The Place Where We Live

If you’ve been reading my blog, enjoying my summer beer trip adventures, and have been wondering to yourself “Where can I taste some of these Michigan beers?” Well…your answer is here in Monroe.

That’s right. Kevin and I have been working with the owners of 129 Lounge in Monroe on organizing a Michigan Beer tasting in honor of (the last day of) Michigan Craft Beer month.

Beers from the following Michigan craft breweries will be featured:

Arbor Brewing Company
Arcadia
Bells
Dark Horse
Founders
Frog Island
New Holland

There will be 17 different beers featured. One of them will be a limited-time-only brew called “Unity Grand Crew” a beer collaboratively brewed by many of the brewers in the State. Click here to read about it!

Forget the demolition derby! Hope to see you there!

We left Calumet on day five of our trip around 10 a.m. It was a 7 hour drive back down to our next stop, Bellaire, Michigan so we figured that would get us to our next destination between five and six p.m. On our way back we decided, rather than backtracking the way that we had come, we would take the route that took us along the southern edge of the UP (eventually along the northern Lake Michigan coastline) AND would allow us to stop for lunch at Hereford and Hops Restaurant and brewpub in Escanaba for lunch, since - according to the Michigan Breweries guide book - the restaurant opened at noon on Sundays. Unfortunately, when we arrived at Hereford, we found that, since the book went to print the place had changed their hours and now wasn’t open until 4 p.m. So, even though we can’t say we tasted there beer at Hereford and Hops, we were at least THERE and managed to snap a picture of the sign.

On the other hand, we were able to make really great time back down to the LP so we decided that we would drive to Bellaire via Petoskey, where (according to Nick the Merchant Marine we met at Keweenaw) there was a brew-pub. We’d never heard it…and now we know that (as in the case of Leelanau Brewing) if we’ve never heard of it, there’s a  chance that it may not actually exist (or it exists, but not in a form conducive to a visit.) After asking several people we finally got our answer: It had gone out of business five years ago.

By the time we got back on the road and got to Bellaire, it was five o’clock. We had arrived at the bed and breakfast where we would be staying for the night just in time for their wine and social hour with other guests. Although I was saving my energy (and alcohol consumption) for Short’s I was excited because - after all - we were practically in Michigan wine country and it would be nice to relax and have a glass of great Michigan wine on the porch with other guests. We ended up being pretty disappointed when out of the four wines they were serving none of them were from Michigan. We politely drank a small glass each of red wine, socialized for a bit with the owners Dave and Jim and the other guests and then were off. After all, the only reason we were staying in Bellaire was Short’s.

Short’s is probably, at least in my book, one of the best breweries in the state. What makes Short’s even more intersting is that the owner and brewer, Joe Short, is around the same age as me (29) and has owned the brewery since he was 25! And he brews amazing beer.

When we walked into the place we were amazed at the chalk board on the back wall which seemed as if it had a never ending selection of beer on tap. When we sat down and the bartender asked us what we wanted we told her, “Just give us a sampler of your best beers.”

She brought out two five-beer flights consisting of:

1. Ginger and Rye (The Vernors of Beer)
2. Local’s Light (The closest I’ve ever had to a Budweiser at a micro-brewery. This may not sound like it, but that’s high praise considering how difficult it is to make a flawless American lager)
3. Pontius Road Pilsner
4. Village Reserve (a nice easy drinking California Common Beer)
5. Pandemonium Pale
6. Sustenance Black Beer
7. Bellaire Brown
8. Chocolate Wheat
9. Huma-Lupa-Licious (any botanists out there will get the reference)
10.The Soft Parade (a mixed fruit beer)

After that flight and a nice appetizer we decided to try the last five beers that they had on tap.

