The 50 States of Beer - Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania

Iron City Brewing Company - Pittsburgh, PA, home of the Penguins.
Best Beer:

Iron City Beer Premium Lager

I want to be honest with you. I don't drink a whole lot of Pennsylvania beer. I picked this state without having a beer in mind. After reviewing what my options were, I knew that Iron City stood out as my clear favorite.

Pennsylvania has a lot of things I really like. The Penguins, Dunder-Mifflin Paper Company, Boy Meets World, and Paddy's Irish Pub [note, I am watching It's Always Sunny as I write this.]. Add to that list, this beer. Straight outta the tin bottle, Iron City is one of my favorite lagers.

It is a "great white buffalo beer" in my mind. I have only drank it two or three times, but the memory of how good it is stays with me. I get thirsty for it occasionally. Sad thing is, it's hard to find round these parts.

My best memory of it is drinking it at, surprise surprise, the Old Chicago in Ames with Cassada, Schenck and Marc Sellers. Them was the days. That was the beer.

For more reading on Iron City Brewing Company, go here.
And visit the official Iron City Brewing Companywebsite, here.

Up Next: Montana

The 50 States of Beer - Oregon

Oregon

Rogue Ales - Newport, OR
Best Beer:

Dead Guy Ale

You'll find that if I didn't discover a beer at the good ol' Old Chicago in Ames, then I probably first found it at the Crescent Moon while I was living in Omaha back in 2007. That's the story with Dead Guy Ale, and it's also the story of the first time I ever went to the Crescent Moon.

On Tuesday nights, the Crescent Moon has a deal where you can go, pay five bucks for a glass and fill it with the "beer of the night" for a dollar or two all night. Then, you get to keep the glass. Anyone who knows me, knows that I love things I can take home.

That first night, I was with my roommate at the time Garrett who suggested we go there in the first place. The "beer of the night" was Dead Guy Ale, and definitely had a unique taste. It was the first maibock I ever tried. I easily refilled that glass six or seven times that night.

This night was also the first time I ever heard of Rogue Ales. It wasn't long until I found Kessler's and their wide selection of Rogue brews. Which lead to me drinking several 24oz bottles of the MOM's Half-E-Weizen (with this picture on the bottle), Brutal Bitter, but I always found my way back to the Dead Guy Ale.

The only Rogue beer I don't like, is the rauchbier, aptly named "Smoke Beer". Nick bought it and we all tried some, and it is forever known as "Bacon Beer".

For more reading on Rogue Ale, go here.
And visit the official Rogue Ale website, here.

Also, here is a funny tour of the Rogue Brewery. Enjoy:


Up next, Pennsylvania

The 50 States of Beer - Minnesota

Minnesota

Summit Brewing Company - St. Paul, MN
Best Beer:

Summit Extra Pale Ale

So I was at Old Chicago. I don't remember exactly what the occasion was, but there was a bunch of us there. Cassada, Schenck and I (of course), and then Sellars, Artie, Alister and Emilie. We were all having lunch (I think) and I had just finished an Iron City Lager (in the aluminum bottle, fyi) and asked the waitress to surprise me. I got Summit EPA.

Since, I have always used it as a quick go-to beer. It never fails, and is perhaps one of the only beers I can safely say I like just as much out of a bottle as I do on tap.

Summit also makes an India Style Rye Ale, which I think just sounds wonderful. However, it's a seasonal beer, so I am going to have to find my way up to Sweet St. Paul (man, that must be the hardest luck Saint of 'em all) to get one.

I also recommend the Summit Porter, it's pretty damn good. Honorable mention for the land-o-lakes state: Granite City Food and Brewery's Duke of Wellington India Pale Ale is pretty good, but I haven't technically had it. I drank it in Cedar Rapids at a chain.

Also, for good measure, here is a shout out to Midwest Supplies where I get the majority of my Home brewing supplies, located in Minneapolis.

For more reading on Summit Brewing Company, go here.
And visit the official Summit Brewing Company website, here.

Up next, Oregon

The 50 States of Beer - Illinois

Illinois

Goose Island Beer Company - Chicago, IL
Best Beer:

Goose Island's India Pale Ale

Goose Island has long been one of my favorite breweries. Ever since I first had the Honkers Ale at Old Chicago in Ames (where you'll find, I had most of my beers), I was a fan.

Over time, I had tried others that I enjoyed, 312, Nut Brown and the Matilda. But it wasn't until some friends and I went to a concert in Chicago that I got a taste of the IPA. We were at Harry' Caray's, and the first sip I was hooked. It was the hoppiest son of a bitch I've ever drank.

Since, I have had it as often as I could, and when I home brewed my first IPA, it was Goose Island's IPA that I compared it to. I suggest to any hop lover to try it out. Cheers.

For more reading on Goose Island Beer Company, go here.
And visit the official Goose Island Beer Company website, here.

