Author: ryan

Ryan Anderson (that's me!) is the editor & founder of MNBeer. Much has changed since the fall of 2005 and I'm proud to have been a part of it all. Sometime I'll tell you about my grand theory that links craft brewing to punk rock. Just ask.

MNHBA Teach a Friend to Homebrew Day at Barley John’s

By on November 1, 2006in beer events, brewpubs, homebrew

From the Barley John’s mailing list:

Teach A Friend to Homebrew Day: Come one, come all to Barley John’s Brewpub in New Brighton on Saturday, November 4th, any time from 10:00 a.m. until 2:00 p.m. The event is part of the American Homebrewers Association’s (AHA) national event, which is Teach A Friend To Homebrew Day. On that day, hundreds of interested parties across the country will discover just how easy it is to make quality craft beer at home. Free brewing demonstrations will begin periodically, so whenever people get there they will not be far from seeing a batch of homebrew started. This event is put on locally by the Minnesota Homebrewers Association.

There will be beginner’s brewing kits given away, so please come and bring that friend or sister-in-law who has always talked about maybe starting to homebrew

For more information, please contact John Longballa at jlongb@ties2.net, or go to the MN Homebrewers website, www.mnbrewers.com. We’ll see you at Barley John’s on November 4th!

Note: Barley Johns is not putting this event on, we are providing the parking lot space in which to host the event. For specific information contact the sponsors. Cheers!

Minnesota Malting Facility in Cannon Falls to Reopen?

By on November 1, 2006in breweries, general beer

This article sounds interesting, to say the least.

Craig Belser, the founder of Bard’s Tale Beer; Bill Sill, vice president of product and industrial development for Progressive Rail; and Rick Young, CEO of True Source Foods, presented an ambitious plan that starts with reopening the malthouse, and eventually includes the construction of a new brewery and other gluten-free food processing facilities in Cannon Falls. If he’s unable to get the use of the malthouse, Belser said he would take his entire proposal elsewhere.

Fitger’s Update

By on October 31, 2006in brewpubs

More new beer from Fitger’s Brewhouse.

Happy Halloween All,
Greetings from the Brewhouse with our weekly new beer update.
We have a very limited amount of Devil’s Track Pumpkin still pouring, it should make it though Halloween. Later this week we will release

Wild Blue Lager
A wild blueberry lager. Light in color rich in body with a very nice blueberry nose and finish.

New beers pouring
Old Red Beard Barleywine ’05 vintage
100% English Maris Otter malt lots of hops and lots of time spent alone and chilly aging to perfection. Enjoy during the cooler nights to come.

Amsterdam Ale
Our homage to a small brewery in Amsterdam call Brewery i
A hybrid Belgian style ale/lager/pilsner. Brewed to combine the characteristics of the amazing beer at Brewery i and the new world style of the Brewhouse.

cask ale this week Starfire Pale Ale

Have a safe Halloween

Cheers
The Brewhouse Gang

MNBeer 2.0 is Coming…

By on October 30, 2006in mnbeer.com

Lots of little, possibly insignificant changes are in store for MNBeer as we move the site from a Blogger-based setup over to WordPress. I looked over a number of different solutions and finally decided on WordPress after trying a number of blogging/CMS packages. Thanks to a few handy plug-ins, WordPress has all of the functionality we need to bring you a more robust site. And for the nerds, WordPress is standards compliant as well.

I’m currently finalizing the design and converting the necessary pages and hope to relaunch by next weekend. Among other things, we’ll be rolling out a new design, an integrated “events” setup (which will allow us to make our “events” page more robust and usable), a forum and better feeds, among other things.

We’ve also decided to open up MNTaps to include bars that sling good beer. If you’re in the business and want to take part, drop me a line (ryanATmnbeer.com) and we’ll add your bar. There are three main stipulations to this, of course.

1. Your bar must dedicate more than 20% of its taps to micros and non-macro imports. If your beer isn’t any more adventurous than Stella, Beck’s, Boddington’s, Sam Adams and Bud, Miller and Coors, MNBeer won’t list your taps. Additionally, if you don’t have any beer from Minnesota on tap, fuggetaboutit.

2. Someone, preferably from the bar, must be willing to send us tap updates monthly, if not bi-weekly or weekly.

3. Your beer line-up needs to periodically change. It doesn’t necessarily have to be weekly or monthly or whatever, however it does need to change from time to time.

Questions? Just ask.

Random Brewpub News/Tap Updates

By on October 27, 2006in brewpubs

Barley Johns’ Oktoberfest is gone, and supposedly a winter ale (?) is in the works.

The Brauhaus is no longer officially a brewpub, at least in the truest sense (if there is such a thing) as they’ve moved their beer-making operations away from The Brauhaus and into a new facility. The Brauhaus is still open, but nowBrau Brothers Brewing, brews, bottles and kegs their beer off-site and supplies The Brauhaus with beer.

I’ve been told that Mr. Smooth Mild as returned to Great Waters as well as Surly’s Furious and Finnegan’s Irish Amber.

Green Mill Brewing Co. in St. Paul now has a Pumpkin Ale on tap.

The Herkimer has their award-winning Unfiltered Pilsener and a kolsch on tap.

Town Hall will have their India Brown Ale on tap at 6:00pm tonight and a Belgian IPA on tap on Saturday as part of their ninth anniverary.

O’Gara’s now has an Oktoberfest and Raspberry Lambic on tap.

O’Hara’s in St. Cloud now has their tasty Dubbel Trouble on tap. A trip to St. Cloud is in my future!

Rock Bottom has added a Coconut Stout as a seasonal beer. I’m quite curious about this one. I’m not much of a coconut fan, but I suspect it might go well with a stout.

And lastly, this probably isn’t new news, but Wellington’s Backwater Brewing Co. is no longer offering growlers, reportedly because of a rather hefty local tax on growlers.

Needless to say, MNBeer makes no claims as to whether or not this information is absolutely correct, but we try to get it right. Cheers!