The Great American Ale Trail - Christian DeBenedetti [103]
BEST of the REST: MINNESOTA
SURLY BREWING CO.
4811 Dusharme Dr. • Brooklyn Center, MN 55429 • (763) 535-3330 • surlybrewing.com
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 that by 2011 he was leading a pitched battle to get the state and local government to approve a destination brewery, bar, restaurant, and event center. Until then, visitors continue flocking to the brewery for tours and tastes of the beer, described as “for a glass, from a can.” Tours are free and available most Friday evenings from 6 to 8 p.m.; register on the website and bring a nonperishable food item for donation. Furious is a 6.2% ABV American IPA brewed with five different malts and four tangy, grapefruity hop varieties working in surprisingly peaceful tandem.
THE MUDDY PIG
162 Dale St. • North Saint Paul, MN 55102-2028 • (651) 254-1030 • www.muddypig.com
An easy-to-find corner bar with a casual, neighborhoody 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. There’s a limited food menu; 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.
Missouri
Kansas City
BOULEVARD BREWING CO.
2501 Southwest Blvd. • Kansas City, MO 64108 (816) 474-7095 • boulevard.com • Established: 1989
SCENE & STORY
John McDonald, a mild-mannered furniture maker, started with some used Bavarian equipment in a one-hundred-year-old converted warehouse. His modest goal was to turn out enough beer for the die-hard beer lovers in Kansas City, perhaps topping out at 6,000 barrels a year, but the local thirst for Boulevard Pale Ale and Unfiltered Wheat was seemingly unquenchable. Fifteen years later in 2005, he broke ground on a three-story, 70,000-square-foot expansion adjoining the original where Belgian-born brewmaster Steven Pauwels can really spread his wings. Boulevard is now among the largest locally owned craft breweries in the American Midwest (making over 600,000 barrels annually), with Unfiltered Wheat as the flagship. The Smokestack series, a line of experimental styles, many aged in wood, set tongues wagging in the beer-geek community.
To tour the operation is to see what happens when a fully modern brewery takes ancient techniques into action. The tour even includes a taste of beers in development along the fifty-minute stroll (free, including at least four samples; reservations required). On occasion Boulevard also works with local restaurant partners to create beer and food pairings for a tour and luncheon with brewmaster Pauwels for $38, which includes a tour, three-course lunch, and a souvenir pint glass.
PHILOSOPHY
Balance is everything. Pauwels brews so that countervailing sensory aspects in his beers—such as bitterness and residual sugars—play off and against one other, no matter how rudimentary the style.
KEY BEER
Tank 7 is an 8% ABV saison beer named for a fermenter that seemed to be giving Pauwels some problems for a new batch, but instead yielded one of the brewery’s best beers yet. It’s the color of hay with an aromatic fruit orchard of flavors and a peppery dry finish. Saison-Brett (8.5 % ABV) takes this superb beer one better: it’s dryhopped and bottle-conditioned with earthy Brettanomyces yeast, then aged three months before leaving the brewery.
St. Louis
SCHLAFLY BOTTLEWORKS
7260 Southwest