Up next, Minnesota

The 50 States of Beer - Nebraska

Nebraska

Empyrean Brewing Company - Lincoln, NE
Best Beer:

I wavered on this pick. I love Empyrean Brewing, from the very first time I ever tried it at the Crescent Moon in Omaha. (Perhaps, the best beer bar in Omaha, located directly above the 2nd best.) And of all the Empyrean's I have had, Third Stone Brown is my favorite. For a nut-brown, it is very crisp and clean. (The words spoke by Schenck also helped sway me.)


My other possible pick, was from Upstream Brewing Company in Omaha, and was the winter seasonal Ebenezer's Brew. But, when it comes down to it, the one hit wonder of Upstream in my eyes does not overshadow the continuous great beers coming out of Lincoln.

My local Old Chicago in Ames, just started getting Empyrean brews on tap, so perhaps it's just my recent partaking in this beer that brought it to the front, but regardless, it is the best beer I have ever tasted from the state of Nebraska.

For more reading on Empyrean Brewing Company, go here.
And visit the official Empyrean Brewing Company website, here.

Up next, Illinois

The 50 States of Beer - Colorado

Colorado

New Belgium Brewery - Fort Collins, CO
Best Beer:

New Belgium's Biere de Mars

While visiting the New Belgium brewery in Fort Collins last March, we took the tour. At one point we stopped for a tasting, and I asked the tour guide if we could try a beer that you couldn't get outside of the brewery at that time.

He poured us a Biere de Mars Ale. It was a great beer. The first thing we did was throw it back, it had a lemon taste that invited drinking.

Then he says "Ok, now taste the beer." Ours were gone. So he poured us another, it was just as good as the first.

He told us a story of how the head brewer at New Belgium, Peter Bouckaert (a belgian) loved how American's were so different than Europeans when it came to beers. If you hand a European a beer... they sniff it, they scrutinize it.

Hand a beer to an American and we drink it. Cause, hey, you might give us another.

For More Reading about New Belgium and Biere De Mars, go here.

Up next, Nebraska

Microbrew Adventures in Colorado

So, in March my friends Erick, JJ and I decided to go on a road trip.

We met up, packed a car and headed west towards Las Vegas (or as I like to call it, Lost Wages) to visit one of our other good friends and fellow home brewer, Joey Bag of Donuts.

Well, as luck would have it, there are several microbreweries between southwest Iowa and Las Vegas, so we decided to visit some.

1st Brewery: New Belgium Brewery - Fort Collins, Co

New Belgium was a great brewery. The three of us all gave it high marks. You could really tell they took a lot of time to make a visit to the brewery a well rounded experience.

The story goes like this:

We walk in, have our complementary beers, and then inquire about the tour. We are told that you need to go online to sign up for the tour, which we didn't do. We do get our name on the list though, just in case someone doesn't show.

I get a textual message from Nick saying that when he visited the brewery a few years ago they told him to write a haiku about New Belgium and that if we read it infront of the bar, we'd get a free beer... well JJ, Erick and I like free beer. So we put our poetry hats on.

They were fedoras.

We came up with this:

Sunshine Wheat, Fat Tire.
We All Love Mothership Wit.
Fifteen Fifty-Four.

Pretty fucking good, huh?

So I go up to the bar and ask the fella about the haiku, and he says he'd never heard of it, dammit. Haiku written in vein... the worse kind of haiku.

Then, as luck would have it, someone skipped the tour so we got in. Awesome.

So the tour begins and there is a table full of beers. The tour guide starts talking, makes a few jokes and gets some laughs. I make some jokes... get some half assed laughs but I can tell this guide works alone, so I decide to lay off the jokes.

Then, this fella with a hat that looked like a bear. (Bearhat = asshole, amiright?) starts talking. He was annoying, but harmless. Him and the tour guide developed a repour and I knew I was not gonna be the class clown of this tour.

The tour guide handed everyone a beer, and continued to talk about the brewery, and goes over some rules. Then Bearhat pulls every bodies favorite (read: nobodies favorite) trick where they point off into space and go "whats that" and then steals another beer.

Tour guide gets pissed. Bearhat looked like an asshole, and the rest of the tour was pretty great.

We asked if we could try a beer you can't get anywhere else, and the guide let us try the Biere De Marz, which was wonderful. JJ and I finished ours quickly, not realizing he wanted us to slow drink it, so he poured us another. (That's when Erick finished his and got another. We can work a system.)

Another cool thing was we got to try an Abbey, that had been bottled that day. It was good.

At the end of the tour, where they were very good about getting us a 3/4 drunk, we went down a slide and watched a video.

We bought growlers, and all in all the experience was great and a hell of a way to kick off our brew tour.

