Grizzly Growler

I meant to write something more in depth about the Missoula Brewfest this weekend, but time just got away from me. So now you know. There’s a brewfest and here are the details: The 16th Annual Garden City BrewFest, produced by the Missoula Downtown Association, promises to be an exciting and vibrant event slated for [...]

My fellow blogger about all things criminal here in Gotham city, Montana sent me this link. Turns out Missoula’s own Kettlehouse Brewing Co. has been ranked numero uno, that’s #1 out of the top 20 microbreweries in the country by a travel site. The description from Matador Trips said thus: Known lovingly as the “K-hole” [...]

Yes, they were the most remote brewery in North America, and I’m not sure how much that contributed to their demise. A volunteer picking up spent grain at the defunct Thompson River Valley brewery told me the owners closed the doors last Thursday. He also said the economy played a big role in the brewery’s [...]

Finally, a sessionable sour ale from Belgian. I think I found this at The Good Food Store a few weeks ago, and I’m really glad I did. I only hope I can get more now that I’ve actually gotten around to tasting it. Many Belgian imports are dumbed-down versions of their REAL sour beers, and [...]

Beer cans offer an entirely new world of marketing possibilities for craft breweries. Some are going with simplistic designs that recall the cans of yesteryear, while others are going with more sophisticated designs, like those above. Check out more Ramm ND designs here. Pretty creative stuff. Now, beer is merited on the taste, so this [...]

One of the coolest things about Missoula’s brewing community is the Community Brew, a partnership between Big Sky Brewing Co. and the Zoo City Zymurgists, our local home brew club. The local brewers hold a competition that is judged by brewers at Big Sky. The winner gets to brew 300 gallons of the winning batch [...]

Can I walk to the Blue Cat over on Rock Island? Why would you want to do that? Or so went the exchange between me and a bartender at the hotel I’m staying at in Davenport, Iowa. Immediately I became suspicious about the quality of the restaurant, the food or maybe even the beer. But [...]

Try googling craft breweries in Davenport, Iowa or Moline, Illinois. You’ll find them, but they seem few and far between. On a work-related trip to America’s heartland, to the only spot where the Mississippi River flows East to West, to the Quad Cities, I found one to start with, knowing full-well others must surely follow. [...]

Sorry for the delay in letting you all know that Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer signed HB 400 into law on April 9. That means that on October 1, Montana will join other states without ridiculously low ABV limits on beer. Some brewers, like Kettlehouse Brewing Co. in Missoula, are already brewing up their batches of [...]

Wine mostly. Why? Well, you know the old adage about what to do when in Rome. I might as well have been in Rome over the weekend. Clearlake, California isn’t exactly Napa Valley, but it’s close enough, I mean really close. And sometimes you just need to cleanse your pallet and offer up some new [...]