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!