Tallgrass Brewing Manhattan, KS

Kansas Territory Brewery

Washington, KS

Central Standard Brewing

Another new brewery in Wichita. Conveniently located a couple blocks from the Hopping Gnome Brewery :-)

Standard Issue Grisette

Farmhouse

Brett Pale - light, piney 

Hoppy Wheat

IPA

DIPA

Grisette was a style we had not heard of, but it was very similar to a gose - funky, light and a dry finish. Similar to an Anderson valley kimmee. 

Fernson

Marshalltown

Where are you after 46 minutes if rural highway driving from Reinback, IA? Marshalltown, IA. Lol. And why, you say are we in Marshalltown, IA? Well, the Iowa River Brewery, that's why. The folks at Single Speed and Reinbeck dissed this place, but I'm not sure why. Heck at 2:00 they had an armed forces veteran here to talk about his experiences and the place is full of military memoriabelia. So how can you diss a place like this??

We had a sampler of 6. Delivered on a remote controlled railroad car. Seriously?? Randy would dig this :-). Honestly, it's a little quirky here, but who'd diss this place? Ok Terri - what did we have? Rye IPA, IPA, Bavarian and Belgian wheats, Amber and a blonde. So yeah, not the best beers we've had all weekend, but how can u go wrong with a veteran tweaking on the CO2 lines?? 

Rein-where??

I Exactly. We're definitely not in Kansas anymore Toto! Lol. This my friends is RURAL Iowa. I thought I'd seen rural Iowa. Um. No. So we're at the Broadstreet Brewey in Reinbeck. They've got a red, wheat, pumpkin and the "Sticky Wicket" IPA. The pumpkin was mild on the pumpkin side and very little pumpkin pie spice - which is nice. We've had a couple other similar pumpkins this weekend. It's nice to taste natural pumpkin flavor in beer without all the pumpkin pie spice to ruin the beer flavor :-). The sticky wicket IPA was surprisingly really good! Pint me ASAP!  So we're hangin out drinking Sticky Wicket, eatin a pretzel and listening to the Jackson 5 on vinyl. Yep - no kidding. Their "entertainment system" is a turntable. No shit. This place is the smallest small town brewery we've ever been to!  Seriously. 

Ok - so update. One of the 7 total patrons just found Dokken - Breaking the Chains on vinyl and the proprietor threw it on the turntable. Lol. "Rockin to Dokken at a tiny brewery in nowhere Iowa on a Sunday. Does it get any better??

Pedal Faster!

Today were road tripping in rural Iowa - a little over 2 hours northeast of Des Moines is the Single Speed Brewery in Cedar Falls. We had a sample of 4 with their Tricycle, JFRD, IPA Blanco and Imperial Flop. Three of the four defy traditional beer styles and therefore are hard to explain. The Tricycle is a wheat, pale ale cream ale hybrid. It was light and tasty. The JFRD....who knows what that was. Lol. The imperial flop was a great tart cherry porter. Typically not our preferred style, but was really good. Last but not least was the IPA Blanco (white IPA). I had a pint of that, a typical white IPA pretty good!

Mad about....

What else? BEER! Madhouse Brewery opened a tap house last year with limited hours so this is our first opportunity to get here. It's a new building...nice. They have three sours on tap, so we got those three plus their honey Pilsner and seasonal wheat. So Terri loves sour beer and of course her favorite one kicked as soon as she finished the sampler :-(  that's her luck. Back to the sampler in a minute - I got a pint of their IPA and it was pretty good. Nothing to write home about, but ok. 

The rest of the sampler was the honey Pilsner and the seasonal wheat. Both were ok, but the standouts were clearly the sours. Here's a great pic of Terri and Susie!  

Alluvial

The clouds have cleared and it's a gorgeous day in central Iowa!! Brewery #2 of the day is another new one, Alluvial just a little north of Ames. The sample had 2 saisons, the IPA and a blonde. So starting with the obvious - the IPA was great. We wanted a growler but they were running low and didn't want to fill growers. Both saisons had a mild sour profile, and the one was really good. Terri had a pint of that and I had a pint of the IPA. It was heavy on citra hops which are one of my favorite. Very, very good. Disappointed we couldn't get a growler. Still another awesome stop. 

And thanks to Dave G for taking the pic of Terri & I!!

TBD. I mean TBC

It's a cool, gloomy day in Ames, IA. The Cyclones are playing at Baylor...and it looks like it's raining pretty good there. That's a convenient excuse for Iowa State fans as they're blaming a slippery ball for Baylor being ahead 21-0 in the first quarter. Could be a long day for Cyclones fans :-). So today we're brewery hopping with our friends Dave and Susie starting at Torrent Brewing Company in Ames. Torrent is in an older warehouse style building in downtown Ames, opened in February 2015.

For our flight we chose their blonde ale, DIPA, pumpkin ale and the octoberfest. All were very good!  Terri had a pint of the blonde and I had a pint of the pumpkin. The guy running the bar was actually the brewer, so we got to visit about the brewing and specifically the pumpkin. He used 60lbs of total pumpkin (less what was lost to peeing and carving) in the mash and then just added a small amount of spice in the boil. Always fun to talk to the brewer :-)

Score update 28-0 Baylor. Another beer please!! Lol!

Crafty Like A Fox

It's our last scheduled brewery hop weekend of 2015, which is very sad not just because of the obvious but also because it means the nasty "W" word is right around the corner. Uugghh. This is a mixed mission trip as Terri is doing some accounting work for our old friend Dave Gebauer's new company Bing Bang Media. Conveniently a brewery just opened right next door - Fox Brewing. Terri and Dave are still working, but I figured I'd mozy over and check it out. Currently they've got a Foxy Belgian Blonde, Fox Tail Red, Slye Red, Hop a long IPA, Fox Trots Chocolate Milk Stout and....like most places this time of year....a Fox-O-Lantern Pumpkin Ale :-)  I don't dare order a sampler without Terri, so I just tried the IPA and the pumpkin and went for a pint of the pumpkin. It's a very light, refreshing pumpkin that doesn't have much of the typical cinnamon, nutmeg pumpkin pie kinda flavor. It's really good. If Terri doesn't get here soon I may have another! Lol.

