Grain Belt Beer & Maxwell's American Pub

I used to love blogging. It gave me something to do at work. Now I don't have a desk job anymore so I rarely blog. In fact it's been about ten months since my last post. But this story I just have to share. It's a feel good story so don't say I didn't warn you. I promise the story revolves loosely around beer. So go grab a Grain Belt Premo and make sure it's a 16 ounce Big Friendly cuz this story's a long one.


My wife and I recently celebrated our 4th wedding anniversary. Last Thursday, actually. If you're scoring at home that means we were married 7/7/07. Let it go. This story begins 21 months earlier. Carolyn and I met briefly in the summer of 2005 while we were both in separate relationships. A few months later I called her and asked if she'd go out with me. She agreed. She was a friend of a friend and knew this call was coming. I knew she wasn't the Applebees type (thank goodness) so I suggested a burger and beer joint. She liked the idea. And it would change my life forever.

THE BEGINNING OF A TRADITION

October 14th, 2005 I took her to Maxwell's American Pub on Washington Ave in downtown Minneapolis. I remember one of the first things she said to me. The waitress had just taken our drink order when Carolyn leaned in and said, "Oh good, you drink". I didn't know how to respond. Turns out she had recently dated a former drinker and dates with him were either drinkless or awkward. It's been a catch phrase that we've joked about ever since.

Moving right along... If you've never been to Maxwell's, most of the tables are situated along one of the perimeter walls. Each table has a black and white photo of some famous Minneapolis landmark. The table we chose on our first date we've dubbed The Grain Belt Table. On the wall was a nice shot of the famous Grain Belt bottle cap billboard near the Hennepin Avenue bridge. I learned that night that she had never seen it before so I made a point of crossing the bridge on our way home. It was as beautiful as any unlit billboard in pitch black night can be. Did you see it? We eventually went back to see it in daylight and it became, along with Maxwell's, one of our favorite spots.

A PROPOSAL

July 14th, 2006 Fast forward nine months. Her parents had season tickets to the Twins that year. Most often it was Carolyn and I who used them. Maxwell's is very close to the Metrodome and we'd usually stop there before games. I knew in December that I was going to ask Carolyn to marry me and I always knew I would do it on our nine monthiversary. I had to do it at Maxwell's where it all began. There was a home game that evening and that would be my guise. Just another pregame at Maxwell's. I also went there for lunch that day. I met a friend who was a photographer, but whom Carolyn had never met. I asked her earlier to secretly shoot the events of the night. Lunch was our reconnaissance mission. I also spoke with the manager. I told him my plan and asked if he could reserve the Grain Belt table for us. He said they don't reserve tables on event nights. Understandable. It was game night and Maxwell's would be busy. So I asked, "How about this? You mark the table reserved and when that becomes that last empty table in the place you take the sign off". He agreed.

The night went perfectly. She was unsuspecting, although she did on one occasion mention that she thought someone was taking a lot of pictures in our direction.

I asked, she said yes.

Carolyn's parents threw us a fantastic engagement party. A great surprise that evening was that Carolyn's mom had a neighbor make a couple of cakes. They were modeled after pictures of Maxwell's and the Grain Belt billboard. Pretty impressive.

July 7th, 2007 We got hitched.

DISASTER STRIKES!

February 20th, 2008 A fire breaks out in the Maxwell's building! Fortunately no one was injured but the space above the pub sustained serious damage. Maxwell's itself had mostly water and smoke damage. The air was so cold that the water from the fire hoses froze to the building making for some bittersweet photographs. Click HERE to see some of them! The fire was devastating and we, too, were devastated. What if they never reopen? What if they have to condemn the building? What if they have to tear it down? That would have ranked right up there with the day Sherlock's Home closed in 2001. I'm still mourning that day, but I digress. Agonizing days turned into weeks and we finally heard Maxwell's was going to rebuild. Great news! But... what if it looks nothing like it used to? We waited anxiously. They said it would take four months. While we waited the bar hired on a new manager - Rosie. He turned out to be another friend of a friend. He heard our story and knew we would be coming in on (re)opening day.

September 13th, 2008 Seven months after the horrible fire they reopened. And it looked darned near exactly like the original. Phew! Carolyn and I were welcomed by Rosie. And to our surprise we were presented with a framed and matted black & white photo of the Grain Belt billboard. We were honored to say the least. It turned out to be a great evening of reminiscing, making new friends and new memories.