11. Hangin Frank
12. Nicey Spicey (A wild experimental blonde wheat beer spiced with lemon, orange, coriander, and peppercorns! It was an excellent beer, although I’m sure I couldn’t drink a lot of it.)
13. Autumn Ale
14. Smoked Apple Ale (another wild but great beer)
15. Purple Rain (another fruity berry beer)

It also turns out that, since we were staying at the Bellaire Bed and Breakfast we were entitled to their mug club membership privileges. Although we didn’t really want to drink much more , we knew we were at a great place and didn’t want to leave. So we decided to order a mug of the Village reserve to split.

We sat down on the couch there (which was really actually an old red car seat) and talked and drank our beer. It was a good thing we stuck around for that last beer, because if we hadn’t, we wouldn’t have gotten to meet Joe, the brewer. Although we had never met Joe we knew who he was the second he walked in the door because…well…a friend of ours told us he looked like Harry Potter…and…he really kinda does. (Luckily Joe Short will probably never read this because I’m sure he gets that all of the time and is probably pretty sick of hearing it!)

We introduced ourselves, told Joe about our trip and chatted with him for a while. We were a little bit disappointed that there was no live music that night as promised. However, Shorts was such a great place it was definitely worth staying there. We finally left a little bit before closing 11 p.m. loaded up with hooded sweatshirts, a pint glass, and a bottle of Joes special limited edition Imperial Cherry Porter. We walked back to the Bellaire Bed and Breakfast (a beautiful place with excellent hosts od - in spite of the non-Michigan wine thing) and settled in for the night.

After a delicious breakfast of fluffy egg casserole, cajun bacon, apple crumb cake, fresh fruit, coffee and cranberry apple juice, and coffee we set out for Traverse City.

Last time, I wrote an entire post about the Michigan House Cafe/Red Jacket Brewpub.

Tonight I want to fill you in on our other stops while we were in the UP before we made our way back down to the mitt.

On Saturday we decided to make our way up the Keweenaw peninsula to Copper Harbor (the very tip) to do a little sight-seeing. We stopped at a lookout from which you could view the Copper Harbor light and then made our way back down Brockway mountain drive which includes a lookout with the highest elevation in the UP. The tip to take Brockway mountain drive came from a few bikers that we had met at dinner in Munising.

As we made our way back down we decided to stop at a local jam shop in Eagle Harbor called the Jam Pot. I figured it would be a great place to do a little shopping for some great jam made from seasonal produce. And it was…only better… it was great jam from seasonal produce and homemade baked goods MADE BY MONKS. How cool! Okay, maybe it’s not that cool for most folks, but as someone who works for a religious community, I thought it was pretty cool. I guess it would only have been cooler if they had MADE THEIR OWN BEER. Just kidding…sort of.

Three jars of jam (to take back for ourselves and as gifts) and one gigantic pumpkin muffin with cream cheese frosting later we made our way back down the peninsula to Calumet.  It was lunch time and we knew the perfect place to go…the Calument “Pasty Festival.” Sadly, the Pasty festival was not as exciting as it sounded. There were only two actual booths where we could buy pasties (we bought two and split each), a band, and a few little craft stands. We found out later that most folks were at the Firemans festival and softball tournament a little way down the road. That explained it. Hey after all, we were in the UP.

After our brief visit to the pasty festival we decided to get back in the car and head into Houghton for our next two beer destinations.

Our first stop was Keweenaw Brewing Company. We ordered the customary sampler which included the Pick Axe blonde ale, the Full Gale pale ale , the Lift Bridge brown, the Waterfront wheat, the Coal Porter(don’t you just love regional beer names), the Red Jacket amber (our favorite), and the Sandy Bottom Session ale. The place was kind of dead when we arrived but started to pick up later in the afternoon as groups of wedding-celebrants stopping in for a pint between the ceremony and the reception wandered in. We ended up talking for a while with a local named Nick, a retired merchant marine who chattend with us about everything from, his travels, to books, to movies,to politics to  local cheese. During that time, Nick bought us a pint of the Red Jacket Amber which we split. I also found the perfect t-shirt that that said “Think globally, drink locally>” on it. Unfortunately they were all out of everything except X-large sizes. We bought a mixed six pack of the Pick-Axe blonde and the Red Jacket amber to take home as a gift for my dad.  Keweenaw is the only brewery in Michigan that cans their beer. However, the cans are lined with glass so as to not give the beer that tin-ey taste. I tried one at the Michigan House. Personally, I could tell the difference between the canned beer and the beer on tap. Maybe it’s just because it’s fresher at the brewery.

