MINNESOTA
THE HAPPY GNOME
498 Selby Ave. • St. Paul, MN 55102 • (651) 287-2018 • thehappygnome.com • Established: 2005
SCENE & STORY
With its facade covered in climbing creeper vine, a spacious patio, vintage-inspired interior of plush brown leather booths, acres of dark and unvarnished wood surfaces, and framed poster art, the Happy Gnome is getting it right on multiple levels before you even sit down.
PHILOSOPHY
Beer is happiness. The beer and food here will make you even happier, with seventy adventurous, fresh taps, 400 bottle selections, and occasional firkins (the nine-gallon British vessels used to dispense cask-conditioned beers through a hand pump). There are monthly brewery dinners and a chef-driven menu daily, featuring expertly prepared fare like chestnut-stuffed quail with roasted squash puree, braised kale, and cherryrye whiskey reduction.
KEY BEER
Look for the Furthermore Fatty Boombalatty Belgian pale ale (Wisconsin), which, besides being a lot of fun to order, is a 7.2% ABV brew of amber with wheaty, zesty notes and peppery bite.
SURLY BREWING
520 Malcolm Ave. SE • Minneapolis, MN 55414 • (763) 999-4040 • surlybrewing.com • Established: 2006
SCENE & STORY
After a trip to Oregon to tour breweries, founder Omar Ansari (a home brewer with big dreams) returned to build Minnesota’s first new brewery since 1987. That was in 2006, and his beers and tours were so incredibly popular—Beer-Advocate magazine named Surly Brewing the Best Brewery in America, and RateBeer named Surly Darkness the best American beer only sixteen months after they sold the first keg—that by 2011 he was leading a pitched battle to get the state and local government to approve a major new destination brewery, bar, restaurant, and event center, which is now open as of 2014. Detailed, hour-long tours are five dollars and include a taster glass and four samples, plus a donation to a local charity; register on the website. There’s a beer hall with food served (brisket, burgers, and sausages, etc.) and a finer restaurant, Brewer’s Table, with dishes like seared foie gras with pan perdu, walnut gravy, candied cranberry or duck with Szechuan pears, toasted barley, carrot jus, and a grilled short rib with beluga lentils, salsify, and frisee (all paired with beers, of course).
PHILOSOPHY
Big beers, big picture. Ansari led a pitched battle to get the right for breweries to sell beer on site. In 2011, Governor Mark Dayton signed the “Surly Bill” into law, making it possible for breweries that produce less than 250,000 barrels each year to sell pints of their beer at their brewery.
KEY BEER
Head brewer Todd Haug, is a brewer of heavy metal flavors with a deft touch. Furious is a 6.2% ABV American IPA brewed with five different malts and four tangy, grapefruity hop varieties working in surprisingly peaceful tandem.
BEST of the REST: MINNESOTA
THE MUDDY PIG
162 Dale St. N. • Saint Paul, MN 55102-2028 • (651) 254-1030 • muddypig.com
An easy-to-find corner bar with a casual, neighborhood feel and weathered old booths, books, a cozy outdoor patio, and lots of dark wood, the Muddy Pig has the best beer selection in the Twin Cities—around fifty taps and a similar number of Belgians. Stick to the beers like Flying Dog’s 8.3% ABV Raging Bitch Belgian- style IPA, which has the peppery bite of a great Belgian and an aromatic whiff of Amarillo hops.
INDEED BREWING COMPANY AND TAPROOM
711 NE 15th Ave. • Minneapolis, MN, 55413 • (612) 843-5090 • indeedbrewing.com
In the summer of 2012, three friends opened an attractive 12,000-square-foot brewery and taproom in a century-old building at the heart of the Northeast Minneapolis Arts District. It was the culmination of a dream for the three founders—Tom Whisenand, Nathan Berndt, and Rachel Anderson—who met at the University of Minnesota, and who make everything from light, crisp APA to beers like Hot Box Imperial Smoked Pepper Porter, a 9% ABV collaboration beer brewed with hickory-smoked peppers and malt smoked over alder, maple, and apple woods. They’ve added an extra taproom area on site and pulled down a silver at GABF in 2014 for a honey beer.
WISCONSIN
New Glarus
NEW GLARUS BREWING CO.