ANOTHER CHAPTER

August 24th, 2010 Now if you're reading this you probably already know that I am a brewer by trade. I should note that it was this wonderful woman who got me started in brewing. For my 30th birthday in '05 she bought me a homebrewing kit. Since then a lot has happened. My starter kit ballooned, I went to brewing school, quit my day job, interned for a large craft brewery and happened to land a job with none other than the brewery that makes Grain Belt beer. That's right, as an employee of the August Schell Brewery I assist in the entire process of producing Grain Belt beer. Coincidence? Even the Maxwell's pint glasses have Grain Belt on the other side. Fate? It brought my wife and me together. Irony? Call it what you will but one thing will always remain true; Grain Belt beer has touched my life in so many different ways that it will always be special to us. It must run in the family. My dad, a lifetime New Yorker until he met my mother, still drinks Grain Belt forty years later. It's the beer he fell in love with while he fell in love with my mom.

July 11th, 2011 Raise your glass (or can).

Here's to the continued success of Grain Belt Beer. May it be around for generations, quenching thirst and making memories. Cheers!

From Homebrewer to Pro Brewer

If you've followed my facebook or twitter posts you probably know that I've taken a new job. Last week I received my first paycheck from The August Schell Brewery and it was a proud moment for me. I told myself all the way to the bank..."I am no longer an amateur". My first day at Schells (8/24/2010) was almost two years to the day after the I started my chemistry class (8/25/2008) to prepare for the American Brewers Guild. So far it's been great. I am learning a lot and after three full weeks I feel like I am able to contribute to the team instead of just getting in the way. My four months at Summit were also great, I would not trade that experience for the world, but for the sake of comparison this is whole different ball of wax. Summit is a new state of the art brewery. Schells is 150 years old if these walls could talk. I often find myself imagining who may have worked within these walls and when did they work here. In the filter room there are some initials carved into the concrete walls and the guy who has trained me so far told me "Those are my old man’s initials; he worked here back in the 60's". I thought that was so cool. I got to see an attic that is rarely used except to replace blown fuses. Up there were old kegs and wooden box crates. I love the history in this place. I am pretty sure it's haunted by some ex-employees and maybe even Schells drinkers. Good times indeed.



Currently I am spending my days in the filter room. Long story short we are responsible for getting the beer from the fermenters to the bottle house. First we "drop" the beer from the fermenters to the ruh tanks - 'ruh' is German for 'rest' and is pronounced 'roo'. This is where the beer goes after fermentation. The ales will condition for a short time and the lagers will, well, lager here for a little longer. Once that is complete we run the beers through a centrifuge and into a pre-finish tank. This step gets rid of most of the solids in the beer. From the pre-finish tank we send the nearly ready beer thru a DE filter and into bright beer tanks in the bottle house. 'DE' is short for Diatomaceous Earth which is a silica based powder made up of the fossilized remains of hard-shelled algae known as diatoms. It is a great filter aid which allows beer to flow through but catches even the smallest particles still left in the beer. From the bright beer tanks the packaging crew will bottle, can or keg the beer.



After a while I will move to other parts of the brewery and I will post about that when I get there. And in case you're wondering... no, we don't use those old wooden tanks anymore. Unfortunately they've been dry so long they don't hold liquid anymore. Still beautiful.

Deschutes Black Butte XXI

If anyone were to ask me what my favorite beer styles are, I always respond IPA, Porters and Stouts. Like the hometown hero, Summit's Great Northern Porter, Deschutes' Black Butte Porter is another one of my favorites. In honor of the brewery's twentieth anniversary in 2008, they brewed an imperial version of this beer adding cocoa nibs, coffee beans and aging a portion in bourbon barrels. And they more than doubled the ABV. They called it Black Butte XX. They did it again in 2009 and called it, well, Black Butte XXI. I had the XXI and the result was amazing. I purchased this beer at the Eden Prairie Muni next to Kowalskis back in May. The intent was to take it along to our annual Men's retreat in early June. But then I noticed something I had never seen on a bottle of beer before. Not a "Best By" date but a "Best After" date. BEST AFTER: 10/17/10 it read. Okay so I would need to do a little aging first. Well I couldn't wait any longer. Last night we had dinner with some friends so I broke it out. Wow this impressed from the start. The aroma was a amazing; full, dark and rich. The flavor followed the aroma up in the most perfect way. I hate it when you get a nice nose and the flavor is completely different or just crap in general. The aroma of this beer suggested that what was to come was going to be special. And it was. It's hard to describe the flavors in this one, but I can say it was less coffee than most coffee beers, less chocolate than most chocolate beers and less bourbon than most barrel aged beers. But together they were all recognizable, existing harmoniously together creating a Gothic mix of java/cocoa with dried fruits and rich tobacco. Mouthfeel was big but not syrupy. The 11% was not boozy and barely distinguishable. If you like big porters and you can find it, pick one up. Better yet, pick up two and drink one now and save one for the inevitable holiday season. You'll be glad you did. For me it was Christmas in July!