By the time we left Keweenaw it was time for dinner, we made our way a few blocks over to The Libary pub and restaurant. We started out with (of course) a sampler of their beer which included the White Out wheat, the Keweenaw Golden ale, the Rock Harbor Light ale, the Portage Premium lager, the Red Brick rye (Kevin’s favorite) the Coppertown Ale, the Rabbit Bay brown, the Java Stout (my favorite), and the Shaft House dry stout. Our dinner there was great, a highlight being a delicious au gratin beer cheese soup with homemade croutons.

We made it a short night and headed back to the Michigan House where we relaxed and sat at the bar for a little while and chatted with Tim and Sue (the owners). We called it a night around 10:30. The next morning we would be driving all the way back down to the LP (about a 7-hour trip) to Bellaire the home of Short’s Brewing Company. More on that next time…

As I said on my last post, I decided to devote an entire post to one of the next stops on our Michigan Beer Tour - The Michigan House Cafe/Red Jacket Brewing Company in Calumet. All the way up in the Keweenaw Peninsula - The northern most part of the UP.

The interesting thing about the Michigan House is - while we were there for two days (Friday night and Saturday night of our trip) - we never once drank a beer that was actually brewed at the Michigan House. Let me explain.

The Michigan House is owned by Tim and Sue Bies. According to our Michigan Breweries book: In the early 1900s, (during the heyday of the copper rush in the UP)  in what was originally the prosperous town of Red Jacket, now part of Calumet,  a brewer named Joseph Bosch built a twenty-one room hotel and bar. As the mines died out, Calumet became a near ghost town. After World War II, the Michigan House Hotel was converted into apartments. The building eventually was abandoned and stood empty for fifteen years until the Bies’ came along. The couple gradually restored the Michigan house to its original turn-of-the-century elegance and opened a restaurant and bar. They also converted two of the apartments on the second floor of the building into guest rooms for travelers. The Bies’ themselves live on the third floor.  

Tim, a homebrewer for years, decided to add a beer of his own to the line-up at the bar and began brewing his signature Oatmeal Espress stout made with locally roasted coffee. While Tim has added seasonal beers to his repetoire, he continues to brew in small batches, only one  at a time using what could be considered nothing more than a top-of-the line home brewing system. As a result the Red Jacket Brewing Company  only produces one half barrel batch a week with an annual average production of about 26 barrels. (Compare that to Bell’s which produces around 57,000 barrels a year!)

While planning our trip, Kevin and I were intrigued by the place and decided to book  one of the rooms above the restaurant there for two nights. While we obviously wouldn’t have a wide selection of beer to sample during our stay, we were charmed by the small mom-and-pop feel of the business and were excited about the stout.

When we arrived at the Michigan House on Friday evening we were pretty road weary. The bartender, Sam, greeted us and showed us to our room upstairs which he unlocked with an old time skeleton key. The room was quaint and homey yet spacious with its own kitchenette decorated with a collection of antique waffle irons. We rested for a bit, and then headed downstairs for dinner. Since we had already stopped at a few places earlier in the day we decided to wait until after our meal to partake of the famous oatmeal stout.

The food at the Michigan House was great. Probably the best meal we had on our entire trip. Both of us had excellent locally caught Lake Superior fish entrees. After we finished our meals we sat back and relaxed waiting for the waitress to come along so we could order that beer. No need for a sampler. There was just one beer. We’d each order a pint. It would be great! Eventually she did and that’s when we got the depressing news…THEY WERE COMPLETELY OUT OF THE STOUT and probably wouldn’t haven any tapped again for another week!

