@JDeRusha wants you to join Team Hunger, @France44Cheese revives the apple-honey-cheese sandwich (so good!), @TroutCaviar finds sheep sorrel at a new location, @AsherBMiller reminds of the last Open Field event this summer, @GrovelandTap welcomes its soon-to-be neighbor, Scusi, and @CTKitchenTable seeks volunteers to pick veggies this weekend for the next @TourdeFarm event.
Becca Dilley / Heavy Table
The most important thing about Capital Brewery’s new Supper Club beer is its name. The beer itself is good summer drinking — a light, joyful, summery American-style lager that’s got a touch of malty depth and a bit of apricot-like brightness.
Becca Dilley / Heavy Table
“Not Bad,” declares the label, and that’s basically right — it’s not redefining the style nor trying particularly hard to do so. It’s good on a hot day and doesn’t demand specialized glassware. It’s not a hop monster; it’s not an extreme flavor; it’s familiar and drinkable without being soulless or watery.
The Madison, WI-based Capital Brewery describes the beer (which sells for $8 a six-pack) as follows:
“Harking back to an era where Supper Clubs were In Vogue and Wisconsin had numerous regional breweries making their version of American Style Lagers. You know, back when these types of beers exhibited regional soul.”
Thus the name — it’s a conscious callback to Upper Midwestern food heritage, a courageous step when many local producers’ first instinct is to somehow namecheck just about anything but the distinctly less-than-sexy but undeniably authentic place that starts at our backyard and stretches out to the Great Plains and the shores of Lake Superior and Lake Michigan.
A Supper Club-pegged beer isn’t a lone voice in the wilderness; look, for example at the names of some of the newer breweries popping up locally: Lift Bridge, tied to the Stillwater landmark of the same name. 612 Brew. Harriet Brewing. Lake Superior Brewing.
It’s echoed by restaurants like the Red Stag, Craftsman, and HauteDish, which fuse a young, high-end food sensibility with a firm grounding in the region — both in terms of ingredients and image.
All good stuff, but it’ll likely take another decade or three before the homeland of beer, sausage, and cheese gets its propers from either coast. Until then, we can hoist a Supper Club and enjoy the peace and quiet.
by James Norton on July 26, 2010
Becca Dilley / Heavy Table
As a beer, there is very little that can be said about Summit’s Belgian Style Golden Ale that hasn’t already been said by Michael Agnew over on A Perfect Pint. There are few things a writer likes to admit less than being beaten to the punch by someone thorough, but there you have it — Agnew knows his beer, and he went into great detail about Golden Ale, the fourth in a line of “Unchained” beers by Summit.
Sweet malt that extends through to the finish, check. Palpable alcohol warming, check. Lots of fruit, right, check. Paradoxically high in alcohol (8.6%) yet refreshing, check. I drank it, I thought it, I discovered that he wrote it, and with a considerably higher level of specificity than I could muster.
In a nutshell, then, this is an exciting summer beer with a lot of punch and passion, and well worth drinking. What then, to add?
Becca Dilley / Heavy Table
How about this: A quick survey of the Summit Unchained Series, now that we’re four beers in. What the hell have we learned? What are they up to with this series? What’s it doing for Summit, and what’s it doing for us, the Upper Midwest’s audience of serious beer lovers?
Five thoughts on the Unchained Series, as it stands.
1. It’s Re-Establishing Summit as a Local Craft Brewery
Despite their respectably large size, nobody who knows anything could credibly claim that Summit’s anything but a local craft brewery. That said: After years of EPA appearing as the default local craft option on taps throughout the area, a bit of boredom had set in, as contrasted with the massive, publicity-churning success of Surly and the toadstools-after-a-rainstorm emergence of numerous mini-craft brewers from South Minneapolis to Stillwater. Continue reading Summit’s Belgian Style Golden Ale and an Unchained Series Survey »
Craving sake? Keep an eye out for @ScottPampuch’s tweet contest for the @MotoI2Go gift cards he won from us yesterday; @LiftBridge releases this year’s MN Tan (and lets you know where to get it), @Celebr8nGenr8n gripes about [unexpectedly] extended rentals, @PunchHighland continues their wine and appetizer promos, and @France44Cheese upholds his cheesemonger code of ethics.
