Midwest Trip Part 1: Three Floyds

On June 24th, my friend Jeff, his girlfriend Cinzia, my girlfriend Tash and I set out on a road trip to Minnesota for our friends Ian & Catherine's wedding. It would be a 6 day long trip and give us a great excuse to drag the girls to a couple different breweries.



Our first beer-related pit stop was at Three Floyds in Munster, Indiana. A great brewery (an A- average on BeerAdvocate) whose beers are nearly impossible to get your hands on in the NY/NJ area. We arrived about 15 minutes before they opened at 11am (CST, which made things difficult for us EST'ers). It's a bit of a strange location, tucked away in an industrial park surrounded by nearly faceless warehouses and the like. We were surprised that there were about 5 other people outside of our group of 4 that were waiting to get in too. On a Thursday afternoon! It was milliseconds between when we first opened the door and when the vibrant aroma of grains permeated our nostrils. This place was going to be awesome.







What a cool hangout space this is. Tons of interesting stuff to look at PLUS wonderful beer. One nice little touch we noticed is that they keep other breweries' beers on tap as well. Very cool. As you'll see above, there's one section of seating that has a window so you can look directly into the brewery and see the masters at work.



The only downside to this stop was that we couldn't take too long, as we had planned on stopping for a bit in Chicago and also making it all the way to our destination in Minnesota by the end of the night. This was also all being done on no sleep at all, so that made it a little more difficult. While there, I had the Sand Pebbles American Brown Ale, the Dreadnaught IPA and the Gumballhead American Pale Wheat Ale. Jeff had the Blunderbuss and the Alpha King APA.

We were very tempted by the wonderful smelling food being served nearby, but alas, we hadn't the time and had to get back on the road. We bought 3 bottles to go, though: Blackheart English Style IPA, Apocolypse Cow IPA and Popskull Old Braun Ale (a collaboration with Dogfish Head), all bombers.

Midwest Trip Part 2 coming soon!

Avery/Russian River Collaboration Not Litigation Ale

Classified a Belgian Strong Dark Ale, Collaboration Not Litigation is a good representation of how my palate has changed. When I first tried this from the bottle way back in 2007, I thought it was excellent and insanely strong, and that's about as far as I could go with it. I had it again, this time on tap at Habitat in Brooklyn, and I realized this isn't THAT great of a beer. BA seems to agree with me, but you have to realize that this brew was more of a gimmick than anything else. Avery made a beer named Salvation. So did Russian River. So what to do? Sue eachother's asses off? Nah. Combine 'em! Cool idea. Okay beer.

Woodman's Food Market, Madison, WI

Wow. Just wow. This place is packed to the gills with craft beer. Not to mention TONS of other stuff as well. We stopped here on our return trip from the midwest (which I'll be posting a detailed entry on later) after doing some research on New Glarus and craft beer in Wisconsin. This was one of the highest rated beer stores in the state, and we just so happened to be traveling through Madison, so we made a brief stop. It's slightly reminiscent of my photo of Boonton Liquor Outlet Wine Cellars but I have to give it to Woodman's as the best beer store I've ever been in.

The picture above doesn't truly do it justice as far as selection goes. Hundreds of six packs, single bottles and cases. It would have been far too easy to spend hours pining over every single bottle, but we had a goal of getting all the way to Founder's in Grand Rapids, MI that night, so we had to be quick. We picked up as much New Glarus as we could handle and hit the road.

If I'm ever in Wisconsin again, I will absolutely be stopping there.

Polish Beer in a Polish Neighborhood

If you live in Greenpoint like I do, it's hard to escape the massive amounts of Polish beer that's sold and consumed in the area. The three major ones you'll find are Tyskie, Żywiec and Okocim. Tyskie is owned by SABMiller, Żywiec is owned by Heineken and Okocim is owned by Carlsberg. So right away I'd be reaching for Okocim over the other two. But a quick perusal of BeerAdvocate lead me to realize that none of these are highly regarded. Yet one stood out to me. Okocim Palone. It claims right on the bottle that it's "fire-brewed dark beer". And it has a freakin phoenix on it!!

BA is down right now so I can't link to the reviews and info that I wanted to, but just know that this was not TOO bad. Not too great either. But if you find yourself stuck in Little Poland (Greenpoint) or Poland ITSELF, go with Okocim Palone. It has a little taste to it, unlike the rest of the Pale Euro Lagers that they make.

Disclaimer: I'm half Polish.

Bear Republic Racer 5 IPA

Bear Republic Racer 5 IPA. This one seems to be becoming more and more available to me in the NYC area, as this was found in my local bodega (to my surprise). My memory could be serving me poorly, but I don't remember seeing it before a year or so ago. It's damn good and can usually be found for about $5 per 22oz bomber. Highly recommended.

You'll also notice that this is a shoddy picture taken during a Red Sox routing of the Yankees. I definitely grumbled and drank the beer a liiiiiiiiittle too quickly to savor it. If the Yankees can ever beat the Red Sox again, I'll take my time.