Holy schizophrenic blog posting Batman! Yeah, yeah, I know I'm posting out of order, but just trying to catch up! So yesterday (Monday) we drove from my Dad's in Hillsboro, OH to Kalamazoo, MI. We stopped at Dark Horse in Marshall, MI on the way (separate post), and from there went to Latitude 42 Brewing just south of Kalamazoo somewhere. It was more of a restaurant brewery kind of like a local Granite City...and had awesome pretzel bites with beer cheese dip! What did a sampler that included the Beach Cruiser hefe, I.P. EH!, Lilikoi Wheat, the Spankdog Pale Ale, a "moon-something" IPA, and a melon lager of some kind.
The melon lager and the Lilikoi Wheat were the standouts. The Lilikoi was brewed with passion fruit that lended a light, fruity flavor. Don't know what kind of melon was used in the melon lager, but it was subtle and really gave a nice finish to what could have been a really bold Budweiser like lager taste.
From Latitude 42 we drove southwest to Paw Paw, MI and stopped at the small Paw Paw Brewery. On the way we passed a lot of vineyards for the nearby Welches juice factory. The bartender at Paw Paw explained the region from there up to norther Michigan had the ideal climate for growing concord and some other white variety of grapes. Very interesting.
The sampler had the citra melon, KUA, raspberry wheat, south branch pale ale, regular wheat, and 2 paws IPA. There were a few locals in there that recommended some of the better stops in the Grand Rapids and Muskegon areas. In fact, I'm typing this at one of them right now - Harmony in Grand Rapids :-). Back to Paw Paw, though....the citra melon was the standout. We're looking for it at local liquor stores as they didn't sell it on site. Speaking of packaging...Paw Paw is in the process of deciding whether they will bottle or can their beer...in addition to kegging of course. A lot of breweries are moving to canning, but cans have a "cheap" connotation to a lot of folks, so they are onion earned about their sales suffering. Before committing to either system, they are having a mobile canning service come in to do their canning. I'd love to get a look at what a mobile canning system looks like :-) but it sounds like a great business opportunity!
The last stop yesterday was at Bell's. Bell's has been around since 1985 and has a couple facilities in Kalamazoo. Their tasting room/general store/restaurant is called the Eccentric Cafe. It's an eclectic place where you order at the bar (food and beer) and then pick it up at a window :-). Terri's favorite was the Wild One sour that she compad to the Sour Bomb from Bank Brewing in Hendricks, MN. So not an overwhelmingly sour sour...just a mild sour. The bartender was a larger friendly guy...reminded us a lot of BJ from Walnut River Brewery in El Dorado, KS. She also really liked the Oarsman which was a light, summer tart ale. We found a 6-pack of that to share with friends when we get home :-)
Now that I think of it, Bell's WAS NOT our last stop yesterday :-) we hit Gonzos Big Dogg quick before calling it a day :-). But that will need to wait for another post. We're ready to head to Founders!
No comments:
Post a Comment