2400 State Hwy. 69 • New Glarus, WI 53574 (608) 527-5850 • newglarusbrewing.com • Established: 1993
SCENE & STORY
After the tiny New Glarus brewery was founded by the straight-talking Deb Carey and her brewer husband, Dan, something wonderful happened. Their little brewery in the countryside grew so quickly throughout the state and into several others that by 1998 the couple was rethinking a strategy of unchecked growth, and pulled distribution back to Wisconsin only, creating an uproar. The Careys were unfazed; they wanted their brewery to stay strong and local. And so the only way to drink some of the best beer in America is to go to Wisconsin, and ideally, New Glarus, to see where it comes into the world.
It’s a testament to ingenuity and the power of a brewery to pull together a community. Rather than stifling sales, limiting their sales market propelled sales higher, and by 2007, the Careys constructed one of the country’s most appealing breweries, a 75,000-square-foot Bavarian-style brewery on a hill about a mile from the original location, which cost the couple $21 million. It’s a fairy tale of steep-pitched roofs, creamy exterior walls with exposed beams, stone-stair approaches, and gleaming copper kettles inside. Free, self-guided tours are offered Monday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; “Hard Hat” tours depart every Friday at 1 p.m. from the original Riverside brewery location, where pilot batches are still developed and wood aged in some cases (twenty dollars per person and reservations required). Recently the family added the “wild fruit cave,” a wood barrel-aging cellar for sour and fruited sour beers.
PHILOSOPHY
Down to earth, experimental, fun, and delicious. As Dan puts it, “Some people paint, some sing, others write . . . I brew.”
KEY BEER
Spotted Cow, a pale, mellow, and wheaty lager is the flagship, but it’s the waxed-top, 750-milliliter bottles of Wisconsin Belgian Red that ends up in the trunk of the most choosey visitors. It’s a racy, scarlet ale of 4.0% ABV brewed with a pound of whole sour Montmorency cherries per bottle, local wheat, and Belgian malt, then aged in oak tanks and balanced by German Hallertau hops which have been aged for a year in the brew-house. It’s as bright and jammy as a Wisconsin cherry pie.
Madison
THE OLD FASHIONED
23 N. Pickney St. • Madison, WI 53703 (608) 310-4110 • theoldfashioned.com • Established: 2005
SCENE & STORY
Befitting its name, the Old Fashioned channels the feel of an old-timey supper club rich with Wisconsin history. It’s located in the heart of Madison, with a view of the capitol building. Authentic Miller and Schlitz banners—along with maps of Wisconsin and a mounted walleye fish or two—adorn the walls, and dark, natural wood gives the spacious 100-seat dining room a convincingly homey, old-school vibe.
PHILOSOPHY
The Old Fashioned is Wisconsin, through and through. Their beer list—fifty taps, 150 bottles—is stocked entirely by Wisconsin breweries, save one bottle of the oft-requested Grain Belt Premium from Minnesota—the sole “import.” Their food menu follows suit: Everything is made from local ingredients or picked up directly from local purveyors. They don’t even have tomatoes when they’re off-season in the Badger State. When it comes time to order, go for the fried walleye sandwich, or perhaps something involving the official state food, cheese. “The batter-fried cheese curds are out of this world,” said waitress Jessica Carrier on a recent visit, “and I’m not just saying that. I have literally had a dream about the cheese curds.”
KEY BEER
Sprecher Black Bavarian Lager, an authentic, German-style black beer that practically dances on the tongue, a far more delicate brew than the hue would suggest (6% ABV).
BEST of the REST: WISCONSIN
ALE ASYLUM
2002 Pankratz St. • Madiso
n, WI 53704 • (608) 663-3926 • aleasylum.com
Home brewer Dean Coffey built this popular brewpub in 2006. Ale Asylum’s Bedlam, a 7.5% ABV Citra-hopped Belgian IPA, is just one of many good beers propelling this little but pioneering Madison micro into the spotlight, along with Hopalicious, an American pale ale hopped eleven times with piny, grapefruity Cascades.
TYRANENA BREWING CO.
1025 Owen St. • Lake Mills, WI 53551 • (920) 648-8699 • tyranena.com
A short drive from Madison leads to sleepy Lake Mills and the sleek Tyranena (pronounced tie-rah-nee-nah) brewery and taproom, opened in 1998. (The company is named for some mysterious rock formations at the edge of a nearby lake.) No one’s quite sure who or what’s behind their design, but no matter, the beer’s good and the owners have a nice beer garden, steady live music, and a sense of humor, sponsoring can’t-miss events such as Sweater Vest Appreciation Night (really). There are free tours Saturdays at 3:30 p.m. and ten taps to sample (in addition to six packaged beers, growlers, and specials). Chief Blackhawk Porter, named for the Sauk Indian chief who led the last armed conflict between Native Americans and Europeans east of the Mississippi, is a fulsome 5.5% ABV brew with notes of coffee, toffee, and chocolate.
