Best Finds 2017

They are easily in my top 10 breweries in the state and they’ve only been open a year.

 

Yeah, I rank Wild Mind as the third best brewery in Minnesota behind only Surly and Sisyphus, and it's only improving. It produces the best sours in the state and possibly well beyond (with respectful apologies to Olvalde, Fair State, and Star Keller). It's as creative a brewery as you're going to find in the Midwest. Wild Mind deserves far more attention and accolades than it gets around here.

 

Wild Minds it is I will be going there soon

 

Central Standard Brewing in Wichita, I have really enjoyed their IPAs this year, they are killing it.

 

I went to Sisyphus when they first opened, and literally not one of their beers stood out to me. Have they really improved that much? Maybe I should give them another shot.

 

Yes, I would give them another try. Sam admitted here that he put out beer that was not up to his standards when they first open. He said they had no money left and it was either put it on or call it quits before even opening. It was really nice that he was open and honest about it, and I think helped give us a little insight to the other side of things.

 

The top new beers I bought locally this year, roughly in order:

Fulton Cognac Aged Patience (amazing beer)
Prairie Bourbon Paradise
Boulevard Rye on Rye on Rye
Bear Republic Fastback Racer
Prairie Paradise
Prairie Barrel Aged Bible Belt
Town Hall Six Hour Tour
Fair State Spirit Foul

I had plenty of out-of-market stuff that would be included on this list, but that's for another day. And Prairie showing up here with those expensive but amazing 12 oz. bottles has put a pretty good dent in my liver.

 

It's fairly common for new breweries to not have their best beer when opening due to inexperience brewing on their new equipment, brewing with new materials or recipes or even brewing on a large scale for the first time. In a perfect world that beer would be dumped but financially it often can't be. I always give new breweries some time to work out the kinks.

 

I'd agree with your early assessment. Not that they were terrible as some have been when starting out but they seemed more in the average range but they have improved a ton. It's one of the core places I look at stopping at when I come down to the cities as a possible stop depending on what they got on at the time.

 

Personally I've found Barrel Theory to be the best "find" of the year. But I love IPA, fruited Berliner Weisse, and flavored stouts, so yeah, they basically seemed to have opened specifically for me. After a rocky start, Modist has come around as another local favorite of mine. While I don't see a ton of love for False Pattern, it's been in heavy rotation for me since it was released. Milk shake IPA was another revelation. D Man, and Junkyard are blowing mind with theirs. Finally, I'll pretty much buy anything Drekker puts out. Great IPA, and fun sour stuff. That pineapple milkshake sour was phenomenal.

 

This is probably why I'll never find a great beer in the local taprooms. I really like the classic continental beers (pils, vienna, dunkel, weizen). No fruit, no kettle sour, no west coast hops, ...

My current favorite is Waldmann. German style beers with a lot of German malt, German hops, and no funky flavors. They seem to have pretty good beers since opening and getting better as the brewer gets more comfortable with the brewing equipment.

 

In no particular order
Fair State - Spirit Foul
Drekker - Ectogasm, People Eater, Milk Maiden, Freak Parade, The Nightman Cometh, all the Brain freeze Variants. Drekker is knocking it out of the park across the board.

Junkyard - Galactic Falconer, Peanut Butter Bandit, all of the Experimental IPAs, Vanilla and Pineapple Shake-O-Matic.

Barrel Theory - Haven't had a bad brew from these fine folks but the clear cut stand outs for me are DDH Rain Drops (pretty much a game changing beer for me) Shooter McGavin, Purple Lambo, MPG, Black Lotus, Java Oats and Mugatu. Excited to actually try something BA from these guys, hopefully SOON.

Toppling Goliath - Fire Skulls & Money

Forager - Pudding Goggles

Disgruntled - Stupid Good, Juicylicious

Modist - Dreamyard, False Pattern

Bad Weather - Climate Change

The Brewing Projekt - Dare Mighty Things IPA Galaxy and 4 hop combo, Resist Milkshake IPA

 

There are lots of local taprooms putting out classic continental styles. Sure, they don't get a lot of press but if you know where to look you can find some world class traditional beer made in MN.

 

To add to what others have said, i’ve really enjoyed the beers from Wild Mind this year. Their sours are good, their hoppy stuff is good and they’ve put out a number of flavored stouts and porters that we’re good too.

If you don’t remember when they first opened, they were advertising themselves as a saison brewery. I thought to myself, well that’s nice but I’m never going there and I’m sure that whole marking campaign resulted in lost business from the start (not to slam saisons, but in this market brewing one style exclusively probably isn’t the best business plan). I’d like to hear the story from someone one the inside as to how they decided to morph from saisons to hazy IPA’s and imperial stouts (still brewing saisons too). Good for them for making their little brewery work and brewing some great beers.

 

Like a lot of other breweries with big dreams of being different, they've grudgingly (albeit creatively) succumbed to the public's demands for styles like New England IPAs and flavored big stouts. That said, I don't think they ever marketed themselves as you describe. They said they would be using wild yeast, and that naturally lends itself to farmhouse ales such as saisons (indeed there were multiple, widely disparate saisons on tap initially). They also noted that they would be doing a lot of sours down the road, in part by utilizing their coolship. But Wild Pale Ale, a dry-hopped APA using Azacca and Citra, was on tap at opening, as was a kolsch. Lèse-Majesté, an unfiltered "rustic version of an IPA," was among their early releases. I know I still like them most for their original dual emphases (farmhouse wild ales and complex sours), even as they've proven themselves adept more broadly.

 

They continue to use wild yeast in most of their beers afaik. Including their IPAs and even their coffee stout. The results have been good to very good so far.

 

A lot of my favorites have already been mentioned, but I'll just toss out Modist's Lord Humungus. Another really good stout to ease the winter!

Also, the tragically short-lived Dilly Dilly. The story around it was funny enough, but I thought the beer itself might have been the best DIPA I've had in the Twin Cities (I haven't managed to cross the river and make it to Barrel Theory yet).

Just coz I feel weird only mentioning one brewery, I really enjoyed all the Junkyard stuff I've had, although the flavored stouts definitely require a lot of sharing.