Eastside Love

Not every great beer brewed in Michigan is put into bottles; many breweries and brewpubs by definition serve their wares exclusively at their own establishment. Successfully packaging beer is not easy, and for some brewers it is simply not in their business plan. Other breweries may bottle a few select products and others still may bottle many flagship offerings but still yield on packaging experimental and small batch selections. So if you’d like to taste the widest array of Michigan’s offerings, you are going to have to drive.

While planning a brewery tour, one should drink beer, so we headed to Ken McPhail’s Hideout Brewery for the proper libations before setting out. The goal: one weekend, six breweries; good thing it was only Thursday. With ten beers on tap, the Hideout was the perfect place to practice sampling etiquette and prepare for the rigorous pace we were setting for ourselves.

Upon entering a brewery new to you, don’t be shy. Ask the bartender’s name, introduce yourself and ask them their favorite beer. Liesl was pouring the night we visited the Hideout and she was happy to pour us sample trays of each offering, definitely the best way to experience a brewery. To get acclimated, I started with the Purple Gang Pilsner. My wife primed with the Grand River Wheat. The beers were clean with a high degree of drinkability and we moved through the ten samples after which I drink a pint of Bootleg IPA. The room feels like you’re somewhere north of Gaylord, not just off Plainfield Avenue. Look for Bootleg IPA downtown also, on tap at the new Hop Cat.

The following afternoon we left for Ann Arbor. Growlers in tow, we planned first for dinner and drinks at Grizzly Peak. Only a short walk from a well lit parking ramp, Grizzly Peak is known for its food as well as its brews, offering a domestic bottle selection along with wine and liquor. The mainline beers, once brewed by Jolly Pumpkin’s Ron Jefferies, tasted clean and simple with our plate of steamed mussels. Of the specialties Draconus, a strong Belgian style, seemed a little under-attenuated and sweet, however, the two hand-pull Real Ale (unfiltered beer which is naturally carbonated and served from a cask) offerings were authentic and dutifully poured.

Conveniently enough, Arbor Brewing is only a short walk down the block. The brewers at Arbor profess to “respect styles and traditions without being a slave to them,” as exemplified by their distinct take on German and Belgian style ales. Not to be confused with the Corner Micro Brewery of Ypsilanti, Arbor beer is brewed on premise and sold exclusively at this location, so be careful to distinguish between the bottled products available statewide and the beers on tap in Ann Arbor.

Like Grizzly Peak, Arbor offered two selections on hand-pull and many others on draught. One should expect hand-pull or cask beer to be served warmer than draught with gentler carbonation. I started with the Sacred Cow IPA Real Ale which was fruity and distinguished, balancing malt with a distinct hoppy flavor and aromatic profile contrary to most bitter bottled IPAs. I ended the night with a dark and crisp Olde Number 22 German Alt as the college crowd kept pouring in. Arbor also took care to pour their offerings into proper style glassware, goblet for Belgian styles, pints for others.

The next morning we headed to Warren for Kuhnhenn and Dragonmead micro breweries. The wait staff at Kuhnhenn was kind enough to allow us to eat our Zingermann’s lunch inside after our hasty drive. A sampler was brought and we soon dove in, really enjoying the fresh hop and sweet malt of Loonie Kuhnie Pale Ale, bed sheet white and floral Michigan Wit and the pine, citrus, banana and bubblegum laced Simcoe Silly.

As we tasted, home brewers arrived to bottle beer they had previously brewed on premise with the founder and head brewer himself, Eric Kuhnhenn. I made my acquaintance and Kuhnhenn obliged me with a complete tour of brew house and cellar. Kuhnhenn talked about the growing popularity of their beers, spurred on by both creative and iconoclastic recipes and techniques, such as their renowned Raspberry Eisbock, and statewide exposure during the winter and summer beer festivals.

The brewery was very alive. Carboys filled every cranny and fermenters were sometimes stacked upon each other. Batch sizes ranged from 15 bbls to 3 gallons. Down in the basement, 55 gallon oak barrels held more than just ales; red wines pressed from imported grapes were ageing next to rows and rows of Meads, Melomels and Cysers, many of which were for sale upstairs in the cooler. Kuhnhenn tells me they are busy enough to have added a new assistant brewer, Wayne Burns formerly of Bo’s Brewery in Pontiac, who is an expert in the area of extremely high gravity ales and lagers. I’m looking forward to sampling his future contributions.
Another short drive led us to Dragonmead. Situated directly off the expressway, the medieval themed taproom offered on tap over 40 of their own beers! Jennifer, who has been with the brewery for ten years, guided us through the German, English, Belgian and Scottish style ales via flights of sampler trays. The beers were precise clones of their European counterparts and, as a whole, by far the most impressive thus far on the tour. Contrary to Kuhnhenn and many West Michigan breweries, Dragonmead’s products rely heavily upon malt and yeast profiles as opposed to hops. It’s hard to believe this highly awarded microbrewery ferments just 3 barrels at a time! A few select styles, such as Final Absolution Belgian Tripel are bottled and distributed statewide, but I couldn’t resist taking home a growler of London Brown Ale.

Now Sunday had finally arrived, but we had one more stop: Webberville and Michigan Brewing Company. The entire facility had recently moved into its new and massive home with adjoined taproom and production facility. MBC is the largest Micro Brewery in the state, I was informed, and from the looks of the cavernous warehouse, they weren’t lying. Daniel Palmer, a new employee who was staffing the in-house homebrew shop, was kind enough to take us behind the bar and into the gigantic brewery where I was confronted with many thousands of square feet of brew house, fermenters, packaging operations, distilling equipment and one fully operational bio diesel production system. Palmer told me most employees ride bikes to get around the place. The potential for growth here is astounding and I’m keeping tabs on their future plans. Most exciting about the present is their partnerships with Michigan State University in the areas of green fuel production and, unrelated, distilling. It seems that through this partnership, MSU can conduct research and explore technology otherwise inaccessible on campus.
Back in the taproom we ordered up yet another tray of samples. I sipped the Bourbon Barrel Aged Porter and Imperial Stout, the first to have been brewed with steam harnessed from the bio fuel, and also tasted the IPA. The full Celis line of beers was also available on tap and in the bottle. It was a slow drive home.

Info about all of the breweries mentioned above at: http://michiganbrewersguild.org/

Originally published February 2008 in Recoil Magazine