Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN
Funny how a second wave of brewing can change a city’s beer identity. For years, people have associated the Twin Cities with Summit, a brewery well known for the quality and consistency of its lagers and ales. The reputation has also carried with it a whiff of old Midwestern fustiness. Then, a few years ago, Minneapolis Town Hall Brewery opened and it was as though anyone who ever cared about good beer in the Twin Cities suddenly had a place to go. With the opening of Surly Brewing Co. in early 2006, the scene acquired an edge that could match the hip feel of the cities themselves.
Now, people began to recognize the contribution of Mackenzies, a bar that has specialized in craft beer for 15 years. The beer dinners at the Happy Gnome and café twenty-eight broadened the beers they paired with food. The Muddy Pig went crazy for Belgians and the Blue Nile was the place to go, if only to have your pint drawn by the inimitable Al.
Omar Ansari, the former homebrewer who opened Surly’s in a building his family owns, says that in the first few months he was open he held a cask beer event. Most of those who attended didn’t know what cask beer was, he says. Now Surly can’t keep up with requests by local beer bars to tap a cask.
“I still think the market has a ways to go, but the thirst for great craft beer is exploding at the bar level and the consumer level,” Ansari says.
Stan Hieronymus, one of the best-traveled beer writers in the country and who writes for this magazine, says a recent trip to the Twin Cities surprised him. The area always supported the old German beers, and beer and food were naturals together, he says. The addition of the cult breweries has given the Twin Cities a new patina. “I liked Minneapolis/St. Paul before,” Hieronymus says. “But it has clearly taken a step forward.
Pittsburgh, PA
When asked which cities in America best exemplified an established good beer culture that had gone unrecognized, Stephen Beaumont, another esteemed beer travel writer, zeroed in on one. “Pittsburgh has a really, really cool beer culture going on, definitely under the radar,” Beaumont says. “There is a lot of support from the locals and the tavern culture is really cool.”
Pittsburgh didn’t “arrive” the way an Atlanta or a Minneapolis did, but built slowly on the tavern culture you find in the neighborhoods of older, working class cities. Penn Brewery is one of the oldest microbreweries in the east, for more than 20 years surviving the shakeouts and the trends to offer consistent, high quality German-style beers. Bracket Penn with the easygoing ale man Scott Smith at East End Brewery.
There are brewpubs of all stripes, with chains like John Harvard’s and Rock Bottom being kept on their toes by locals like Hereford & Hops. The Church Brew Works, built in an old Catholic Church in suburban Lawrenceville is, pardon the sacrilege, a religious experience.
The beer bars are particularly deep and distinguished. The Sharp Edge has a national reputation for its selection. Chris Dilla’s Bocktown Beer & Grill encourages its customers to browse what Dilla calls her “beer library.”
Fat Head’s Saloon, around for 16 years, is so well thought of that among its 42 taps are beers made exclusively for the bar by the brewers at Rogue and Brewery Van Steenberg in Belgium. Owner Glenn Benigni changes five to 10 of those taps every week.
Tim Santoro, one of the owners of Barley’s & Hop’s, says that Pittsburgh distinguishes itself by the penetration of good beer in restaurants, even the chains. This is at least in part due to the education provided by Santoro, whose store offers at least 1,000 different kinds of bottled beers and encourages customers to mix their sixpacks.
“The beer culture in Pittsburgh is thriving more than ever,” Santoro says. “Per capita, I think we are one of the better beer cities in America.”
Portland, ME
Like Pittsburgh, the Right Coast Portland established itself early in the craft brewing revolution and held on as stubbornly as winter. D.L. Geary’s Brewing Co. and Shipyard Brewing have been making good beer since the 1980s. Geary’s was the first microbrewery in Maine. Because of the growing popularity of Belgian styles, Portland has found a new cache in Allagash Brewing Co., one of the best Belgian-style brewers in the country.
The brewpubs like Gritty McDuff’s are old stalwarts but the cultural reach of beer in Portland is best discovered in its beer bars, like the Great Lost Bear, Brian Boru or the piquantly named Three Dollar Deweys, where you kind almost always find Allagash, Geary’s or the beers from Casco Bay and Sebago Brewing Cos.
Santa Rosa/Healdsburg/Petaluma, CA
Surprise, surprise, the stories always begin. I was driving along in the heart of wine country when suddenly, unexpectedly and for no good reason I happened upon a place that brewed beer. My, how queer! While the brewers in this part of the world have probably wearied of it, this surprise has been an effective tool in galvanizing a beer community in the heart of Sonoma County.
I readily admit once again to bending the rules that I have been mangling right along as I create this list. Santa Rosa might not stand alone as a beer city. Healdsburg to the north and Petaluma to the south are not close enough to be sister cities. But this North Bay Highway 101 Corridor is strung together by hop vines rather than grape vines. Rebellion forges the fiercest kind of community.
Beginning in Petaluma, you have the exquisitely hopped ales of Lagunitas Brewing Co., which just put a new 80-barrel brewhouse on line. Lagunitas IPA is now available in many parts of the country, but the real treat is their seasonal lineup, sold in 22-ounce bombers. Lagunitas Maximus is one of the finest of the bigger India pale Ales and they make Gnarleywine, which rhymes with its style and an old ale called Hairy Eyeball.
Not to be out-alphaed are the beers made by the brewers in Santa Rosa. Randall Gremp’s Third Street Ale Works and Vinnie Cilurzo’s Russian River Brewing Co. offer a wide range of ales. Cilurzo makes excellent Belgian-style beers and his supercharged Pliny the Elder is one of the great beers made in America. Cilurzo says he is just completing an expansion that will more that triple his output to 10,000 barrels of beer.
And up the highway apiece is Bear Republic, just off the lovely town square in Healdsburg. The unpretentious brewery is an oasis of sorts on the square, overrun as it is by the traps selling high priced bric-a-brac to the tourists.
The ales are uniformly wonderful; the Racer 5 India Pale Ale, a standout. Richard Norgrove, the owner and brewer, was named the 2006 Small Brewer of the Year at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver.
“We are all very tight,” Cilurzo says of the other brewers. “You can make a case for the corridor. We’re all about big flavors, like the wine; the locally raised chicken and ducks and the farmers’ markets are just great. We all really fit into that mix.”
There may be surprises here, cities you might not have known had muscled up on the malt and hops, or others that have burnished their reputations. What should not surprise is that the craft beer revolution is broader, deeper and stronger across the country. There may still be seven or 10 beer cities of the first rank, but never before have their been so many creditable beer destinations.
It’s time to travel, belly up and remake our lists. Let the Great Beer City debate resume.
