Best new breweries in twin cities?

Barrel Theory, Utepils, Venn, 12welve Eyes, Unmapped

Edit: check this thread

https://www.beeradvocate.com/commun...rewery-that-opened-in-2017-list-top-3.552474/

 

I will second visiting Utepils and Venn.

 

Blackstack, Barrel Theory, 12Welve Eyes. Not new to last year, but I'll add in Wild Mind.

 

if you go to Venn, You might want to checkout Northbound brew Pub It's not new but it's about 1/2 mile away. Elevated Liquor store is close too for take home beer.
http://northboundbrewpub.com/beer/
What kind of tap room experience do you want? what type of beer do you want to drink?

 

My recommendation is stick to the downtown St. Paul area and check out Barrel Theory, 12welve Eyes, and Waldmann, all within a mile and a half of each other. Barrel Theory specializes in the fashionable styles of NEIPAs, pastry stouts, and fruited kettle sours (and, as of this writing in its first nine months of operation, nothing else). It's not my bag but has built quite the reputation among those who like their beers hip and sweet. 12welve Eyes has a much more wide-ranging array of offerings, and it's reminiscent of the kind of brewery you'd tend to find in a more mature market, as it produces well-executed, flavorful, dry-leaning beers with low to moderate alcohol content. Waldmann brews German-style beers in a building restored to resemble its original incarnation as a 19th century German-American saloon. The beer is good and the setting is unique and charming. Those three will give you a lot of variety in a small geographical area and a chance to check out the most buzzed about, best, and most interesting breweries to open in the Twin Cities area in the last year, respectively.

 

If you go to Waldmann go to Bad Weather (not new) also it's next door. Waldmann's is unique and small. Checkout there facebook/twitter there might be a small band playing in the afternoon which adds to the tap room experience.

 

Visiting next weekend. Not all that interested in IPAs and Stouts (love em, but we have plenty out here), more so wilds, sours, saisons, etc. Wild Mind has been on my list to check out, but any others doing mixed fermentation, barrel stuff in the last couple of years? last visit was at least 2016 if not 2015.

 

Unfortunately few breweries are producing product of that sort in the Twin Cities. Even Wild Mind is saving its most interesting work for its Forgotten Barrel Society membership program and for high-profile keg distribution. Lately its taproom has been stocked mostly with more accessible and trendier fare, I'm sorry to say.

Definitely check out Fair State (opened in 2014) if you haven't already; it will have multiple options for you. Otherwise, there are a lot of kettle sours around town, but most of them are not just fruited but fruit-forward. They employ a touch of Lactobacillus and tropical fruits to distinguish them from 1990s-brewpub-style blueberry wheat ales (i.e., they're fruit beers for the masses, not sours for sourheads, for the most part).

A saison is available at many breweries, but the vast majority of them don't utilize wild yeast. Fulton and Indeed, both of which are ancient breweries by Minnesota standards, have dabbled in mixed culture and barrel fermentation in recent years, but you'll have to check their websites to see if any such beers are on tap when you arrive.

There are some outstate breweries doing nice work in this area (Olvalde, Forager, and Bemidji come to mind), but, among them, only Olvalde distributes in the Twin Cities on a regular basis (and is well worth seeking out if you're looking for packaged beers). Minnesota's great mixed culture fermentation hope, Oakhold Farmhouse Brewery, recently announced that it would not be opening after all, leaving a big hole in the market for this sort of beer.

Here's a list of the top Sour/Wild Ales produced in Minnesota. It's an all-too-limited lot.

I know it's not at all what you specified, but, if you're looking for a brewery making challenging beers outside of the norm, HammerHeart in Lino Lakes (a northern Twin Cities exurb) specializes in smoked beers and does a very good job with them.

 

Great info, thanks! Was a little disappointed at the Wild Mind taplist, hopefully in a week it changes a bit. Fair State I think had just opened last time I was there, so will have to check out. Cheers!

 

German beer on tap:
https://winzerstuberestaurant.com/
http://www.gasthofzg.com/

Lazy monk in Eau Claire WI
http://www.lazymonkbrewing.com/

Venn has some German style beers coming up soon including a Bock

 

Wild Mind typically taps at least one new beer a week. They have a bunch of mixed-fermentation sours conditioning right now, so there will be more soon. They tap beers once they are ready, so there are times when they put on like new things at the same time. I would recommend checking recent Untappd check-ins. Their website isn’t always up to date and they forget to post new beers on their social media pretty frequently.

If you visit Barrel Theory, Biergarten Germania is a couple blocks away and has a good selection of German beer and local interpretations. Waldmann and Bad Weather are next door to each other and both do traditional German styles pretty frequently. Bauhaus and Fair State both have good Americanized German-inspired beers.

 

Wild Mind is releasing a framboise on Saturday. Link is below.

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=id%3D2022758484612254%3Btype%3Dpost%3Buser%3Dwildmindales

 

Good timing! What are their releases like? With 300 bottles limit 6 I can't imagine too crazy of a show

 

I would recommend going earlier on in the afternoon on Saturday. There are typically only a handful of people that show up at open, but the fruited Spontanes are their highest demand beers. When Spontane Bramble was released, bottles lasted almost the whole day.

 

I may have to show up at 11:30 just to say I used that perk of the FBS.

 

Sup.

 

Bottles are gone. 20 minutes to sell out.