Homebrewers of the World, Unite!!

I recently returned home from a long weekend at the National Homebrewers Convention in Cincinnati, OH. It was several days of beer, chili, beer, food, beer, seminars, some mead, beer, speeches, some cider, more food, and beer. But I am jumping ahead, lets back up and start from the beginning.

Tom, Scott and I (all members of the Kenosha Bidal Society) started out on our journey to Cincinnati on Thursday morning. Now Cincinnati is a 6 1/2 hour drive from Kenosha, so we knew we had a full day ahead of us. Fortunately, we also knew that somewhere in Indiana a brewpub awaited us for lunch. We weren't quite sure where, letting the traffic and associated delays determine that for us.

When we crossed into Indiana, we knew we weren't too far from Three Floyds Brew Pub, however it was still early enough that we felt we should continue on. Now, I had done some homework and I must recommend to anyone traveling and wanting to know where to find breweries or brewpub the following items.

First, Google Earth is a fantastic online mapping system to which you can add the Beer Me! Worldwide Brewery Map. With these two tools you can select a country or a state and see a map showing every brewery for your selection. From this we knew that our next option was the Lafayette Brewing Company in Lafayette, IN or waiting until Indianapolis.

The second recommendation is a GPS unit. I have a Garmin which I have found to be helpful when traveling to unfamiliar locations. The unit I have allows me to load custom Points of Interest. I found a website, POIFriend, where users have loaded Points of Interest files they have created. Specifically, I found a file with every brewery listed by the Brewer's Association. With this file loaded on my GPS unit, it was simply a matter of selecting the brewery of interest and let the GPS calculate the arrival time.

With all this high tech information, we ended up at the Lafayette Brewing Company for lunch. Located in downtown Lafayette, amidst turn of the last century buildings, the LBC was a friendly and attractive restaurant/pub. We started with a sampler round in order to familiarize ourselves with the beers. All the beers were well made and had no fatal flaws, however we seemed to find the hop character in the Eastside Bitter, Tippecanoe Common Ale and Eighty-Five to be too aggressive. The Prophet's Rock Pale Ale was described as "Eminently quaffable!" and it lived up to that description. The Black Angus Oatmeal Stout was also a very nice beer. One very nice option at LBC is that the beers are available by the pint and half-pint; a really great option when you want to try a couple but don't want to over indulge. For lunch, we started with Bavarian Beer Nuggets, described as "balls of spicy sausage, sauerkraut and cream cheese rolled in panko bread crumbs and deep fried." They were quite tasty and something different from the usual wings or onion rings. Tom had a Southwest Chicken Wrap, Scott had the Pulled Pork Beer-B-Q sandwich and I had the Jumbo Pork Tenderloin sandwich. All three were excellent and are recommended. All in all, our visit to LBC was enjoyable and a good way to breakup the drive.

To be continued......

A Tale of Two Mikes

It was the best of beers. It was the worst of beers.

I have frequented Captain Mike's, located in downtown Kenosha near the harbor, for some time now. The beer selection features almost 200 different beers, mostly in bottles and features various craft breweries, imports and several macro beers. The tap selection consists of the the usual suspects, nothing exciting. The quality of the bottled beer is usually good, though I have occasionally gotten an old or skunky bottle. The bartenders are friendly and somewhat knowledgable of the various beers served. While I would like to see more variety on tap, Captain Mike's does have the largest selection in town.

Meanwhile, while I was sitting on a barstool at Captain Mike's, the owner was busy working on a new bar, Uncle Mike's. Uncle Mike's is located south of Kenosha in Pleasant Prairie, on Sheridan Road. I had heard that the beer selection was larger and included several interesting taps, so I finally made the trip. I wasn't expecting alot, since the last time I had visited the bar now known as Uncle Mike's it was a dive country and western bar. I was pleasantly surprised however, as the entire bar had been redecorated. Uncle Mike's features a nice bar area; roomy and well lit; plus an outside beer garden. The menu listed 400 beers in bottles and 8 beers on tap. The tap selection included Chimay, Delirium Tremens and Rogue. I tried the Rogue Honey Orange Wheat, however I found it to be too sweet and cloying, especially for a Rogue product. I followed that up with a Three Floyd's Dark Lord 2008. What a fantastic beer! Rich and complex, with hints of chocolate and currents and as thick as motor oil, Dark Lord was an experience worth a few dollars more than the average beer. However I am not sure if it was worth the $40 price at Uncle Mike's. I know that the price of everything is going up, beer included, however several of the prices at Uncle Mike's seemed a little high. Unfortunately, since no one else is meeting this demand in the Kenosha area, I don't expect the prices to drop any time soon.