The Michigan House Cafe/Red Jacket Brewing Company
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.