The NORTHEAST
WHILE IT’S TRUE THAT THE WEST HAS A LOCK ON MODERN CRAFT BREWING HISTORY AND has long been at its leading edge, the Northeast offers tastes of America’s oldest historical beer traditions and its most delicious, innovative present tense all at once. From rural Vermont to the rocky shores of Maine, there’s a new craft beer tapestry to explore that is every bit as diverse as the population itself.
What else to expect from the hardy types that call New England home? Head to the coast for raw oysters and innovative stouts or deep into the Northeast kingdom for hoppy ales like Heady Topper, a canned sensation of rare intensity. The leafy byways and small towns of Maine and Vermont, especially, offer beer travelers a lot of great options. Spring and fall are the times to go (winter extremes make travel and brewery hours variable, and summer can be stiflingly hot); be sure to plan ahead for the sometimes long drives between breweries and beer bars, and look into lodging options well in advance, especially in peak tourist season (when all leaves turn kaleidoscopic). Trust me: You haven’t witnessed fall until you’ve walked in a forest in upstate Vermont or New Hampshire in, say, October. The colors are indescribably vivid, varied, and inspiring.
So, whatever you do, make the trip. What was once a quiet corner of the United States when it comes to beer has become a world-class beer region, with true farmhouse breweries like the celebrated indies Hill Farmstead and Oxbow joining urban innovators in the Boston area like Trillium, Mystic, and Jack’s Abby. Early pathbreakers—including the Belgian-styled Allagash in Portland, Maine—keep pushing into new territory with their all-spontaneously fermented ales that are as rare, delicious, and sought after as any beers in the world today. The local seafood alone—fresh lobster roll, anyone?—is worth the trip. World-class beers now make this region not just interesting but truly bucket-list worthy.
MAINE
ALLAGASH
50 Industrial Wy. • Portland, ME 04103 (800) 330-5385 • allagash.com • Established: 1994
SCENE & STORY
Rob Tod’s Allagash Brewery helped usher in the American craze for Belgian brewing styles with its first of many insanely drinkable beers, Allagash White, a traditional 5% ABV wit containing wheat (in place of barley), coriander and other spices, and curaçao orange peel. Since then, Tod, along with brewmaster Jason Perkins, have created an array of new standards and superb bottle-conditioned beers. The brewery features free thirty-minute tours (call ahead just to make sure they’re on) and a tasteful merchandise and bottle shop. It’s not much to look at on the outside, but the beer is extraordinary in every way, and has influenced and inspired countless young American brewers.
PHILOSOPHY
Of all the American craft breweries inspired by Belgium’s funky brewing practices, Allagash has made some of the boldest leaps, utilizing herbs, spices, and starchy vegetables usually only eaten on Thanksgiving. Some are wood-aged and then bottle-conditioned, meaning the beers have rested quietly in oak barrels before bottling with some yeast and a small measure of special brewing sugar to carbonate in the bottle. Inspired by Belgian classics but going in new directions, too, these beers boast wine-like complexity and higher alcohol levels, pushing the limits of what’s considered sane and desirable in American microbrewing. They’re also often very good with food, exhibiting tannins, vinous notes of vanilla and various acidic dimensions (and accents of whatever liquid was in the barrel before beer, usually red wine or bourbon). Incredibly time-consuming and expensive to produce, barrel-aged beers expand the sensory horizon of beer almost exponentially, and Allagash has been at the forefront of this practice, inspiring countless imitators.
KEY BEER
Part of the (not barrel-aged) Serie de Origine experimental series, Confluence (7.5% ABV) combines the house Belgian yeast strain with Brettanomyces (wild yeast), or “brett,” two kinds of traditional English hops, and a transatlantic medley of grains (including German-style pilsner malts) for a totally deracinated, fully delicious evening sipper. This is a beer that shouldn’t work—it sounds like the recipe came from a few rolls of some cloak-wearing home brewer’s twelve-sided dice—but does. It’s tart and wine-like on the front end, warm and creamy on the back end, and delicious throughout.
