I’ve been sitting on the info for a bit due to business and/or laziness, but thanks to Sean’s reminder, I’ll give a quick nod to Moto-I, Blake Richardson’s (Herkimer) new sake brewpub in Uptown. My knowledge of sake is pretty weak, but here’s a bit of a description of the place from their website:

moto-i is the first sake brewery restaurant outside of Japan. Located in Uptown, Minneapolis, moto-i is a full service restaurant with liquor, beer, wine and, of course, sake! moto-i makes draft sake or namazake. Nama is unpasteurized, and needs plenty of care as it can never get warm.

Our menu is reminiscent of an Izakaya, a Japanese Pub. With small plates as well as noodles and rice dishes, we incorporate many Asian ethnicities and keep the focus on street food of the best Asian Hawkers

Sean reports that the bar is also well-stocked with Minnesota-brewed offerings. Check ’em out!

Surly Darkness Day, originally uploaded by MNBeer.

Surly Darkness Day was a blast. It’s no surprise – gather a good crowd of beer lovers, add some hard-to-find beer, some more beer on tap and some music and you’re bound to have a good time. Eric and I rolled in about 2:00pm to help pour beer and met up with Mag and Kat almost immediately. I ran into a few other friends on my way in but didn’t get a chance to chat as I was on a bit of a mission – grab a beer, scope the place out and then get to work.

By 2pm, we had missed the lines that went down the street from the Surly gates. I spoke with a few people that were in the mid-to-late 700s and they estimated that another 300 people were behind them in line earlier in the day. As we pulled up, a number of people were walking out with two and three bottles and not surprisingly, there was still Darkness to be had after 6pm. If you didn’t come back (or stay) for Darkness after 5:30 or so, you missed out!

I was pouring beer inside – straight from the brite tanks. Smoke was immensely popular at our stand, though I must say that Furious straight from the tanks was probably my favorite. The location also afforded me the opportunity to take a few photos and catch the bands.

Over the course of the day, I had the opportunity to chat with a number of old friends as well as some great new folks. Beer nerds are the best nerds out there. Check out a few more photos from the event on our Flickr account.

Here’s Mag’s account of the event (linky)

And a video or two from Chip.

Nice little video over at Pioneer Press…

(Different link. Hopefully this will work better.)