We were shocked. Here we were at the nothern-most brewery in Michigan, for two nights, eager to try this one beer we had heard so much about…and it was gone…all gone. It was kind of like that scene in A Christmas story where the neighbor’s dogs eat the Christmas turkey. 

While we were completely bummed about our luck we didn’t fret too much. After all, the Bies’ not only brewed beer… they appreciated it. So even without there stout, there were a number of great local beers (from Michigan and Wisconsin - which in the UP is almost more local than Michigan) to choose from on the menu. Besides we soon realized that there were so many other things that we loved about the Michigan House, we could deal with the fact that we wouldn’t be able to try their famous beer: the excellent food; the quaint room we could walk up to after spending an evening at the bar watching the Tiger Game and having a few beers; the original mural above the bar depicting German revelers; the complementary soaps sitting next to the claw-foot bathtub in our room - hand made by Sue Bies - using spent beer grain as an exfoliant; the childrens book that Tim and Sue authored and illustrated called “Hops in Socks” which teaches kids about the art of brewing; the two dogs who greeted us at the door when we walked up the stairs to go to to bed at night. These things made us realize that there are more important things in life (and on vacation) than beer. 

While sitting at the bar on our last night there we had a chance to talk for a while with Tim and Sue. We told them about our what we were doing. They apologized for the absence of the stout and explained that some unexpected emergency repairs had come up which had put Tim behind in his brewing. Apparently that’s one of the major drawbacks to owning your own restaurant, bar, guesthouse, AND trying to brew your own beer at the same time. We assured them that we didn’t mind, we were having such a great time there.

That night we bought two copies of the “Hops in Socks” book, one to give to a friend of our who has a four-year-old son and one to keep for ourselves for or own little future brewer we may have someday. Sue even gave me a few free bars of her handmade “brewer’s soap” wrapped in cellophane, tied with a ribbon and adorned with a sprig of dried barley.

It’s safe to say that the Michigan House was probably the one of the best places we stayed at on the whole trip, and we met some of the coolest people in the  UP. We’ll definitely visit there again. Only next time… we’ll call ahead to make sure Tim’s got some of that stout on tap.  

June 29, 2007 - Got on the road around 10:00 a.m. Arrived at our next destination, Marquette, around 10:45. Our brewery destination in Marquette - Vierling Restaurant/Marquette Harbor Brewing Co.-  like most places didn’t open unti. 11 a.m. So we took a walk around the pier for about a half an hour.

During our walk we stumbled upon an exhibit called “Grandma Doors”  all along the waterfront of the and throughout the park. I guess I shouldn’t say stumbled  upon because you can’t miss the 200-plus doors that line the waliking/bike trail. Local artists decorated the doors in honor their grandmothers. 

Around 11:30 a.m. we made our way back up from the waterfront to Vierling. 

The inside of Marquette Harbor is beautiful old place with a gorgeous oak bar. Sitting in the pub you feel like you’re in a turn of the century pub. We sat down and were waited on by Jamie (a friendly bartender with cute Betty Page bangs). We ordered a sampler of everything and Jamie caught on right away to the fact that we were Michigan beer tourists. After all, we were sampling beer beforn noon on a Friday.  Beers sampled included:  a nut brown ale (excellent) the plank road pale ale (another favorite), the Spears Tug stout, a Canadian blonde ale, a scotch ale (very light for a scotch ale which is usually pretty bold with a very high alcohol content - but that’s okay. Afterall, it was only 11:30 a.m.) a peach wheat , a blueberry wheat (complete with whole blueberries bobbing up and down in the glass) and the Captain Ripley red.

