In celebration of American Craft Beer Week, Beer Advocate compiled a list of the Top 50 American Craft Beers and the Top 50 Places to Have a Beer in America as ranked by their readers/reviewers. I’m happy to see that Minneapolis Town Hall made both lists – their Masala Mama IPA was ranked seventh, outranking some very nice beers, and Minneapolis Town Hall was ranked 46th overall as a place to have a beer in America. Congrats!

Don from Lake Superior Brewing will be sampling beer on Friday, May 19th at Zipp’s Liquors. from 4:30 to 9:00. Ask him nicely and perhaps he’ll dig out some pre-release Windward Wheat!

Beer… glass… seafood… mmm… Yup, Surly is having yet another event with the lure of free stuff! Tonight, they’ll be at McCormick & Schmick’s, downtown. Details below.

Buy a beer and keep the Surly glass! (Quantities are limited). Today at
McCormick & Schmick’s, downtown Minneapolis
4:30-6:00. Todd and Omar will both be there unless today’s brew is a
disaster.
It has taken about a week for us at the brewery to get back to normal after
the weekend Open House. We were hoping for around 500 people to show up over

the 2 days. It seems everybody brought a friend as almost 1000 members of
SURLY NATION showed up for tours and beer. Thanks to all that made it a
great weekend.
More events are coming! Check the SURLY website’s Calendar page. Next week
we pour our first cask beer at the Blue Nile and look for us the the City
Pages beer festival.
See you drinking!
Omar

Great beer bars like The Blue Nile don’t always get their due on this site, but as MNBeer expands and improves, we hope to change that. In any case, I’ll encourage you to head over to the Blue Nile next Tuesday night for the tapping of a cask of Surly Furious.

Come one, come all, but come by 2027 E. Franklin, Minneapolis next Tuesday night (sorry, truth!) for the first tapping of cask Surly at a bar (outside of the Grand Opening at the brewery last Saturday.

This is the only Furious cask in existence, and it’s dry-hopped, not sure with what, though.

Here’s the deal: the first 25 people to come up to me and say “I need to get Surly” get a ticket for a free pint. After that, they’re only $3 a pint.

Also, Omar will be on hand to pass out a case of pint glasses, one each to the first 24 paying customers of any Surly, the cask or the 2 taps.

At that price per pint, that cask will kill that night, so make sure you’re one of the lucky Furious drinkers!

Sound good?

See y’all there, I hope!

cheers,
AL

P.S. if you come early, you’re in time for happy hour, when both Furious and Bender are only $2.50 from 5 to 8.

First, a few photos from our visit to the packed Surly Brewing Co. grand opening on Saturday. We arrived around 2:00, bellied up for some free beer and took the tour. Between the two of us, we had a chance to get a good taste of everything (Bourbon-Barrel Bender {yum}, Furious {which, after a few months of sampling pints, reminds me of my latest homebrew, albeit less biscuit-y}, Bender and the Belgian-style beer whose name currently escapes me {actually it reminds me of the best hefeweizen I’ve ever made, with WLP380}), and had a really good time.

And since I needed more CO2, we decided to drive over to St. Paul after getting Surly and get an exchange at Northern Brewer. Along the way, I decided that I was hungry and Dawn needed to “PEE REALLY BADLY!” so we decided to visit the Green Mill on Hamline and Grand so Dawn could relieve herself, I could eat and more importantly, MNBeer could get a list of what’s on tap at the Green Mill since we’ve been slacking on that one since day one. For those of you like myself who are too lazy to pick up a phone, Green Mill’s seasonals are currently a Bitter and a Honey Brown Ale.

Finally, we’ve added a few photos to the breweries and brewpubs pages. Just a few, mind you (Summit, Surly, Schell’s and an outside shot of Green Mill), but it’s a start. In the meantime, if you have any photos of Minnesota beer-related events and places that you’d like to share, let us know!