Brewery Updates in Minnesota (2020)

How many liquor stores have their inventory online? I know Total Wine does, but most of the things you would want to browse for (seasonals, one-offs) aren't listed or can't be ordered online. Only place I know of that seems to have most of their inventory online is France 44.

 

I have no idea.

I use F44's online ordering / curbside pickup quite a bit. South Lyndale also seems to have their online ordering set up, although I don't shop there as much, and their ability to handle the orders in a timely way is not as good as F44's. (F44 says allow 2 hours; SLyn says up to 6.)

I have no idea how much of their inventory is shown online. I do know that the F44's online list can get out of date, since I have twice ordered beers that were actually no longer in stock. They called me right away when that happened. Once I went with a substitute that I had been considering. The second time I went with their suggestion. They will also answer emails about their stock, although I've never asked about anything really exclusive or rare, so IDK about that.

Between those two, my order of preference is F44 followed by South Lyndale.

I have also bought from Total Wine, but their web site seems to not make everything available for curbside once the stock gets low enough. Besides, I don't frequent them much anyhow... I prefer local stores over national chains. I will use their web site for a quick check of whether a beer has made it into MN distribution, since their web site performs well.

Unfortunately, I don't know of a non-TW store that handles online ordering / curbside pickup closer to me than F44/SLyn. They are a bit of a drive for me, so I tend to make farm-family-style "shopping day" trips every couple of weeks (which is another reason I don't worry much about the exclusive or rare.)

 

My experience on F44 was a little different, the website didn't seem to have the beers I wanted on the website even though when they called the phone person easily found them. I'll readily admit I gave up easily and just got in the habit of calling so maybe it was an isolated experience. It is easy to call them, they have the accurate inventory handy. The only time they went to check was on a limited bomber that was down to a couple, they wanted to make sure. But usually, it's like "six pack of Kalamazoo Stout, six pack of Bent Paddle Black, Six pack of George Hunter Stout, and something else, then they're "yup, you're good to go"

 

I misstated F44's order ready guidelines... they actually say to allow 1 hour, not 2!

Also, don't assume that just because your search for a particular beer shows no results that it is not in the online inventory. I've discovered their search function can be a bit odd. It is not exactly literal, just odd. Trying a different word will sometimes have the beer appear. I can't remember any specific examples, so I realize this is not all that helpful...

 

#6, the Baltic porter, is listed on sir website as 10.89% and I’m suspicious of 6 and 7 being that exactly similar in abv. #7 just isn’t listed anywhere on their website that I’ve found. Everything for CABA goes back to the Baltic porter.

I saw it listed at something like 8ish % (I think on here?) but no idea where that came from.

 

I drank a bottle of NO. 7 last night. It didn't seem to be a very high ABV beer in anyway. I thought 7 to 8% ABV but it's hard to say since I had 5 beers before it. Schell's website/media needs to list available beers better and give us more info.

 

If you’re in the Edina area I highly recommend the Edina Liquor online ordering platform with free delivery. They overhauled it a month or two ago and it’s pretty current and accurate.

 

I have had 1 bottle of #7 and agree it seems lighter in ABV than last year. It isn't nearly as thick or robust as #6 imho. I believe Schell's does change the base beer from year to year.

The Schell's Facebook page does seem to confirm #7 is a dark lager and not a porter:

Cave-Aged Barrel-Aged is back and better than ever!

Hitting shelves on November 2nd, this year's CABA is a dark lager aged in New Riff and Buffalo Trace Bourbon Barrels.

 

Foremost in Owatonna is selling crowlers this week.

 

I was in NE Minneapolis near Dangerous Man picking up some food to go and was going to stop in and buy some crowlers, but most crowlers were $17-24 for the beers I was interested in such as their cranberry beer, peanut butter porter and a pastry stout. Seemed pretty high for the equivalent of about 2 beers, but maybe I’m wrong since I haven’t bought many crowlers lately. I do buy Junkyard crowlers, but I don’t remember paying that much for any of their crowlers. Is DM an outlier here? Are they in trouble and just trying to stay afloat? Curious to hear what people think.

 

$8-12 is what I normally see for crowlers.

 

That seems quite high. Especially for a Kolsch, Cream Ale ETC that they have on their site.

Edit: checked out Indeed's site for crowler prices. Most are between $8-$11.

 

The cream ale was $13 I believe and was the lowest price beer that I saw. Prices just seemed wacky to me.

 

That is wacky. I was looking at Venn today and found 3 that I wanted for $8 each. YMMV.

If we could only buy 4 packs and 6 packs of 12 oz. cans at the breweries....

 

4 crowlers for $30 at Birch’s on the Lake

 

That sounds crazy. Are you sure those were the crowler prices, not the growler prices? They sell both.

 

I'm pretty sure that's the case. Their crowlers have always been between $8-12 there and I just picked some up a couple weeks ago and the Sour I still have in the fridge was $9.

 

I bought 4 crowlers from Luce Line brewery last Sunday and got a free one.

I gave two to my son (IPA and Hefe). He liked the IPA better.
I picked up stout and pale ale and plan to have them tomorrow.

While first beers from a new brewery can be suspect, i just wanted to support them. Can't be an easy time to open a brewery.

 

you might be right! (I hope you are)

 

Bricksworth Beer Co in Burnsville now have Crowlers for sale. They opened a while back serving only pizza, but their beer is now available. i picked up a couple of IPA's but i haven't tasted them yet. They had about 6 or 7 different beers available including two sours for the sour crowd.