me. They are both ok. Are you planning on doing tours everywhere?

You might look into the tour schedule at Flat Earth in St Paul. Pretty decent little brewery right next to Summit.

After Town Hall I think the 2nd best brewpub in the Twin Cities is Barley John's.

MN has quite a few solid breweries but they are pretty spread out and the best one, Surly, isn't doing any more tours until fall. I don't know if your emphasis is going to be on touring or tasting, but it could be a decent idea to hit up somewhere like The Happy Gnome. They are a pretty good beer bar with a focus on serving lots of local brews (although they have a huge selection in general).

You could try:
Surly (they usually have a few, including Furious)
Fulton
Rush River (River Falls, WI)
Lift Bridge (solid beers)
Flat Earth
Schell's
Summit

Update your tour with New Glarus and Surly. That is all.

Ok a couple of things here.

1. When you get to Ale Asylum try there Ballistic IPA. Quite possibly my favorite IPA ever, although I do have a sweet spot for Amarillo hops. Really want to hear other opinions of this one. Bedlam, their Belgian IPA, didn't impress me too much. Seemed like a lot going on in that beer. I've had Hopalicious (pale ale) and Trepel Nova (tripel), both were not bad, but were nothing spectacular either.

2. Capitol Brewery seems a tad overrated. I've had their Winter Skal, Dark, Island Wheat and Blonde Doppelbock. Nothing really impressed me, but again nothing was outrageously bad either. Although I have heard really bad things about there Super Club Lager so I'd stay away from that one if I were you.

3. As other people have said, stop by Surly. I've never had one of their beers, but always hear good things about them.

4. As far as New Glarus goes, I dunno. Like all their beers are good, but they all seem a tad watery to me. Like if they just had maybe 10 to 15% more flavor they would be awesome. They all seem to be missing that extra little oomph. That being said, if you do go there get their Wisconsin Belgian Red (58th on Beer Advocates top 100) and/or their Raspberry Tart (64th on Beer Advocates top 100). Two excellent excellent fruit beers.

5. Now comes my last point. Central Waters Brewery in Amherst, Wisconsin. Now I'm not sure what kind of pub or what they have there, but that matters naught. The fact is these boys can brew. Their Coffee Stout (74th on Beer Advocates top 100 beers list) is amazing. Quite possibly the best stout I have ever had. Just phenomenal. I've also had there Bourbon Barrel Barleywine (76th on Beer Advocates top 100 list). My bottle was very fresh, brewed just one or two months earlier. The thing about this beer is I think it would have been great had it been adged. As it was, it wasn't that great. It would be interesting to hear your thoughts on this one if you go up there. There Satin Solstice Imperial Stout is very very good, but not on the tip top level of their Coffee Stout. I've also had their IPA and Porter. Both are quite solid. Central Waters reminds me a lot of Sierra Nevada. They both make solid solid brews that aren't overly complex or way on one end of the spectrum. Just solid, simple, good beers.


Now as Wisconsin breweries that I am somewhat familiar with I would rate them on a whole as Central Waters > Ale Asylum > New Glarus > Capital.

So, I decided to try Oaked Arrogant Bastard Ale and I was pretty disappointed. I was expecting something on par with the regular Arrogant Bastard, but to my surprise it really didn't taste much like it at all. I think it having been aged in the oak barrels made it have a nice smooth taste, but it severely took away from the hops and the bitterness that I liked from the original Arrogant Bastard Ale.

The flavor was good, no doubt, but I just had such high expectations for it, that it just fell through the roof.

Since it seems to have been lost in my one medium sized paragraph, touring Surly is not an option. They have suspended all tours until 9/10.

They do lots of events around town so you could watch for something like that or ask me if they are doing something before you leave (I keep a pretty close eye on it) but your best bet is probably going to be stopping by The Happy Gnome or one of a handful of other bars. It really is worth doing though, Surly is the best midwestern brewery this side of Three Floyds.

yeah do not go to herkimer or great waters...they suck.

happy gnome, stub and herbs, or many other good beer places would be a better choice in MN

Thanks a ton for the information here guys.