2nd Brewery: Coopersmith's Pub & Brewing - Fort Collins, Co

Coopersmith's was a brewpub. We were pretty drunk by the time we got there. The first thing I noticed walking in was the names of the beers, like Columbine Kolsch and Punjabi Pale Ale.

Now, to me those sounded sorta sketchy, but they both were pretty good.

We ate dinner at Coopersmith's and they (like any respectable Witherspoons franchise in Europe) had a 2 dinner special. I had fish and chips and drank.

The beer was very good, and the staff were knowledgable. We didn't take a tour, but did get a little history of the place, learning that it was started by 2 former Old Chicago managers.

My personal favorite beer on tap was the Punjabi Cask Conditioned Pale Ale. I bought a growler, and would very much like to go back next time I am in Fort Collins and drink some more.

3rd Brewery: Oskar Blues - Lyons, Co... I mean Longmont, Co.

Oskar Blues is popular for being the only micro/craft brewery that solely cans their beer. That sounds like a joke. It is not.

The whole place wasn't a joke either. We originally drove to the brewery in Lyons which is a brewpub, but no longer the major brewery. That is in Longmont. So we drove to Longmont, and passed another Oskar Blues restaurant, on the way to the new brewery.

The brewery was a giant warehouse looking building. We weren't for sure if it was the right place, maybe we should have stopped at the resturant, but then we saw this door.

And went inside. There was a tiny bar, called "The Tasty Weasel". We tried some beer, Dale's Pale Ale and Mama's Little Yellow Pils standing out in my mind, and then took the tour.

The tour was given by the cutest girl, and she was full of energy and willing to answer all our questions. However, she couldn't. She had only given a handful of tours, but she was cute, so we let it slide.

She also introduced us to the brewer, Eric, who did answer some questions.

Oskar Blues was very impressive, and the fact that they only can seems to be very controversial. We had never heard of the brewery, but they are in over 25 states.

After the tour, we got to hang out in the employee break area, drink and play this shuffle board style game.

At the Oskar Blues restaurant in Longmont, we ate lunch and drank some more. Also, JJ spilled a glass of water everywhere.

4th Brewery: Left Hand Brewing Company - Longmont, Co

Of all the breweries we'd been to at this point, Left Hand was the one I was most familiar with. I had drank a lot of the Left Hand Milk Stout and Sawtooth Ale in my time.

In my mind, the brewery was going to be a lot like New Belgium. Big, Fancy, Flashy. It wasn't. That isn't a bad thing though.

The bartender was great, and there was a couple sitting next to us who gave us a good history of the brewery as well as a history of themselves.

After having a flight of beers, we inquired about a tour. The bartender told us if she could find someone to give us one, we could go.

She did.

At the time I am writing this, I have forgotten his name. Because I was drunk. This was after we'd been to Oskar Blues and drank a lot at Left Hand already. But, what I do remember is that the tour was amazing.

He kept telling us that he wasn't for sure what we wanted to know, and that he hadn't given tours before. But then we spent about an hour and a half going around the brewery, learning everything and taking photos.

I don't want to publish everything that went on in the brewery because of OSHA restrictions, but ask me and you'll get the low down.

I was to drunk when we left to get a growler, but I still plan on going back.

5th Brewery: CB and Potts - Denver, Co

I will not dignify this brewery with information. Just stay away. If not for the picture below I wouldn't even believe we went there.

6th Brewery: Breckenridge Brewery & Pub - Breckenridge, Co
We went to the Breckenridge Brewpub the day after our adventures in Longmont. So we were all a little under the weather. That sucked, considering they had such great beer.

Breckenridge, famous for it's Oatmeal Stout, is no longer only made in the town it's named for, but is now in Denver. But, the brewpub is still supplied by it's on sight brewery.

We met the brew master, and he gave us a tour. He was a really nice guy. For a popular brewery, it was run small. I liked that. The brew master made all the beer, and there were only a handful of employees.

I wish we could have hit the brewery in Denver, just for comparison, but that'll be for another time.

As a whole, the brewery leg of our trip was pretty good. CB and Potts wasn't the only shit brewery we stopped at, there were a couple in Las Vegas that were bad. But still, we drank more good beer than bad.

The 50 States of Beer - California

California

Anchor Brewing - San Francisco, CA

Best Beer:

Anchor Steam is the first TRUE American Beer. Originally brewed in the 1896, it's called "Steam Beer" due to it being brewed with lager yeast at ale temperatures, during the gold rush when they didn't have the ability to brew at the temperatrure required for the popular lagers of the time. (or so the story goes).

The dry taste is a real unique character to the brew, and thanks to some handy trademarking in those early years, Anchor Brewing is the only official brewery that makes a "Steam Beer".

I had my first Anchor Steam at Old Chicago in Ames in 2006, and have drank several since. It's always a safe bet.

For more reading on Anchor Steam, go here.
And visit the official Anchor Brewing website, here.

Up next, Colorado