Frothy Minnesota Beer Market?

You are missing out! Those are all great beers but my summer cooler often includes mainly fresh MN beers from Schell's, Bent Paddle, Surly, Indeed and Fair State has cans of Hefeweizen too! Granted I'm drinking less IPA's in the summer.

 

No, I definitely meant what I said. You must have mistook me. The OP and I couldn't DISAGREE more.

 

Don't get me wrong, I love the offerings from our local brewers, especially Bent Paddle. But i usually stock my cooler with what is the best of the best IMO, those those all get left behind!

I do need try that Hefe though, haven't yet and have been meaning too.

I should add, I have been downing Summits new Pils... that right there is a tasty treat.

 

I have quoted the OP. I have quoted you. Where is the disagreement? Are you not saying almost exactly the same thing in the bolded comments? I know it is hard to "agree to disagree", but can we not even "agree to agree"?

Perhaps after a few beers this will all make more sense to me. Yay beer!

 

Oops, that's my bad. I was mistaking the OP for the guy that was hating on the MN beer scene. Sorry! My bad @maximum12, you are not the one I meant to call out in my posts!

 

I think a solid core lineup is good. Granted I do find it appealing if they rotate at least one line with something new to try.

 

What is the brewery opening south of Duluth? That is in my neck of the woods and I hadn't heard anything about it. Care to share some more info?

 

I agree with some of the sentiments in this thread about a lot of the newer breweries sticking to the standard style of 4-5 beers without anything new or exciting. However there are a breweries that are getting out of their comfort zone as well.

Surly has been making some decent kettle sours and gose beers lately. I would hesitate to call any of their beers ordinary, they may not all be great, but they aren't the typical stouts or IPAs either.
Fair State's sours have been improving with each batch and I think they're delicious. Hammerhart makes some great barrel aged and smoked beers. Steel Toe puts out great barrel aged beers regularly. I could go on, the point is that not all breweries want to become the next Surly, CW or Bell's and thats great.

The beer scene in the twin cities is still vibrant and growing. The ceiling though will be hit when the consumer's palate adjusts and they stop going to the breweries that are putting out a lesser product.

I also agree that more breweries should wait to start putting product on shelves because of the big risk that comes with it. Right now they're banking on people buying their product because its local and this may work for a while but if there aren't improvements in quality, the breweries will sink.

 

I believe he is referring to Oakhold. Farmhouse/sour brewery. Caleb Levar is one of the founders and currently works as a microbiologist/assistant brewer at Fair State. I'm sure others have more info, but they've had a few writeups in the Growler. I'm sure there is info in the "New Breweries in MN" thread too

 

Thanks for the info. I'll have to keep an eye out, as their work moves forward.

 

Is this different from Oude Oak?

 

The idea of to keep small and grow with demand vs grow in all aspects at the same time is a complex business plan. I am assuming that if you are packaging and shipping to bars or liquor store you are doing so to get in front of more people. So business plan of Dangerous man make perfect sense if you can position yourself in a place that can get heavy traffic to get the regulars plus the average walking costumer. However cost of building in these locations should be higher and most already have breweries in these areas. If you know you can scale larger but may need the support to bring people to your destination you may need the taps as a starting point.

It all comes down to how good is you product. Their will always be room for a new brewery if you deliver great beer. If you can't do that your going to have a hard time.

I hope that all new and existing have good business plans but produce a good product and know that everyone is after you so you can't rest on past success.

 

Am I way off on my memory of LTD? I've only been once but everything was mediocre to plain awful, and that was about the same feedback I read until recently. Have they really upped their game?

 

No. Their beer sucked when we were there recently. Not a single thing worth drinking.

 

Only been to LTD once and tried 4 beers. All were mediocre at best. The Double IPA was a boozy mess.

 

I agree with those who have stated that we have a great beer scene here in the twin cities and I agree that I could probably drink nothing but local beer and be happy. Just to play devil's advocate for sake of argument I just looked up a recently opened brewery that i haven't been to and was curious about to see what they have on tap and it fits right in with the other side of the argument

Able Seedhouse and Brewery
#1 IPA
#2 Red Ale
#3 Session stout
#4 Wheat Pale ale
#5 Pub Ale - Malty British style I assume

Might be a cool spot but with that lineup, it's not worth the gas money for a visit. Not to mention they are in the heart of Northeast Minneapolis with a bunch of better options within just a few miles. If breweries think that they can open in this environment with a mediocre lineup and expect to draw large crowds, maybe the beer scene is getting a bit "frothy"

 

It also is some of the worst beer available for sale out there. Not that it is totally relevant to the current discussion, their beer is just god awful.