A few things:

- Surly doesn't have a public bar or tasting room, correct? I tried to get in on their tours but they were all sold out as soon as I saw the dates. Makes sense if they have suspended tours. We plan to visit a beer bar to have some Surly if we can't get it at the brewery.

- Central Waters doesn't fit well with the driving schedule. However, I'm going up to the Northwoods in early August and it's literally right off the highway I'm taking to get there, so I'll stop by there and grab a sampler and a growler of whatever I like the best then.

- New Glarus is a little out of the way too, and not a major worry since I could technically just go visit the little town it's in with the gf sometime, as it's not going to be too far a drive from the northside of Chicago. Nevertheless, if we're still feeling it on Saturday on the way home, we'll likely stop by here.

- We choose Ale Asylum and Das Bierhaus for the end of day 1 and 2 because they are open late and seem like ideal places to arrive at like 8pm and drink for 4-5 hours at. Especially compared to Capitol (closes early and Ale Asylum looks like it could be better beer) and Northwoods (near Das Bierhaus, but probably will end up being a solid dinner place for us with OK beer, at least that's what I'm expecting after doing a little research).

- I'm really glad I'm finding out that places like Flat Earth and BarleyJohn's are better than Herkimer and Great Waters. I didn't fully research the MN stuff yet, so I just defaulted to all the beermapping ratings, but planned to more fully research these on day 1 and 2, before we arrive on day 3.

Thanks for all the advice.

Animal Chin - I'll definitely have that IPA. I doubt there's an IPA outside of something that looks run of the mill and standard that I won't try on this trip. I usually at least get a sampler from every one of these places, then a growler from every single place of whatever I like the most (or if it's something that is worth trying and not sold in a sampler, I'll just get the growler of that, I have like 25 different growlers from various breweries here at my place and I'll likely add another 15 or so more this trip lol. We also bring back plenty of filled growlers for our friends that can't get off for the trip, so that will be appreciated).

SL 72 - Not planning on doing tours everywhere, many places only offer Saturday or Sunday tours. Guessing over under on tours is going to be something like 2. I don't love the standard tours, I've probably been on at least 6 tours over the years.

The most ideal thing in the way of tours is when we arrive somewhere in late morning or early afternoon during Thursday or Friday and it's empty. That's when brewers sometimes take you back solo on a tour and you can really learn a lot. Once in awhile we get lucky like when we went to Founders and right after last call one of the employees took us in the back and showed us some of the equipment and such.

Dave's beerfarm looks to be really cool to check out and will probably satisfy our thirst for knowledge this time. He grows a lot of his ingredients on the farm and brews on site (as well as contractor brews and distributes through that stone creek and I think steven's point breweries). Everything I read about the brews sounds really good, so I think we'll be in store for fun there. He's letting us stop by early on Friday, when they are usually not open, so I have hopes for that.

I think the only major question I have left: What's the best beer bar in Minneapolis that is within a short cab ride from Townhall? I believe we'll end up staying near Townhall Friday night and just drinking there, but I'd like to visit one beer bar so I can have some Surly. I've had it a few times in Chicago and always enjoyed their beer.

First, Town Hall is a good beer bar, they just only sell their own beers :P

There are actually two other pretty good places both within a mile of it.

The Acadia Cafe is a tiny bar with a pretty good selection that is only a couple blocks away. Would qualify as a short walk. While everything in the area is technically a campus bar, this one feels a little more... off campus?

Stub and Herbs is another option. It feels much more "on campus" but probably will have the better beer selection of the two. I don't go to Acadia often, but I think Stub and Herbs is probably also the cheaper. It's a little further away though, so it'd be a very short cab instead of a short walk.

I know Town Hall has good food. Stub and Herbs also has good burgers at least. I've never eaten at Acadia (I've only gone there to see a friend's band a couple of times).

Thanks.

Believe me, I'll be more than happy with Town Hall that night, but I'd like to get some Surly on tap.

I suppose one of the breweries we hit earlier that day is likely to have Surly on tap, and we'll probably pick up some Surly from a liquor store to take back, so maybe the bars will be unnecessary that night.

