Breweries Opening in the Minnesota 2016/2017

Yes. It's their dedicated sour brewery.

 

Will Star Keller Brewing have "growler" sales? I am not sure how it works, since Schell's cannot, but this is technically a separate entity. It would be great if they could do special bottle releases at the taproom.

On a side note, why wasn't this an option for Barley John's?

 

Barley John's had a brew pub license. No distribution but you can have a full bar and guest beers. I am sure they will get a brewery license which will allow them to distribute and operate a taproom serving only their own products. Growlers can be sold in their taproom until their volume exceeds x,000 barrels production (I don't recall the actual number right of hand) if they so choose

 

When i spoke to jace a few months ago, he envisioned doing brewery only bottle releases at the starkeller

 

Well, as promised, I stopped into Urban Moose In Sauk Rapids tonight. It was busy, but not packed, though they opened up at 11 AM, and I didn't get there till 8:30 PM. When you walk into the door you have a choice to go into the brew pub area off to the left, or straight into the Flying Pig Restaurant area. If you go up the stairs, you have the option of an outdoor deck seating area.

I didn't order any food from Flying Pig, but, of course, had the beer. They had 8 on tap tonight. If I remember correctly, they had 12 taps, so they have room for expansion.

Now on to the beer.

I ordered their flight. It consisted of 5 beers. Here's the ones I had
Tussen-Takk Blonde Ale - 5.9% ABV 12 IBU
Fortuitous Happenstance American Wheat Ale - 5.9% ABV 15 IBU
Things In Motion Tend To Stay In Motion Apricot Ale - 5.9% ABV 15 IBU
Alpha Acid Theory IPA - 7.1% ABV 60 IBU
Ketterwahler Stout - 6.53% ABV 35 IBU

The 3 I didn't have were
Double Overhand California Common - 4.8% ABV 25 IBU
Alpine Butterfly Belgian Saison - 6.0% ABV
Bound By Gravity Belgian Golden - 7.5% ABV 28 IBU

I didn't take notes while drinking, yeah, I know, my bad. I forgot to bring a notepad to write them down. That being said, I was impressed. of the 5 I had the Apricot Ale was the weakest one, but it doesn't have to do with technical issues, it has to do with it wasn't my cup of tea. The American Wheat really interested me. It didn't have the banana feel of a standard wheat, it had some citrus in it. The IPA was very good. Delicious hoppiness to it. The Blonde was fairly refreshing. Just a hint of sweetness to it. The Stout was the standout in my book. I was very impressed with it. It had hints of chocolate, coffee, vanilla in the nose. The taste had all of those, plus cherry, and a slight smoke feel. The smoke feel was light, but there.

So, yes, I think they have it right, right off the bat. It took a long time to open, but I think they used their time well to get used to the equipment. They might very well be the stand out in the St. Cloud metro. I'm excited to see what they do next.

 

A new brewery in downtown Saint Paul has signed a lease. 12welve eyes Brewing. They have a Facebook page.


12welve Eyes Brewing
July 18 at 2:02pm ·


We are extremely excited to be a part of this beautiful building!

 

Hey guys, long time stalker, but I don't post often. This is Levi, Caleb's business partner with Oakhold. If you're unaware, Caleb is an assistant brewer at Fair State and their microbiologist.

Fair State has two different types of sours in general - kettle sours and barrel aged sours. Most of you are probably familiar with kettle sours and how it's a way to minimize risk of contamination because the lacto gets boiled before going into cold-side (fermentation, packaging, etc.). All of the BA sours are kept in the basement away from the clean beers and use almost exclusively separate equipment. I'm not aware of any cross contamination issues that FSBS has experienced. It certainly doesn't hurt to have an experienced and talented head brewer and a PhD microbiologist to help keep things under control.

Based on the recent Growler article, it seems that Wild Mind intends to keep all of their beer in-house. If that's the case, it will all likely be consumed fresh enough that any minor infections wouldn't be noticed, but they'll also have full control of their inventory and can pull beer from taps if something is clearly going wrong. Or at least that would be my hope.

 

Very cool. I'm sure it certainly pays dividends having someone with Caleb's background helping out. I just know that some of the best breweries in the nation have had issues with cross-contamination and others are very careful about using separate facilities/equipment. The other day I saw a post that Cory King had where he mentioned that he'd like to release Derivation bottles as 375's to make them last longer and get the price point down, but his "clean" bottler was for 750's only.

 

One of our favorite sayings is, "exponential growth's a bitch", as in, it doesn't take long for a couple of unwanted microbes to turn into a huge infection issue. We do intend to brew a few 'clean' beers, so we will have to take pains to minimize those risks and do sufficient QC. Like you said, Caleb's expertise will be a huge help, but even big breweries with sophisticated labs still miss things. Regardless, I think it's a risk worth taking as long as you're prepared to respond to something going wrong after beer hits the shelf.

 

I'm even starting to get confused as to what is all open now. Anything out near Bloomington that is relatively new? I was thinking LTD wouldn't be too far out of the way. I'll be in Bloomington for a meeting later this week.

 

Bloomington is a wasteland for breweries. How the 4th largest city in the state still is without a single brewery is a mystery to me

 

I mentioned that to a brewer I was chatting with the other day and the only thing he could think of was maybe it's city council/licensing related? I was recently working in Bloomington and it's not just bad there, but you have to go like 15 minutes up to LTD, Steel Toe, or Town Hall to hit one after work. There's a little lake called Oxboro Lake off of 95th that a buddy was looking at as a potential spot that I think you'd absolutely print money over there. 35W and 494 intersect close to there and you have an airport and the mall of america within a couple miles. Whoever jumps on this idea owes me 10%.

 

Wild Mind Artisan Ales opening on the 28th, not that far from Bloomington.

 

The two in Lakeville are around 20 minutes away. I did not think it was that far. Nutmeg perhaps lol? Have they got their shit together yet?

 

And it makes me sad every day.

Also, Badger Hill isn't too far away if you're near 169. I'd generally rather go to LTD or Steel Toe, though. Or go to the Town Hall Tap.

 

Probably is the mayor and the city council. Every interaction that I've had with them has been poor at best.

 

Residents aren't much better either. Case in point, almost no one wanted a Target to go up on the corner of Normandale and Old Shakopee. Think of the shenanigans that would come with opening a brewery in town!

 

I was at the Wild Mind soft opening tonight. They only had 3 saisons on tap. I highly recommend checking it out in Thursday. There was a table beer, a Nelson Sauvin-hopped saison, and their house saison (the only wild available). They were a very solid set of full-flavored beers that were free of off-flavors, which is unfortunately rare for brewery openings. For a more detailed review, you can track me down on Untappd for a Reader's Digest summary (same username).

They anticipate having 2 additional wild beers on Thursday. It will likely be a few weeks before they release anything with a more complex funk and/or sour character, but I will definitely be back this weekend to see.

 

I was thinking LTD but I just remembered they make you buy the glass for growler fills there and I want to get a few growlers for a party we got going on Saturday...I might just hit Sissyphus or perhaps Birch's....both are great options and both fill growlers from anywhere..