We weren’t quite hungry enough for lunch yet but we decided to split an appetizer of beer-cheese spread and breadsticks. The breadsticks were deep-fried. Completely unneccessary but delicous nonetheless.  We sat and talked for a while with Jamie and with a man  who was originally from Florida but who was staying with his sister for a year in Marquette. We didn’t stay too long at Vierling. Our final destination for the day was the Keweenaw Peninsula and we had one more stop to make before getting there - Jasper Ridge Brewing Company in Ishpeming.   

Jasper Ridge was named after, according to our Michigan Breweries book, Jasper Knob, a nearby  rock formation that is the world’s largest jemstone. Jasper Knob is made of alternating bands of jasper and hemetite.  I have to admit that we weren’t all that impressed with the location of Jasper Ridge. We actually passed it once because it was back off the road a bit in a strip-mall-ey busness complex that includes a few hotels, several restaurants, a movie theater and a bowling alley. However - what the place lacked in location it made up for in good beer and great hospitality.

By the time we arrived the place was packed with locals there for lunch. And, as at Vierling, we were identified right away as Michigan beer tourists. This time it was because we brought our Michigan Breweries book into the pub with us. Turns out, it’s a good thing we did. As we sat down and ordered our sampler (this one included the Ropes golden wheat, a Raspberry wheat, the Copper Kolsch, a belgian wit, the Jasper Brown ale, and Red Earth Pale ale - my favorite) a man approached us who turned out to be Grant Lyke - the brewer at Jasper Ridge.

Grant was a wonderful host who stuck around and chatted with us the whole time we were there. At one point he asked the see our Michigan Breweries book. He remembered being interviewed for the  book but had never read the finished product. In While we were finishing up our beer he went into the back office and decided to order several copies of the book to sell at the gift-counter. He even posed for a picture for us in the back in front of his brewing equipment.

We could have stayed a lot longer at Jasper Ridge, however, the rest of the afternoon was dedicated to our drive to the Keweenaw Peninsula where we would be staying for two nights. We took our time getting there even stopping along the way for a short hike at a little known place we discovered in our “Off the Beaten Path - Michigan” guidebook. It’s actually located at a rest area! Just beyond the bathrooms, back off the road is  path that creeps into the woods and within a half a mile comes to the impressive Canyon falls formed by the Sturgeon River.

We arrived in Calumet(just past Houghton/Hancock) around 4:30 p.m. that afternoon. We stayed two nights at the Michigan House Cafe/Red Jacket Brewing Company. I’ll save Michigan House for tomorrow’s post.

June 28, 2007. We woke up around 8:00 Thursday morning to some chilly UP weather. It was in the mid-nineties when we left Monroe so temps in the low to mid fifties with a breeze were a shock. We put on the few warm pieces of clothing we packed up our camp-site and headed off for breakfast and to plan the next leg of our trip.

After breakfast, we drove out to Whitefish Point to the Great Lakes Shipwreck museum. The area of Lake Superior just off of Whitefish Point is called “the graveyard of the Great Lakes” because of the wicked November storms that whip up there which have caused many wrecks on the lake.  The most famous shipwreck is that of The Edmund Fitzgerald in 1975.

The museum features exhibits on the most famous shipwrecks in that area dating all the way back to the 1800s, including some of the salvaged wreckage. One of the highlights is the bell that they brought up from the wreckage of the EF. You can also go and see a short 15-minute film about their 1995 dive to recover the bell in and replace it with a new one engraved with the names of the people who died in the wreck. Kevin and I actually got a little choked up watching the film when one man talked about surviving the Vietnam war and then losing his brother several years later on the Fitzgerald.

One of the drawbacks of the museum is that the Gordon Lightfoot song “Wreck of th Edmund Fitzgerald is on a continuous loop and was also used in the soundtrack for the film. After listening to it on our drive out to Whitefish Point and then hearing it continuously in the museam, we were sick of the song.

