Thought I would give a little update! Next week I am taking a much needed vacation!  Federal regulations state that I must take a week away once a year and well my week has arrived! I will be kicking off my Vacation by taking a tour of Peace Tree Brewing in Knoxville so look for a Blog on that. I also plan on brewing my Speckled Heifer Kit from Northern Brewer. Last but not least I ordered 2 more kits tonight both from Northern Brewer. The first is a Rye PA which is now my new favorite style of beer. Founders Brewing which is new to Iowa as of last week makes a great Rye PA.  (you can pick it up at your local Hy Vee). I also ordered a Honey Wiezen Kit this should make for a nice easy drinking beer on a hot summer day. I can't wait to get them brewing !  CHEERS!!! 

Tonight I want to Share the story of Surly brewing with you. Why you ask because it is such a great story! It is a story about a home brewer and a pro brewer who joined forces to make great beer. They were tired of all the bland boring beer that surrounded them. They decided that when you cant find a good beer you get SURLY! It starts with the owner Omar who is a home brewer and is working in his parents abrasives factory in Brooklyn Park Minnesota. He brews a beer to announce the birth of his child his friend's love it and urge him to go pro. His partner Pro brewer Todd cut his chops as a brewer in Oregon and learned commercial brewing big batches at Summit in St Paul. Feeling his art was suffering while brewing the big batches he quits Summit and chooses a suburban Minneapolis branch of Rock Bottom to practice the art of brewing. Omar finally convinces his dad there is more money in craft beer then sand paper and talks Todd into joining forces with him the rest is history! Along the way they are challenged they find it is not so easy to turn and abrasives factory into a brewery open a brewery. They had to clean the factory from top to bottom, they cut a water line with a concrete saw, and the industrial park they were located in was not zoned for a brewery! So Omar starts to lobby local politicians to change things and he wins the zoning. He also is faced with Minnesota's backward liquor laws where you still cant by beer on Sunday which is LAME and you cant sell beer at a brewery? So last year they start this huge grassroots effort and it pays off with the passing of the Surly bill. This bill will allow a brewery to sell beer and food on site. Omar then announced plans for a 20 million dollar destination brewery, beer garden and events center that will increase there production 10 fold. If you have not tasted there beer I will tell you it is fantastic!

There stable of beers is bold and in your face. Bold malts up front and highly hopped finishes all are delicious! There is Cynic a peppery Saison, Furious a hoppy red (my favorite)Surly Bender a brown and then my wife's favorite Moe's Coffee Bender. They also have several seasonal releases the highly sought after Darkness a bold RIS that people camp out for, Wet (fresh hop ale), Surly mild, Abrasive (DIPA)and many many more! While in Minnesota I was lucky enough to get a tour of Surly! Tours are announced on Facebook 3 weeks in advance and all 125 spots book up in about 5 minutes!!! The tour is very laid back each person gets 5 beer tokens and is then allowed to roam around the brewery on there own. A brief and informative history/ QA sesion is conducted and then its back to drinking it is very informal and a lot of fun! While in the cities we had great experience of all thing beer but the trip to Surly was the icing on the cake! Once again Special thanks to my Wife for putting it all together! Maybe we can go back next year ?? ; With there current layout the have managed to brew an impressive 18,000 BBL with a small canning and keg line. They still have some room to grow in there current location. However they have there eyes on the prize! They plan on becoming the Stone brewing of the Midwest and I look forward to there destination brewery! Currently you can only get there beers in Minnesota so if you visit pick some up! ( and get some for me as well!) I have 1 can left in my fridge and I am saving it so it can be used to compare my home brewed version of Surly Cynic with there's! Until next time CHEERS!!!

A row of fermentor's

Another row of fermentor's full of Surly goodness

 They filter there beer  with a centrifuge!!

Pallets of Furious cans await filling

The weather has been so fantastic I have found it a lot harder to blog because I would rather be outside. Brewing wise things are in full swing right now my kolsch is bottle conditioning and my Surly Cynic Kit from Northern Brewer is currently in the secondary fermentor doing a little clearing up. This kit was one of 2 partial kits that I was really excited to try as this is just one step away from all grain brewing. The whole mini mash process was a lot of fun and not nearly as hard as I thought it would be. I took a gravity reading last week after racking it to another carboy and it tasted great despite being a very young beer. I am really looking forward to the finished product some time around June.