This Blog's Growing Mold

The good news is, I'm having a great time and learning a great deal as an intern for Summit Brewing Company. The bad news, as a result, is that I am no longer sitting behind a desk all day. So I really haven't been keeping up with my blog as I should be. I did, however, recently contribute to another blog. Summit's blog. There I talked about some of my experiences as an intern. I posted to Facebook and Twitter about the story but thought I should put something out here too. If you want to read it, go to summitbeerblog(dot)com or just click here.

Terrapin - Left Hand Depth Charge

I don't do a whole lot of reviews here on my blog but in anticipation of Surly's 4th anniversary beer, I thought I would break this one out. Depth Charge is an Espresso Milk Stout and Surly 4 is going to be an Iced Double Espresso Milk Stout. Stylistically these sound like similar beers. But there is only one way to find out just how much they have in common.

Let's drink them!

Depth Charge is a collaboration beer from Terrapin in Athens, Georgia and Left Hand in Longmont, Colorado. Here is what Terrapin's website says about the beer:

"The second in the midnight project series. Left hand brewer, Ro, joined Spike at the Terrapin Brewery in Athens to cook up this espresso milk stout in July 2009.

Be wary of the calm before the storm. This creamy, deeply delicious milk stout will seduce you into submission while the explosion of hand roasted gourmet espresso will blow you into next week. We Shall Drink in the breweries. We Shall Drink in the pubs. We Shall Drink in the comfort of our homes. We Shall Never Surrender.

Brewed with a blend of espresso roasted coffee beans made just for this project by Jittery Joe's Coffee, Athens, GA"

That's quite the build up. Let's see if it stands up. Beer Advocate reports this beer has a 7% ABV. Oops, perhaps I shouldn't have let this one age for six months. I got this beer in a trade from fellow beer blogger Rusty Diamond last fall and I wonder what it would have been like then.

Well, let's get to it.

Aroma: Lots of bitter coffee. Some milk chocolate and cocoa aromas, like the smell of powdered hot chocolate. There are no esters or hops and surprisingly I don't get the sweet lactose I was hoping for. All good smells, no flaws evident.

Appearance: Very dark, opaque. Dark garnet when held up to a light. Pretty clear actually. Clear and opaque... huh? Frothy brown head. Very tight bubbles, rocky head commences. Fades slowly.

Flavor: Again, mostly espresso/coffee, harsh not smooth. Bitterness from both hops and dark malts. Dark chocolate and finally some lactose sweetness. Some nice hop flavors, more lactose as it warms.

Mouthfeel: Medium-full body, some roasty astringency but not offensive. As expected, no heat. Somewhat creamy and loads of pleasant carbonation.

Overall I enjoyed this beer, I would certainly drink another one, and another. But since I like milk stouts and coffee beers so much I was expecting a lot. More lactose sweetness would have been welcome in both the aroma and flavor. Also, I would have enjoyed a smoother coffee flavor instead of the bitterness here. Coffee beers are usually one or the other and I used to think that the cold press coffee beers were the smoother of the two. But I've had some cold pressed coffee beers that were bitter as well. Go figure. Another please!

Questions I'd like to throw out to the beer drinking community are these: 1) Does coffee bitterness increase over time? 2) Does lactose sweetness diminish over time? I would love to know your experiences and determine whether or not time had anything to do with the imbalance of this coffee milk stout.

Slainte!

DA

PS Surly 4 review will be forthcoming. Release party is February 23rd at The Blue Nile. Stay tuned.

Happy New Year!

Okay, so this post is 43 days late. With all that's been going on, I haven't been able to keep my blog as up to date as I'd like. In my last post I explained why I'd been so absent. Despite neglecting the blog, I have not been neglecting the beer.

So what have I been up to?

In my last post of 2009, before my Houdini act, I wrote about a Beer Blogger's Brewoff in which I was participating. Since the original brewday disaster, things have been going along fairly well. On January 2nd I racked the molasses stout into secondary where it remained until the 10th at which time I bottled the beer. After two weeks I popped one open and it was as flat as the Earth before Columbus turned left to go right. I figured it was just too cool where I was storing it so I moved it upstairs in our townhouse. One week later, still flat. What to do? I moved it into one of the internal bathrooms. No, we don't have an outhouse. Internal as in one with a heat vent but no windows. I shut the door and ignored for a week. This did the trick. I popped one open last weekend with The Captain and it was nice and frothy. Tasted good too, I can't wait to try everyone elses next weekend.