After, our trip to the Shipwreck Museam we visited Tahquamenon Falls. Our original intent was to hike from our campground to the falls. However, we realized the night before that our site in the Tahquamenon State Park that the campsite we had chosen was about 15 miles away from the falls and…well we decided to drive. We stopped at the lower falls first and then the upper falls. The upper falls are the larger and more impressive of the two.  East of the Missisippi, Tahquamenon (with a fifty foot drop) is the third largest next to Niagra Falls and Cumberland falls in Kentucky.

Our visit to the falls also led us to our second beer destination - Tahquamenon Falls Brewery and Pub which is located in the Tahquamenon State Park near the  upper falls. According to our “Michigan Breweries Guidebook.” The Tahquamenon Falls Brewery and Pub was originally an old logging camp built by Jack Barrett of Barrett Logging Company. The pub now is owned and operated by b Lark Carlyle Ludlow, the granddaughter of Jack Barrett. She is also the brewer now at Tahquamenon which we thought was pretty cool considering brewing is for the most part, a male-dominated industry.

As we sat down for lunch the place was bustling with lots of other tourists like us who were there to see the falls.  However, we were there for the beer so we sat at the bar and ordered a sampler of the three offerings they had on tap: The Lumber Jack Lager, the Harvest Ale and the Black Bear Stout. The Black Bear was our favorite so we decided to split a pint. For lunch we shared a pasty. Our first the UP. It was one of the best that we had on our whole trip.

Our next destinaiton was Lake Superior Brewing Company in Grand Marais, a sleepy little Lake Superior harbor town. We stopped in  to split a sampler which included the Cabin Fever Extra Special Bitter (our favorite). Their Granite Brown (our second favorite) the Hematite Stout, Sandstone IPA, Jasper Cherry, and Puddington Wheat. Lake Superior was a nice contrast to our visit to the Tahquamenon Brew Pub. It was smaller and had more of a “local watering hold” kind of feel to it.  We chatted for a while with Stacey a man from Grand Rapids with a summer home just outside of town who was there with his granddaughter for lunch and a pint. 

After our brief stop at Lake Superior BP we set off again. We decided to take some of the back roads so that we could see the Pictured Rocks National Lake Shore. Pictured Rocks gets its name from the sandstone bluffs that rise 200 feet up from the water’s surface. The cliffs are shades of pink, red and green from the mineral rich water that seeps from the rock. (Probably some of the minerals that those beers were named after in Lake Superior!)

After driving 40 miles on mostly dirt roads through Pictured Rocks,we decided to call it a night that evening in Munising  We ate dinner at a little family restaurant that Stacy recommended for us called ”The Dogpatch” which is cleverly decorated with Lil Abner cartoon characters.

Our Michigan summer beer tour started on the June 27th. We left around 10 a.m. Before leaving Kevin made a set of mix CDs of Michigan/Great Lakes themed songs to listen to on the drive. Highlights were such classics as Gordon Lightfoot’s “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald and “Ode to the Pasty” by Folk Singer Kitty Donohue.

We arrived at our first destination around 1:30 in the afternoon. Just in time for lunch. Our first stop was Wiltse’s Brewpub and Family restaurant in Oscoda, Michigan. Oscoda is on what we learned is called the “Sunrise Coast” meaning the east coast of Michigan or Lake Huron coast at the mouth of the Ausable river. We also learned that Oscoda claims to be the birthplace of Paul Bunyan. I say claims because this title has also been claimed by Bangor, Maine and Akeley, Minnesota and probably countless other logging towns around the country. However the Michigan legislature ignored this claim and offically declared the legendary character a native of Oscoda.

However, you have to admit, setting up a brewpub in this town lends itself to clever names for beer such as the the Paul Bunyan ale and and Babe the Blue Ox stout. We started with a pint each - for me, a pint of the Au Sable Weizenbeer (a classic summery german wheat beer) and Kevin a pint of the Oscoda rare (the regular rotating tap) which at this time was a double IPA (India Pale Ale for those not familiar with beer jargon. IPAs are highly hopped beers named for the days when the British added extra hops to beer that they were shipping to colonies overseas, in order to prevent spoiliage.)

