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

Founders Brewing Company

Those of you who have not tried the beer brewed in Michigan are missing out on some unique and pleasing beers.  I recently enjoyed a great example of the seasonal fare available in Michigan from Founders Brewing Company in Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA.  The beer was called Blushing Monk.

Blushing Monk is a Belgian Style Fruit ale made with raspberries.  As with Belgian styles, the beer was low in carbonation, high in alcohol (9.2% ABV), and malty.  The raspberries gave the beer a beautiful deep red color and a well-balanced raspberry flavor.  This beer is produced each year in limited quantities, so I was pleased when my beer guy put one aside for me from the only case the distributor had for him to sell.  This beer was last brewed in 2007.  I hope we don't have to wait another 4 years for the next batch!

Cheers,

Zymus

Welcome

Hi All:

I started this blog for the simple purpose of recording my musings on beer.  I'm an enthusiast of craft beer and have had the good fortune of being able to visit many places with great beer.  I'm also lucky enough to have lived in places where great beer is made and appreciated: Southern/Central California; Washington; and Ann Arbor, Michigan.

I have collected beer bottles my entire adult life, but not actively.  When I came across a beer that I particularly enjoyed, I saved the bottle.  Eventually, I had a decent collection.  Once people found out about the collection, they would bring be bottles from their travels or hometowns.  Today, I have nearly 1,600.  These images show a small part of the collection.

I'm not entirely sure what I'll write about other than it will be beer-related.  Please feel free to comment, but I will not engage in any "this-beer-is-better-than-that-beer" discussions.  Just enjoy what you please and let others do the same.

Zymus