Molasses Stout "breathing" on bottling day

Not long after the new year began I discovered a new beer bar. Opened in September (I think they said) in the old The Times restaurant space is a new Asian inspired restaurant called Ginger Hop. Always eager to try something new I sauntered in and sat down at the end of the bar. I think I was the only person in the place so I had to ask if they were even open. They were indeed and I was told I had just caught them between the lunch and happy hour rush. As luck would have it I arrived about the same time as happy hour. Their HH runs from 3-6 and 10-close everyday but Saturday. During happy hour, pints will set you back a mere $3 (excluding some high gravity or special release beers - even those are reduced to $5). Besides the Mich Golden Light and Sapporo, their twelve taps were all craft beer offerings (four of them from Minnesota). I inquired about the obviously absent Surly and discovered they are on a waiting list. The beers that interested me that evening were the Founders Imperial Stout and the 21st Amendment Back in Black. Being a virgin of both, I wasted no time. The BIB was a black IPA and was pretty much just as you'd expect. It was dark, like a schwarzbier but very hoppy. I like the idea, but the flavor just didn't work for me. I always say my three favorite styles are Porter, Stout and IPA but apparently I don't like them all in the same glass. The Founders Imperial Stout was very pleasing. Thick and viscous and a nice balance of sweet and roasty bitterness. We tried the smoked duck potstickers and a couple different kinds of satay and were very pleased with the food (which is also priced nicely during happy hour). The beer was great, the service friendly and the atmosphere comfortable and welcoming. Check it out if you haven't already. I know I'll be back.

Ginger Hop

As you may have read in other local beer blogger posts there was recently a meeting of the minds for local beer writers. Both hobby and professional writers met at Stub and Herbs in mid January. We put down our pens and keyboards and raised a glass with one another. There was no agenda, just a group of like-minded individuals getting together to do what they do best; examine and, most importantly, enjoy beer. A couple of shout outs: Thanks to Jon from Stub and Herbs for the apps and beer specials and to Stu from Friday Night Beer for organizing the event. I can't wait for the next one.

In attendance that evening were Front Row: Nils (Nils Pils: A Poor Man's Guide to Spendy Beer), Kat (aka Hopwhore), Kris (MSP Beer - Beer Musings from Minneapolis - St. Paul), Stu (Friday Night Beer), Micheal (A Perfect Pint), Jon (Legal Beer), Eric (Bearded Brewing). Back Row: Scott (Scott McGerick's Weblog), Mag (MSP Beer - Beer Musings from Minneapolis - St. Paul), Ryan, (MNBeer.com), Shawn (The Beer Genome Project), Eric (Lucid Brewing), Aaron (The Captain's Chair), Derek - that's me (Beer This!), El Jefe (Friend of the Bearded Brewer), Spencer (A Brewer's Journey). Not Pictured: Andrew (Hopchart.com), Doug (Author - Land of Amber Waters). I am sure I have missed someone.

Slainte

DA

Happy FeBRUary!

Wow, February 3rd already and I still haven't posted a single time in Twenty Ten. There is a very good reason for that. In anticipation of my suspected unemployment we have been prepping our town home for rental. Where are we going to live if we rent out our home? In the in-laws basement! Now I know that living with the in-laws has a certain negative connotation to it, but I don't think it's going to be so bad. I was lucky enough to marry a gal with great parents. I get along with them well and I believe they will respect our privacy. They have a roomy lower level and we should be able to spread out pretty well.

Since ringing in the New Year I have spent countless hours packing up our nonessentials and getting them over to a storage locker. It's amazing how we are still able to function normally when three quarters or our stuff is inaccessible. When we finally purchase a new home, I think we may simplify things a bit. However, despite all the packing, all of my homebrew equipment remains on site.

So about this unemployment I mentioned earlier. I work in the retirement trust industry and my one and only (very large) client decided to take their business to another bank leaving me and another fellow high and dry. The deconversion was an eight month process and upon completion I was expecting a pink slip. Of course also during this time I was enrolled in the Craft Brewers program with the American Brewers Guild. Hoping to make a career change soon a pink slip would be almost welcoming. As it turns out I finally got the news on January 21st. We got a one month notice and my last day in the corporate world will be February 19th.

What's next? Well as a student at the Guild I was to do an internship upon completion of the course work. I lined up the internship with Summit Brewing Company right here in the Twin Cities. Summit has been very flexible with me and very patient as I waited for my current job situation to play out. I will begin my four month internship with them on February 22nd. It is an unpaid internship but as luck would have it, I am receiving four months of severance from my current employer. Talk about luck!

After the internship with Summit I will be looking for a job in the brewing industry. Perhaps there will be a position at Summit? That would be ideal, but I have to remain realistic. Summit is a great company to work for and has very little turnover. Open positions are hard to come by. My wife and I are faced with the very real possibility of having to move out of state to find work. This is why we are getting the town home rented now (or soon) so we don't have to worry about that if we suddenly have to move across the country. While we'd both love to stay close to our families, I think we'd both welcome an adventure as well.

I apologize for being blog-absent for so long. It has been a ton of work not only packing up our entire home but also bringing it up to good renting condition. Now that I have much of the pre-rental paperwork out of the way I will try to post more frequently. And being that we are in the only month of the year with the word Bru in it, I think that makes it all the more important.

BEER THIS!

DA