I'll be going from Toledo to Chicago and I'm looking for a brewery that opens early that serves coffee. Does any place between these two points open early? Looking for a place like Vennture Brew Co in Milwaukee, or Living Waters Brewing in Nashville. Any recommendations appreciated.
Great question! Highly interested in answers also! It’s actually easier to get a beer than a coffee first thing in the morning at Vennture. Amazing place!
I found Ramblin’ Red’s Brewing/Red Rambler Coffee just west of Toledo, though taps don’t open until 11:00am. https://www.redrambler.com/
Depending on how far you might be willing to detour, there's one in Kalamazoo called Brite Eyes (probably 40-45 minute detour from I-80), plus one in Caledonia, MI and another in northern suburban Detroit (St. Clair Shores, I think), both at least an hour detour.
Title begs the question “Why?”. Are you doing an 8 hour day at a brewery? Coffee shops for coffee and breweries for beer seems to be a safe rule of thumb.
Maybe the aim is to drink coffee for breakfast and haul away some beer for lunch or dinner? Also they can tick off a brewery visit.
I love coffee and beer, so if I could find a place near me that roasted their own beans and brewed beer, I'd be there! As long as they did them well, of course. Wouldn't have to go far to find a coffee for their coffee stouts would they?
Vennture is the best I've seen at this. I've been to a number of breweries that serve coffee during the day such as Unmapped and Wild Mind in Minneapolis, Forager in Rochester, and Olentangy River in Columbus but Vennture blows them all out of the water. Their coffee (and hospitality/vibe) is on another level. I stopped in intending to snag a latte and a 4-pack of beer to-go and ended up having a pour over of some house-roasted imported coffee that the barista/bartender was amped up about. It was so good I sampled a shot of espresso made with some other beans he was raving about. Then had to have a couple beers to balance out all that caffeine. There were other people in there reading books and studying like any other coffee shop, then there were probably 10-12 people having beers at 10am (only in Wisconsin?) I would love to see more places take on elevated coffee in the same way.
Don't think this will help since it's IN Chicago-proper, but Bitter Pops is basically a cafe in the morning (they have their own coffee, brewed by Hexe, which is a very cool coffeeshop with cocktails) and a taproom/beer shop in the afternoon. It's not a brewery, but they're pretty tight with the local breweries so they regularly get very good, fresh local stuff.
And this was why I was wondering what the OP’s purpose was. If he wants to-go beer then Bitter Pops has the bottle shop, but I’m not sure they serve alcohol until later if he is looking to drink beer at 8am or something. I was going to say Map Room is good as they do coffee in the morning and beer later, but it also isn’t a brewery and doesn’t have a bottle shop.
