Short's Brewing Company

The past 10 years have been great for Michigan-based beers.  I have sampled beers from around the USA and world, and Michigan beers stack up with the best.  One of my particularly favorite breweries is the Short's Brewing Company located in Elk Rapids with a taproom in Bellaire, Michigan.  http://www.shortsbrewing.com/.

Sampling beers at Short's

Short's Brewing Taproom, Bellaire, MI

Short's brews 10 beers that are available year-round and a whopping 40+ seasonal and specialty beers.  The brewery specializes in mixing and matching herbs, spices, fruits, and other flavors to create astonishingly unique beers.  For example, this year's Anniversary Ale was a wheat beer with blood orange zest/puree and green peppercorns.  At 10% ABV and a stiff 63 IBUs, this beer was a hearty treat.

The brewery also released in May their Spruce Pilsner, an Imperial Indian Pilsner made with Michigan spruce needles.  It did not sound too good to me, but I found it to be another unexpected treat from this out-of-the-way brewery.

If you find yourself up in the Boyne or Traverse City areas of Michigan, a side trip to the Short's taproom is well worth the time.  When I visited, they had 20 beers on tap and the food was quite good as well.

Cheers,

Zymus