Since the last update I have been able to add a few new brewing tools to the process. I now have a wort chiller, a full sized fridge(dedicated to beer and brewing) and what seems like a life time supply of Irish moss. All of these things will help me brew a higher quality and clearer product. I got to use all 3 for the first time on the kolsch. In another week or two I will be brewing Northern brewers speckled heifer Kit.This is a partial mash clone of one of my favorite beers New Glarus Brewing's Spotted Cow. The style is a cream ale and will be great drinking in the warm days ahead! Until the next update Cheers!

 Last weekend the wife and I were able to escape Iowa and we headed to the Twin Cities for some much needed R&R. This trip started out as as a very generous birthday present from my parents. My dad knew that I have been wanting to add a new wort chiller to my brewing arsenal. So he said hey I will get you the chiller but why don't you just go up to the cities and  pick it up at Midwest Supply? What a great reason to go visit my to favorite shops in person!! My wife made it even better by getting on line and getting us tours of both Summit brewing and Surly brewing!!  I cannot believe she got us into both as these tours fill up weeks in advance! I want to thank my parents and my wife for what turned out to be one Awesome trip!!

Standing in Summits beautiful tasting room!
We started off Friday with a stop at Ikea this was the only request my wife had for the weekend. Although the store was being remodeled and the shopping selection was less than stellar we still were able to get everything we were looking for.( including 6 new beer mugs for 1.99 a piece let me tell you at that price you cant go wrong) I now have 6 new mugs but I should of bought 12! That night I made a stop at the 4 Firkins beer store where I stocked up on some stuff you just cant get here in Iowa. I now have a fridge full of Surly and also got some beers from Stone,Brooklyn brewing and Descuhtes.  The next stop was at a small new upstart brewery Steel Toe Brewing. http://www.steeltoebrewing.com/ This happen to coincide with a special event there. It was the release of there new double IPA dubbed size 11! This huge beer specs out at 11% ABV and a whooping 111 IBUs dont worry it tastes fantastic! So I scored 2 bottles of this and a growler of there red Rain Maker.

In the very back of Steel Toes brew house are some Templeton Rye barrles!! Word is there full of a special barley wine they will be releasing soon!

The 3 fermentor set up at Steel Toe brewing

Saturday we had two tours on the books an afternoon tour at Summit brewing and an evening tour at Surly brewing. Summit  is an 800,000 barrel brewery so it is a great deal larger than Steel toe and there 3 fermentation tank setup. The tour of summit was great and to see the size and scale of there mid sized operation was impressive. From the huge sunlit tasting room with a beautiful wooden bar,the large copper boil kettles imported from Germany , the cavernous fermentation room and bottling line that can bottle 1200 bottles and hour.  Summit has built them selves a very nice clean facility to produce some good craft brew!! The best part of a tour is of course the free beer afterwords. Our knowledgeable and funny tour guides made this the highlight of the tour.  It was great to get to have a few samples of there Miabock and relax!!

The fermentation room smelled amazing! There are 24 tanks holding somewhere  close to 880 kegs of beer and each tank was close to 3 stories tall! The equipment in the center is there filtration device it was very impressive. On Monday Summit annouced a 6 million dollar expansion it will include an addition to this room and 2 more beers to there line up one a being a year round IPA and an Kolsch  for the summer.

Summit has four beautiful copper kettles imported from Germany

This is the cold storage warehouse at Summit. The tour guide called it his zombie apocalypse hide out and with this much tasty suds in one place I can see why. This was just a week and a half supply for summit in this room. Disclaimer this picture shows maybe 1/4  of the beer in this room and this photo does not do this room justice !!! On the right you see pallets of kegs stacked five high and that stack is at least 30 ft deep!!

The last Brewery we visited on Saturday Was Surly which I feel deserves its own blog because what there doing there is that great until then CHEERS!!!