Breweryoke!

Brewing beer. Singing karaoke. Breweryoke.

The beer is a mild American Pale Ale. It'll get dry-hopped with Cascades from our own hop garden!

Cleaning Öchslebräu

 Getting ready for tomorrow!

Sunken Ship Brewing, Princeton MN

Minnesota's newest brewery is also the closest brewery to our house! Sunken Ship Brewing will open on Saturday, July 30. They held a soft opening last night, and it was worth the wait.

They're located at 32273 124th Street, just off the Rum River Road exit on Highway 169, in a renovated boat repair shop. Hence the nautical theme, and as an added bonus, the brewery's floor was already sloped and drained properly.

There's a big patio out front and another smaller one in back, along with a fenced-in dog park for your pups. Well-behaved dogs are also welcome inside.

The interior is essentially two big rooms: the bar and the brewery.

The brewing equipment is from Craft Kettle Brewing Equipment in New Orleans.

And of course, the beer. Princeton native and Minnesota beer veteran Bobby Blasey plans to have all sixteen taps flowing soon. As of yesterday, there were three actual beers, two grocery beers, and a couple of seltzers.

I started with the Uncharted Odyssey. As billed, it was a crisp, clean light beer. Damn tasty and refreshing.

Next up was the Aran Sweater Stout. Lots of chocolate malt, and a herbal, almost minty hop flavor. Definitely worth having another.

Finally, the Graceful Insanity Hazy IPA. Intensely citrusy, but without the annoying slick mouthfeel that so many hazys have, I enjoyed this one too.

Paris enjoyed the Ships Bounty Sour, saying it had more strawberry character than raspberry. It was kinda thick, and so didn't have the bone-dry scrape-off-your-tooth-enamel tartness.

Sunken Ship's grand opening runs from 11am-11pm, Saturday, July 30. Live music begins at noon and runs for the duration. Two food trucks will be on hand, and the first 100 attendees get to spin the wheel for prizes.

See you there!

New Jersey Continues To Be The Armpit of America

I couldn't do better than Breweries in Pennsylvania's headline for this article. If you need a reminder of just how odious New Jersey is, read on.

The passing of this ruling means New Jersey breweries are now limited to the following:

• Hosting only 25 on-site activities per year (Events such as trivia, live music, etc.)

• Host only 52 private parties per year

• Attend only 12 off premises events per year

In addition to the above, this ruling also prohibits breweries from the following:

• Selling coffee on site

• Collaborating/ coordinating with food vendors/trucks

• Selling food or operating a restaurant

• Selling specialty cocktails using malt alcohol

• Offering a free drink to any guest

• Offer Happy Hour pricing

And get this: during the height of COVID, New Jersey allowed breweries to offer free beer to customers to incentivize them to get the vaccine. Now, fourteen months later, it's illegal.

It's obvious that the restaurant lobby has put enough money into the New Jersey State Legislature to buy punitive measures for their competition. It's disgusting that that's allowed to happen, and it could happen to breweries near you as well.

Read the whole story at Breweries in Pennsylvania

OTAN Olutta!

A small brewery in Finland has launched a NATO-themed beer to mark the Nordic country’s bid to join the Western military alliance.

Olaf Brewing's OTAN lager features a blue label with a cartoon version of a beer-drinking medieval knight in metal armor emblazoned with NATO’s compass symbol.

The beer's name is a play on the Finnish expression “Otan olutta,” which means “I’ll have a beer,” and the French abbreviation for NATO, which is “OTAN.”

CEO Petteri Vanttinen ... described the new lager as having “a taste of security, with a hint of freedom.”

Read the whole story at NBCDFW.

A nice day for the Beer Dais

 60°, fairly sunny...a nice day for outdoor beers 

Sadness and Fun in Saint Paul

I've had some Tin Whiskers canned beers, and they've been pretty tasty. On Friday, I finally paid them a visit to have some in person.

The menu was kinda limited, but they had a fair Vienna Lager, a magnificent Sweet Stout, an excellent Imperial Stout, and a real good barrel-aged version of the same.

Now the sad news: Tin Whiskers is closing next Saturday, May 7, after eight years in business. So if you haven't had a chance to try their beers yet, or you want to enjoy them one more time, you'd best do it soon. We picked up three crowlers of the Imperial Stout to savor later.

Google Maps sent us in a bit of a circle on the short drive to MetroNOME Brewery, but we got there anyway. This is a new place that uses money from their beer sales to fund musical instruments, lessons, and education for underprivileged youth in the Twin Cities Metro Area.

Nice place, fun people, good beers with great music-themed names. My favorite of the bunch was the Acoustic EPA, a 5.1% abv "extra pale ale" with a huge orange-citrusy hop flavor and a real nice bitterness backed by a graham cracker maltiness. But all of the beers were pretty tasty.

Next stop: Saint Paul Brewing, not far away. (There are a lot of breweries in and near downtown Saint Paul.) This is a spectacular place in the old Hamm's Brewery complex.

Their beer garden is in the now-outdoor ruins of the old ice house.

They had a couple excellent beers here too. Smoke on the Lager is nicely smoky and a little sweet. Hidden Passage is an English-style IPA, biscuity and fruity.

11 Wells Distillery is right next door, so we stopped in there for a Rye.

And finally and as usual, Aegir Brewing is on the way home, and as it happens, they have a new beer on tap. #11031 Unsolicited Deck Pic is a pretty tasty Hazy IPA, as Hazy IPAs go.

And Moose and I went back to Aegir on Saturday for a couple glasses of Shield Maidens Blonde just for good measure.