The joy of a serious lamb roast on the farm, a splash of tart bloggy venom for Ringo, Rachel loves the fried chicken at Willy D’s (née Derrick’s) and thinks Mango Tango is mondo trashy, Well Fed Guide to Life hits the Tea House, and a pretty excellent looking Lift Bridge cigar dinner in Stillwater.
Scott Theisen / Heavy Table
You could do worse than Arborfest to help a good cause. At its $45-a-head fundraiser Friday night at Macalester College, the Family Tree Clinic, a St. Paul-based sexual health care and education provider, lined up 18 local beer producers, three wineries, food, and more for its 10th annual bash. Just walk in, grab your wee tasting glass, and go — each brewery or winery had a table with several samples, so there was a head-spinningly vast array of artisanal drinking.
My tour started with the 15-year-old Lake Superior Brewing Company. Co-owner and brewmaster Dale Kleinschmidt poured a barley-wine style Old Man Winter Warmer (10.3% ABV) and explained why he’s made the trip from Duluth the past five years for Arborfest.
Scott Theisen / Heavy Table
“I’m locked away in the brewery every other day of the week, so we don’t get to see other brewers very much,” he said. “So it’s a nice chance to socialize, get people exposed to our brands, and help out a good cause. Three pretty good reasons.”
John Langer, District Manager for Kansas City, MO-based Boulevard Brewing Co., was pouring Boss Tom’s Golden Bock, their super-drinkable spring seasonal, and Double-Wide IPA, among others. He said that for smaller beer producers, events like Arborfest are a sort of family reunion.
“I think this event is good for all breweries and all craft breweries just because it’s such a wide variety of people,” he said. “There’s over 600 people I believe every year, it’s for a great cause, and we’ve always been involved because of the great craft beer showing of all the breweries around, so it’s a great event to be in. We’re all friends here. Everybody is trying everybody’s beers to see what’s new, see what’s out there.”
Scott Theisen / Heavy Table
The event also included vinyl-spinning DJs and beer-absorbing food like brats and soft pretzels, but these were clearly not the focus. And for having hundreds of people there, there was surprisingly little line-standing. Most tables had two or three brewery employees at the ready, filling your glass before you knew it. It took substantial willpower to not get amazingly polluted. The 18-brewery lineup included: Barley John’s, Bell’s, Boulevard, Cold Spring, Finnegans, Fitger’s (pictured, bottom), Flat Earth, Great Waters, The Herkimer, Lake Superior, Lift Bridge, Mantorville, Rock Bottom, Rush River, Schell’s, Summit, Surly, and Town Hall. Crispin was there, too, as was Vine Park Brewing Company, the St. Paul outfit that lets you homebrew on their premises. Wineries included Carlos Creek, Morgan Creek, and WineStreet Spirits.
Steve Rinker, VP of sales for Lift Bridge Beer Company, said the seamless setup kept his brewery coming back.
Scott Theisen / Heavy Table
“It costs a little more to get in here, so these are real beer lovers. From that aspect, it’s kind of a low-key event,” he said. “They’re not all the same. This is a little more sophisticated, a little more high-brow. Most of them start off that way and turn into beerfest, drunkfest. So yeah, we like this one, I’m relaxing, the lines aren’t a mile long, we’re not pouring through 20 kegs of beer, so it’s a really good event.”
“Everyone has their own style,” he added. “Brewing is like painting; no one paints the same picture. We all start with a blank canvas, and our take on beer is different from Surly’s, it’s different from Flat Earth’s, it’s different from the brewpubs, so you can come here and you’re not going to taste two beers that taste the same. You may taste 100 beers, but there’s probably only 20 different styles in the whole building. You have 20 different styles and 100 different craft tastes — that says something about the people who are brewing it.”
Scott Theisen / Heavy Table
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