OXBOW BLENDING & BOTTLING
49 Washington Ave. • Portland, ME 04101 • (207) 350-0025 • oxbowbeer.com • Established: 2015
OXBOW BEER
274 Jones Woods Rd. • Newcastle, ME 04553
(207) 315-5962 • Established: 2011
SCENE & STORY
Picture, if you can, a rocking street party with a massive stage, DJs pumping dub-step, face-masked graffiti artists wielding poppling paint cans, glass (pipe) blowers, hordes of raucous locals and, to top it all off, a skater launching a perfect kick-flip over a flaming whiskey barrel. Now imagine that this party, attended by more than 2,000 beer lovers recently in Portland, Maine, has been organized by a tiny farmhouse brewery fifty miles from town on eighteen acres whose connoisseur-ready beer styles hail from the sleepy Belgian countryside—saison, grisette, and other mellow stripes normally served alongside a good cow’s milk cheese. That’s exactly the beautiful paradox Newcastle, ME, Oxbow embodies every day, which is why, like that flaming whiskey barrel stunt (true story, by the way), it’s on fire.
While the beers are still sold only in Maine, Adams and partners Geoff and Dash Masland have begun collaborating with Italy’s Birrificio del Ducato and Naparbier in Spain’s Basque region, as well as opening a new 10,000-square-foot Portland warehouse to use for barrel aging, blending and bottling, on Washington Avenue. Meanwhile, “the Newcastle brewery and tasting room are very small, but sit on an eighteen-acre plot in the middle of the woods,” says Adams. “We have a pond (swimming in the summer, hockey in the winter!); we have bees for honey, grow fruits for our beers and raise pigs on our spent grains. It is quiet and peaceful.”
Best of all: you can rent out the crisply appointed three-bedroom farmhouse at Oxbow Beer (sleeps nine) for $255 a night, which has a full modern kitchen, full bathroom, laundry facilities, and wireless Internet. It even comes with a twenty-five-dollar credit for the taproom.
THE COOLSHIP REVOLUTION & THE SLOW BURN of AMERICAN WILD ALES
For some craft brewers innovation means slowing down—way down. Instead of finding ways to get more people to buy their beer faster, they’re aging ales for months or even years with monkish consideration. You’ve heard of slow food? This is slow brewed.
For Allagash, mere months of barrel aging wasn’t enough; in 2008, following Tod’s trip to Belgium and tours of funky artisanal operations, Allagash installed what is thought to be the first modern koelschip, or “coolship” in the United States. A shallow-bottomed steel vessel used to cool a rich wheat-, barley-, and aged-hops-infu
sed wort (unfermented beer), expose it to the outside air, and kick off a spontaneous wild yeast fermentation, coolships are still used in a handful of breweries in Belgium (including Cantillon, the granddaddy of them all) in the making of lambic, the traditional sour beers of the Zenne Valley outside of Brussels.
It’s a remarkable process to observe. Freshly brewed beer is moved into the koelschip following a long boil—up to four hours—of a mash using unmalted wheat (to facilitate a super-long fermentation). The brewer then opens louvered vents or windows to allow ambient air to cool and to let naturally occurring yeasts aloft to settle in the beer. The next day the now-inoculated beer is racked into preused wood barrels (often formerly containing red wine), whereupon the wild yeasts and bacteria begin—very slowly begin—to chew on the starches inside. Anywhere from hours or days to several months later the fermentation erupts and the beer begins a voyage of drying, souring, and evaporation through the oak walls of the barrels, leaving behind an ever tarter and more complex beer as time goes on. It’s a mysterious, near-mystical process, one far more gnostic than most traditional brewmasters can stomach. Later those beers are sometimes blended with younger beers to make what Belgians call Geuze, or aged again with fresh fruits to make kriek (cherry), framboise (raspberry), cassis (currant), and other tart-sweet creations.
Allagash’s bold experiment succeeded, and in so doing challenged long-held beliefs. There are many who still object that the Allagash beers (and subsequent, similar projects popping up all over the country) shouldn’t be called Lambic, an appellation akin to Champagne or Parma ham. Tod and Russian River’s Vinnie Cilurzo (among others) who are leading the American revival of the style (and variations thereof) prefer to call them wild ales or spontaneous fermentation beers, a solution which seems respectful and useful, especially as the beers—owing to the difference in local microflora—are unique, even if the methods are similar. And today the approach is one of the most talked-about directions in craft beer. Now the excellent Allagash beers are trickling out (the aging and blending period can take up to three years). Tod and Perkins have proven that Americans can make wild ales without physically adding yeast, a development the most enlightened Belgian producers—such as Cantillon’s Van Roy—applaud and support. And thanks to the success of Tod’s koelschip, other breweries are trying them out, too. Among them: Jester King, Crooked Stave, Prairie Artisan Ales, and Wolves & People.
The Great American Ale Trail (Revised Edition) Page 29