Come for the Tour Stay for the Beer

December 12, 2007

Last Saturday(12/8/07) was a day to celebrate the 11th anniversary of one of the most unique breweries in the state of Michigan, Arcadia Brewing Co. It was our first visit to the brewery and initially we were only going for the Michigan Brewer’s Guild membership tour between 1pm -3pm. Once we got there we came to the conclusion that we would need to stay longer than planned. Luckily we found a walking distance hotel and someone to feed our 2 cats which the brewer and our tour guide, Bryan Wiggs seemed to get a kick out of.

The day started off with a tour of the brewery. They have a Paul Austin brewery which is meant to give the beer an English feel reflecting on 250 years of brewing history. They have a 25 barrel system and open fermenters and use nothing but English malts, Northwest American hops and Ringwood yeast. They also “burtonize” their water which hardens the water in order to get to be more like the waters of Burton-on-Trent. This gives their beer a real English feel. Their dedication to brewing in this uniquely English style has paid off. This year they won a silver in the Barley Wine Style category with their Cereal Killer Barley Wine at the Great American Beer Festival. I got to try this beer later and it was excellent. They have won many other medals at the World Cup and won praises in Scotland’s Tradition Ale Festival by being named one of the finest cask ales served at their 1997 festival.

After the tour we had to leave in order to allow them to get prepared for the Anniversary party. So we went down to a local beer bar called Griffin bar and grille. They have a funny little slogan there,”Good for what ales you”. They back it up with 31 taps plus 2 hand-pulls. The hand-pulls they had on Saturday were Arcadia Scotch Ale and Bell’s Two Hearted. It had an old time pub feel andwas almost as good as having a Bells’ cask. I heard they sometimes serve something called Amberon which a combination Bell’s Oberon and a Bell’s Amber in a hand-pull tap. I have to come back when that is on tap.

We then went to the Arcadia 11th anniversary party. They went all out with their employees dressed in kilts, an address to the haggis, bagpipes and a Celtic band(Fonn Mor). A great sounding fun band. If you ever get a chance you should check them out. The highlight of the evening was the release of a 2 new beers every hour. My wife and I would split each of these beers so we could hang out without over doing it and if you drink only what is released you will only have a pint an hour. The highlights were the Hop Rocket a triple I.P.A. and Cereal Killer Barley Wine. They also had a Cherry Cocoa Loco which is a chocolate stout that seemed pretty light on the cherries but I really like the regular Cocoa Loco so I’d prefer no cherries anyway. The best part is, we had a good showing from the MI Craft Beer group so we had a lot of great people to hang out with.

On a final note we ran into Bill Metzger. Bill is the publisher of Brewing News. This area(MI) is covered by the Great Lakes Brewing News. It is a great paper for info on what is happening in the world of beer but I read it for the articles. These papers are available in all areas of the country and they are a great help when planning your vacation…that is if you vacation like us and want to check out the local breweries. Saturday, Bill and was outto have fun but he is often at events like this to sell products from the Brewing News web site. One of my favorites is the “Make Beer Not War” t-shirt.

Posted in Beer Event, Brewery/Brewpub