I had some Town Hall once, some hoppy ass beer that actually had hops in the growler. Friend of a friend brought some back once, that was a good beer.

Surly is still on tap at surprisingly few bars around here. The Acadia might be worth the trip.

Also, Minneapolis has some nice liquor stores. Maybe my favorite one, Surdyk's, isn't too far from that area. They are known for their wine selection especially, but they have a great selection of everything, including beer. The deli is pretty good too. And they'll pretty much get you drunk if you go when they're doing samples.

Going to Portland in Mid-August.

Beer bars/breweries not to miss?

Rogue and Bridgeport both are great and happen to be like 4 blocks apart. Deschutes also has a pub in Portland (their main brewery is in Bend), and they're the best brewery on the west coast after Stone IMO.

Lots of good info in this thread:
http://beeradvocate.com/forum/read/2871543

Anything you like style-wise in particular? I can help you out in more detail but there's really just so many good bars/brewpubs that it's hard to go wrong.

If you are in Portland you can pretty much pick up a rock, throw it in any direction, and go into the brewery that you hit thoroughly enjoying the beer you drink when you sit down.

Beer news! Er, beer history!!!

First, from back on June 2nd:

Man's favourite recreational drug suddenly gets much stronger with extreme beers

Nanny State was 1.1& ABV.

This whole article is definitely worth a read.

And now the winner:

BrewDog's 55% ABV beer: the strongest and most expensive beer in history

I dunno. I mean, at what point does distilling beer turn it from beer into a distilled spirit? Whiskey makers aren't calling their product beer, does BrewDog think theirs is beer simply because they use freeze distillation instead of boiling the alcohol off? Boston Beer spent a long time selectively breeding yeast to develop a strain with off-the-charts alcohol tolerance, and then brewed a beer with it, so to me that's still the winner.

In the end, though, who cares? To paraphrase a post from elsewhere, it's like a restaurant claiming they use more salt in their food than anyone else. Congrats, I guess; how's it taste?

Their previous efforts got decent reviews:

http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/brewdog...enguin/114110/
http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/brewdog...smarck/118414/

I dont think most people that pay that much for a beer have the heart to give it a poor review whether they like it or not. Reading BA is proof that price and rarity take part in how people rate the beer they drink.

Yesterdays haul



I've had the Iowa Pale Ale once before, it's good, but certainly on the mild side, could used a tad more hops..

Had the Acme for the first time yesterday, really liked it

Busting into the O'Fallon in a couple hours..

Anyone tried any of these three? Not sure how far away from here you can buy the Iowa Pale Ale, I'd imagine not very..

*sorry for the sloppy reviews, I just got into IPA's recently

I enjoy the North Coast Acme IPA and like it fine. I do admit I prefer my India Pale Ales on the mild side, so keep that in mind.

In the end, I do care.

If there's anything I learned from poker, it's that the casual participant is often going to bring some less obvious value to the sector.

This may not be true in everything, but I think in poker as well as beer it is true.

What I am saying is, that so many people that are getting into craft beer love to talk about the DFH 120 minute, or the Utopias or whatever other "extreme" beers are around, that this is a pretty good thing for beer.

The more people that get into beer, even if they stay at a level where those beers are the coolest thing ever to them, the more breweries that pop up and make good beer. And some of those places turn into Surly or FFF or Russian River or Stone or Brooklyn or Goose or whoever else.

So while I don't particularly care to try this beer unless it's about 5% of the price it costs now (and even then if it tastes anything like what I would guess it tastes like, I would probably have one shot of it max), I think this is something that should absolutely be encouraged in the industry.

On a semi related note, craft distilleries seem to be popping up more and more these days. Anybody have any interest stories or recommendations on these?

My Wisconsin-Twin cities trip report will happen in here today or tomorrow too, great trip.

Fwiw they acknowledged that they aren't trying to make money off this stuff, it is just a competition they are engaging in for publicity. They released a pretty funny video with their "Sink the Bismark" IIPA, although their German competitor didn't exactly appreciate the WWII humor.

Also, it looks like BrewDog is probably a legit good brewery.