Beer: Summit Brewery

A few weeks ago my best friend braved this land I like to refer to as an Ice Bucket of Doom, and visited me. We had a big ol' blizzard the weekend she was here, complete with a super fun white out (the text doesn't convey my heavy sarcasm, so this aside is necessary to point out said sarcasm)

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We usually spend a lot of time drinking wine and exploring wineries when we hang out.  I come from a group of friends that adores wine, wine culture, and .... drinking.  A lot of wine. But, it's not exactly wine season in Minnesota. This problem was addressed by a different solution; BEER. There is a sh*t ton of beer in this state. This reality makes up for the lack of wine.

And, spoiler alert.  It is good beer.

We headed down to St. Paul to indulge at the Summit Brewery.

Summit Brewery gives a fabulously short and sweet (free!) tour  with just enough history to make you go "Wow, cool" and they close with 4, 4oz beer samples. Which meant that we sampled the full spectrum of beers by sharing. My husband was our DD so we held some of his drink tokens hostage to get the full beer sampling experience.

Wall of Awesome Beers and Awards

While all beers were pretty gosh darn good, standout beers were the Maibock (a spring ale) for its easy drinking, and lightness. The second beer we loved was the winter beer the Frost Line Rye. Lastly, the Oatmeal Stout was worth the hype (our tour guides absolute fav.) and was pretty gosh darn good! I realize I just gave a range of beer varieties. It doesn't change the fact that they were all outstanding.

Oatmeal Stout

Beer tasting is a different experience than wine tasting.  I think that no matter where we go for a tasting, it will always remind me of the movie Drinking Buddies, because it just seems like those are the type of people who work at breweries: super cool hipsters who are passionate about beer. It also reminds me of Portlandia for some reason......

Happy Drinking!