We live near an area of Northeast Minneapolis that has exploded with microbreweries/taprooms. When Nate's relatives were here last week we decided we had to take them on a taproom tour! Most of them are close enough together that you can almost walk to each one too which is awesome. Thursday evening was warm, but a perfect night to explore! My parents kindly babysat Oliver so we could be out and about for awhile.
We started at Sociable Cider Werks - which actually isn't beer, it's all hard ciders. They opened up like the week Oliver was born or right around then and we were going to try to go sometime this winter, but just never got there as we really hadn't been doing much of this kind of thing until this summer really! I really enjoyed this place, there are a large variety of ciders that they make! They don't do flights, but they do offer small pours of their brews, so we ordered one of each and then between the five of us we passed them around and each got a taste of each one!
Nate's cousins and aunt are not huge craft beer drinkers in general (they live in Budweiser land after all) so we figured this was a good place to start the evening. Everyone had at least one that they really liked, so that worked out well!
Nate, Scott, Linda and Tyler enjoying a cider
Down the road from Sociable Cider Werks are two breweries you can park in between and just walk from one to the other. Bauhaus Brew Labs and 612 Brew. Nate and I had just been to Bauhaus on our date night a couple of weeks ago, but decided they would probably like this one a lot as many of the beers they have are nice, light and easy drinking for even the most sensitive pallet. They also do flights, so we were able to order a couple and share.
They also had one beer on cask that evening (it's a different way of kegging beer) so we ordered one of those for everyone to try as well!
Nate's sister and her boyfriend also met up with us and they were happy to help us drink the beers too! Another nice thing about each of these breweries is they usually have a food truck on site so we were also able to purchase some food to nosh on as well. Back at Sociable they had a Japanese style food truck with some of the best potstickers I've had in ages.
Cheers to MN beers!
We walked over to 612 Brew after we finished at Bauhaus. 612 gets it's name from the area code for most of Minneapolis. They have never been my favorite of the taprooms near us, when we first started going there I used to wonder if they wanted to be a taproom or a dance club with how loud they pump their music (yes I am 90) but this time was much better. I feel their beer has improved a bit too, though it's still not my most favorite. We knew they also did beer flights though so we thought it would be another good choice to do some sampling.
Nate's sister will kill me for this pic when she sees it!
They have really nice paddles for their beer flights. I'd say their most improved brew to me - at least from the last time I had it which was before I even got pregnant with Oliver is one called Mary Ann, it has ginger in it (nice play on Gilligan's Island!) and it was actually quite refreshing on a warm night! The last time I had it I could barely taste the ginger, but this time it was definitely noticeable!
It was getting pretty late at this point - well late for these parents who needed to go get their baby at some point - so we decided to make just one more stop before heading home for the night and I was really wanting to take them to my favorite of the Northeast breweries for selfish reasons - I still hadn't been there in person since having Ollie. So we headed to Indeed Brewing Company and ordered a last round there. Indeed was probably not a great choice for their specific taste in beer, but I just adore this place so much I wanted them to at least see it and give it a try. They did actually like a couple of their options as well. And Andrew Zimmern's food truck was there so they thought that was pretty awesome too!
Enjoying a few last brews at Indeed.
Even though they aren't as huge into the craft beers as we are, his cousins and aunt really enjoyed checking all of these places out with us. We ended up having them over to our house on their last night here and then they sampled Nate's beer and they said his beer was the best they'd ever had! I thought that was really sweet, one of them even wants to try homebrewing now - so overall I think we taught them pretty well!