For lunch, I decided to take advantage of being just off the coast of one of the Great Lakes (and tried to stick to the local diet - at least for that meal) and ordered pan fried yellow lake perch fresh from Lake Huron. Kevin ordered a burger infused with Paul Bunyan ale served on a pretzel bun. After lunch we decided to split five ounce samples of the other beers we hadn’t tried yet which included the Babe the Blue Ox Stout, the Paul Bunyan Ale, and the Wiltse’s lager. Kevin’s favorite was the stout (great smokey roasted malt flavor with hints of chocolate and coffee) and mine was the Paul Bunyan. Although the waitress described it as a ”red beer somewhat like Killians.” (I’ve noticed that sometimes waitresses feel like they have to describe beers in terms of common mass produced brands that people will know) it was actually more of a traditional American Pale Ale with the perfect balance of maltiness and citrusy hop flavor.

As we finished our samples, the waitress approached us to ask if there was anything else we needed and I, somewhat shyly, asked if the brewer was working today and, if so, if there was any chance we could meet him. Let’s face it, on this trip, brewers were like rock stars to us! Steve Moore came out and introduced himself and we began talking to him about the beer, our trip and about his work there. Steve is a retired airforce pilot. There was an Airforce base in Oscoda that closed in 1993. Now he works full-time at Wiltse’s as their brewer.  Kevin’s dream retirement job! There’s even a picture of a young Steve on the wall with a group of other airforce pilots posing in front of a B-52 Bomber.*

Steve was a wonderful host who sat and chatted with us for a while and even gave us  ice to fill our small cooler.We bought a growler of the Paul Bunyan to take with us that night to drink around the campfire.

We arrived in our final destination around 8 o’clock that evening - Taqhquamenon Falls State Park in the UP. By the time we set up camp, went and bought hot dogs and fire wood, started a fire, ate, and drank our growler of Paul Bunyan we were pretty tired. We decided to call it a night  around 11 p.m.

* Special thanks to Paul Ruschmann and Maryanne Nasiatka who wrote the book “Michigan Breweries” (2006, Stackpole Books). Their book was our primary travel guide for this trip. Without this book we wouldn’t have known to look for things like the picture of Steve next to the B-52. I will probably refer to this book a lot in my posts about this trip. The book is available at Amazon or you can ask your local book store to order it.

I originally intended to begin my Michigan beer trip posts - logically- with the first day of our trip. However, after posting my photo album to a Yahoo Group that Kevin and I belong to (Craft Beer in Michigan) several people saw my photo of a Leelanau Brewing Company sticker marked “Phantom Brewery?” and helped clear up  my questions about the existence of such a place. Also, since I was trying to reel everyone in yesterday with my teaser of a “phantom brewery” I decided that my first post would have to be about Leelanau Brewing Company even though I have never actually been there (well sort of) and have never sampled their beer.

Here’s the story:

On Tuesday, the day after we exploring the three breweries in Traverse City, we decided to venture intoTraverse City wine country and drove out to Chateau Chantal, a great winery on Old Mission Peninsula recommended by my mom. We were sampling wines but standing there in beer t-shirts (me in my “Make Beer Not War” shirt and Kevin in his Detroit Beer Co. shirt) so we felt obligated to explain to the man serving us that we were on a Michigan brewery tour–not to mention our utter ignorance of wine in comparison to our knowledge of beer at this point. 

It turned out that, in addition to making wine, this man also brewed his own beer and was intrigued by our trip. He asked us if we had been to Leelanau Brewing Company on the Leelanau Penninsula yet. What’s this? A brewery that we had never heard about. We were excited. He even went on to mention that he had tasted their beers and noted that they were packaged in 750 ml bottles.  “Hmm,” we said. “That sounds just like  Jolly Pumpkin.” (another craft brewery in Dexter, MI - which we’d visited before.) However He wasn’t familiar with JP.

