Browsing Tag

brewpub

Moab Brewery

July 27, 2019

The primary agenda for our trip to Moab was the National Parks. Both Canyonlands and Arches are nearby. Canyonlands was our first stop and it blew us away. We spent the entire day driving the White Rim Road around the Island in the Sky. With baby on my back we hiked to Mesa Arch, Grand View Point Overlook, and a handful of spur trails. After lugging my daughter across the mesa in the hot sun there was only one recovery drink on my mind: a cold beer at Moab Brewery.

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Strap Tank Brewery

July 9, 2019

“Can we get a table outside?” I asked. “I’m sorry, the patio isn’t open yet.” the friendly hostess responded. Not open yet? It was early afternoon on a Saturday, almost 70 degrees and sunny. In Minnesota, this place would be overflowing. I’d heard that Utah had some interesting laws and it was unclear whether this was one of them. It was the start of a series of head scratching revelations we would have during our visit to Strap Tank Brewery.

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Barley John’s Brewpub

March 24, 2019

I’m at an age where you start to see your friends less and less often. Everyone has a family and they’ve settled into their own routines. There are a few people that I’m lucky to see more than once a year. I’ve been working in St. Paul for over a decade and one day it dawned on me that one of those friends lives relatively close to my office. It took just a few texts to line up a time after work to meet my friend Adam at Barley John’s Brewpub in New Brighton.

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Awards

Minnesota Craft Beer: Best of 2018

January 3, 2019
Tap Traveler Post at Bobbing Bobber

I really enjoy writing this article, but these awards get harder and harder every year! That’s mostly because there are so many great breweries in the state and partly due to some self imposed limits. Every award must go to a brewery I’ve visited in the calendar year and I won’t give a brewery the same award two years in a row. I also added a Best Innovation category to reward the breweries that are consistently pushing the envelope! I’ve visited almost 100 breweries in Minnesota and written posts about a healthy amount of them. If I’m missing your favorites I’d love to hear about them. Let’s get to it!

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Rowley Farmhouse Ales

August 19, 2018

We’d just spent the morning at Bandelier National Monument and had worked up quite the thirst climbing in and out of the ancestral pueblo homes in the Frijoles Canyon. After re-grouping in the parking lot we determined that a brewpub would fit the bill and I identified a particular one that I thought would be worth a visit. Into our rental cars we piled and headed back into Santa Fe to the taproom of Rowley Farmhouse Ales.

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Second Street Brewery

August 4, 2018

Anytime you have a metaphysical experience you should follow it up with a beer. Which is why, after running around and exploring the magical world of Meow Wolf, we took a walk around the corner to reflect on our experience and trade notes about all of the craziness. Our destination was one of several craft breweries in the area, and since one couple in our group was now pushing a stroller we chose the closest: Second Street Brewery’s Rufina Taproom.

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Bosque Brewing Co.

July 21, 2018

When I was looking for breweries in Albuquerque there were two names that kept cropping up. On our way to Santa Fe it just so happened we needed somewhere to eat lunch. What better place than a brewpub? For those two reasons it was an easy decision to stop at the Bosque Brewing Co. Public House.

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Two Brothers Brewing

February 14, 2018

In January my wife and I were determined to visit our friends in Cleveland for a birthday party. That’s a significant drive, so we decided to make a pit stop in Chicago to visit my old friend and roommate Adrian. I slipped out of work around lunch, swung home to pick up Samantha, and texted my friend our estimated time of arrival. He was well prepared for our visit and had planned our night accordingly. The first stop was for food and beer at the Two Brothers Brewing Roundhouse.

I generally do my research when I’m visiting breweries outside of Minnesota, but this time I left it completely up to my friend. He’d been living in Colorado for many years and I was banking on his experience to drive a recommendation. Something about Two Brothers rung a bell when he mentioned it but I didn’t put two and two together until I saw their logo. I’ve seen their beer in stores and, while I’ve never tried it myself, I’ve always been curious to give them a taste. There’s just too much local beer to support that it’s hard to branch out sometimes. My friend explained that the brewpub was inside an old roundhouse. It turns (no pun intended) out that trains began with only the ability to move forwards! This creates a bit of a challenge when you want to turn a locomotive around. Even after reverse was added it still made more sense to spin around in a less conventional way. That’s why the roundhouse was invented, and now it provides a stunning location for a brewpub with a truly unique beer garden.

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Awards

Minnesota Craft Beer: Best of 2017

January 6, 2018
Wild Mind Artisan Ales Tap Traveler

It’s that time of year again. Time to reflect upon the breweries that I visited in the past year and identify some of my favorites. Since this is the second time I’m doing these awards I added some ground rules. I’m only assigning an award to somewhere that I visited in 2017. If you don’t see one of your favorites then let please let me know. Rest assured that with the amount of breweries now in Minnesota there is a great chance I didn’t make it there. In an effort to shake things up, I decided to ensure there were no repeats from last year. Lastly, to recognize the best of the breweries that opened in 2017, there is a new category called Best New Brewery. Let’s get started!

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