 

Farnham Street Brewing

It's a HUGE sampler to finish the day. Go big or go home!!

And they had a couple custom made hats for sale, too. Doesn't Randy look great! LOL. 

Scriptown Brewery

Benson Brewery

Debut IPA, Hop Box Pale Ale, Blonde, Spicetoberfest :-)

Infusion Brewing Co

Wheat, Radial IPA, Pumpkin, Kegstand Pale Ale. 

Nebraska Brewing Company

Ale Stirm, Inifinite Wheat, EOS Hefeweizen, Nut Brown, Pale Ale, IPA, Hopanomaly, Pumpkin

Soaring Wings Vineyard & Brewing

Interesting place out in the middle of nowhere. Beer flight was one sample at a time in a wine glass we got to keep. Kinda different, hence no flight picture. Hung out outside in the breeze and sun overlooking the vineyard. Nice place, ok beer. 

Lucky Bucket

Heartland Wheat, IPA, Big Pimpin Pumpkin, Smoked Chili Porter. 

Guac

What's better than chips and guacamole? Chips and BACON guacamole!

Size 7

Sissy Puss. aka. Brian?

So... Not sure how many breweries we've stopped at today - 5 or 6 maybe? But no matter - we find ourselves at Sisyphus Brewing and their quatro flight of steam beer, pale ale, IPA and double rye. Greeting us at the door was Ablert, the brewer's dog. We was rolled on his back just waiting for a belly scratch! This place was kind of like Ron Burgundys basement. Shuffleboard and all kinds of games including Rock em Sock em Robots! Lol. Dogs, kids, games and beer. Hmmmm. 

Why so Furious?

Being Sociable

Bau Down

Danger!

Yes Indeedy

Silo Beer?!?!

Bang Brewing is right next door to the Urban Growler. So close in fact that at first glance you might think it's where the Urban Growler stores it grain. Why? Because it's actually a grain bin. Not a building made to look like a grain bin, no....an actual grain bin! We estimate it was about 35 feet in diameter, so not a huge bin. The couple that owns it are the only employees. They do it all. And they are only open Friday and Saturday evenings, so seeing their place requires a little planning. They had 6 beers on tap - but not your normal IPA, Pilsner and stout...theirs were "different" :-) I had a shorty of their hoppiest lager - "The Boss" - kind of like an IPA, but with a malty finish. Different, but pretty good. Terri had "The Neat" - a "sparkling bitter" brew according to them. It was a very light beer with a lot of hop bitterness. We chatted with a guy quite a while about his electrical contracting business the whole time just looking around the inside of the bin. Everything was pretty much in plain sight. The fermenters and mash tuns lined part of the walls, the grains were stacked on pallets and I'm guessing there was a cooler behind the tap wall. Brewing is a messy job, and This was probably the cleanest, neatest brewery we've visited. It was so neat, it's hard to believe they actually brew here. It looked like it was more "designed" for style rather than a real brewery. So hats off to this couple, they have a great thing going!

Urban cowboy

Stop number 3 today - the Urban Growler. We were here last October, but weren't blogging then. They have a 6 shot sampler with their cream ale, blueberry wheat, kolsch, Kentucky coon, IPA and rye IPA. And most importantly they have food - hence the real reason we're here! Blueberry wheat - what else needs to be said? It was great! We had a sandwich and some spinach artichoke dip to sober up, finished the samer and walked next door to he silo - Bang brewing. 

Fair State - 10,000 Lakes

Insight was a great stop - tough to beat. Due to traffic getting worse, we looked for the next closest place - Fair State. They were on the must visit list because they had 5 sour beers on tap. After sampling 4, Terri chose the one that was dry hopped. Think hoppy kinda sour light beer :-). Compared to other sours, none of these were very sour, but the one brewed with blackberry was pretty tasty. A note about the neighborhood - very ethnic. We parked in front of the Islamic multicultural center and the local order in places were Thai, middle eastern, afghan, Ecuadorian and Mexican. We'll be outa here WAY before dark - lol!!

Oh, I had a half pint of the IPA - kind of an average IPA. :-) guess that beats an equadorian IPA :-)

Gaining some Insight

It was a long rainy drive to Minneapolis, so a sampler of 7 was in order!! Insight Brewing is our first brewery stop - after 2 hours of shopping we were more than ready! Here's the sampler run down : English session ale, hell chicken pale ale, sunken city saison, troll way IPA, London style porter, phantom taxi DIPA and last but not least, the Doe Eyes saison with cherries. We started with the saison with cherries - awesome! The cherries blasted through the typical clovy saison taste. Yummy. Next I jumped into the DIPA - WOW. Citrusy, mango, smooth and a bitter, bitter finish. Loved it. Getting a growler!!  Just tried the hell chicken - can really pick up the orange and grapefruit flavors - not really hoppy though. Almost has a mt dew or sprite like flavor. Hmmmm - crown & hell chicken?? 

Next up - the IPA. Again, wow. Citrusy and refreshing. Very good. Last, and least for us anyway was the London porter. Light body, not over the top coffee and a light smoky flavor. Even Terri thought it wasn't too bad. Insight was a great stop. I hope the others are at least half as good!

STAMPEDE WIN!!!

Congratulations to the Sioux Falls Stampede! 2015 USHL Clark Cup Champions! Glad we cut our vacation short to see it in person!