He then asked a co-worker to look online for the address and phone number for us. She wrote it down on a post-it-note along with a toll-free phone number. After a few samples and bottles of wine to take home as gifts, we were on our way excited about our new discovery.

We  were able to quickly locate the address on the map and drove directly to the location.  “This works out well,” we thought. We were stopping in Lake Leelanau to buy coffee anyway, so it was on our way. We located the address right - 473 North Manitou Trail West. However, we didn’t find a brewery or pub. Instead, we found a bed and breakfast called “The Snowbird”. We decided that maybe we were accidentally on South Manitou trail so we pulled out turned around and went back in the opposite direction thinking that we might find another 473 street number down the road. No such luck. I decided to call the toll free number but got something that sounded like a home answering machine message. This was odd. Finally we decided to stop in downtown Leland at a bakery ( I don’t know why… but usually at every bakery there’s a brewer or at least someone interested in beer). One woman told us that she knew the place  and that it was actually in Glen Arbor. The other woman behind the counter reminded her that she was thinking of Leelanau Coffee Roasters not Leelanau Brewing.  In the end, neither of them had ever heard of it. 

We got back on the road and decided to forget about the brewery and stop and pick up our coffee at Higher Grounds. Just for the heck of it, we asked the two women working there about it.  They had never heard of it either but one of them went in the back to ask someone else. She came back to tell us to stop looking for it because it didn’t exist. The way she made it sound Leelanau Brewing Company was either a grand idea that never materialized or a ghost brewery that once existed but had gone out of business long ago.

We went on our merry way thinking we hadn’t missed out on anything…and decided to put it out of our minds… Until we arrived several days later at New Holland Brewing Company and picked up the most recent edition of Great Lakes Brewing News and noticed that - Sure enough -Leelanau was listed as a Michigan brewery. However, there was no  street address and the phone number had a 248 area code (Oakland County?) not a Traverse City area-code. How bizarre! However, we shrugged it off when we also noted that Leelanau was not listed in the Michigan Beer Guide.

The last straw was our stop “The Hide Out” in Grand Rapids where we saw the Leelanau Brewing Company sticker pasted to their cooler. The funny thing is, no one their could explain it their either.

Hence the phantom brewery.

Then we got back home and, as I said earlier, posted the photo to the Craft Beer in Michigan group. Several people wrote us back to tell us that Leelanau does exist although all of their beer is being brewed by Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales in Dexter  while the Leelanau owners are building/developing the brewery in Lake Leelanau. They pointed us to the Leelanau Brewing Company website (I don’t know why we didn’t think of this when we were finally in Saugatuck and had Internet access!) which held all the answers including the fact that their “headquarters are not currently open to the public.” The woman at the winery must have missed this small detail.

We also found out that Charles, the owner (and probably the mysterious voice on the answering machine) will have a booth at the 2007 Michgan Summer Beer fest. So we will get to sample Leelanau Brewing Company beer.

Needless to say, we can’t wait to meet Charles at the beer festival if possible and to someday stay at the “Snowbird” when it is a farmhouse craft brewery/B&B.

Believe me…we definitely know how to get there by now.

Sorry it’s been a while since my last post. Kevin and I have been on an 11 day brewery tour of Michigan for our summer vacation.

Did you know that there are over 66 craft breweries in the state?

In all we visited twenty three Michigan microbreweries and sampled over 150 different beers (most of the time we split 5 oz samples of each so that we wouldn’t overdo it!)

Our trip was timely considering that the Michigan Legislature recently passed H.R. 140 designating July as Michigan Craft Beer Month. 

In honor of Michigan Craft Beer month (and leading up to the 10th anniversary of the Michigan Summer Beer Festival) I’ll be posting some of the highlights of our trip, including one phantom brewery which we were told existed but we were never able to find.

In other Michigan beer related news, check out this post  over on Jacob Longton’s Laissez-faire blog for his take on the possibility of a Michigan beer tax.