Phallic symbols are funny, but then again, I'm a juvenile.  Naming your brewery Big Wood is probably an homage to the mighty schlong, but you could try to get away saying it is about lumberjacks or something, though no guy would believe you.  I think they did call it Big Wood because it was funny and it took big wood to launch a brewery and do it their way.  If you have a rager for craft beer and want to sell a lot of merch, it goes hand in hand.  When you call your first beer, Morning Wood Coffee Stout, there is no doubt it was the culmination of a wet dream for Big Wood.

In Canada, eh.  On a recent trip to Toronto I didn't have to search far to find a brewery to hit.  Elsinore had a commanding view of the city from its perch on a hill.  The brewery was first opened in 1983 and runs a taproom out of it's huge facility, oddly enough near an old Royal Canadian mental asylum.  Crazy, right?  The brewery stands as a monolith of older times when beer was king.  The factory was large with two smoke stacks that didn't appear to be running while we were there.  It's almost spooky now as it runs at a much lower capacity than it once did, according to the bartender, a nice older guy with a funny accent, wearing all black.  I bet the place has many secrets to tell.

I love it when a brewery has a lot of history to it's setting.  This isn't possible for many, but it really adds to the experience for me and is what I think of when I think about brew pubs.  St Paul Brewing has a home run in this regard.  Hamm's Brewing started in St Paul in 1865 by a German immigrant named, Theodore Hamm.  Hamm actually acquired the small brewery through holding the deed to a foreclosed loan from the prior owner, Andrew Keller.  Hamm's has a long tradition in Minnesota and I remember seeing Hamm's Beer commercials on tv as a kid.  An animated bear with the famous saying, "from the land of sky blue waters." were quite memorable for a kid.  At one point, Hamm's was the 5th largest brewery in the country, having expanded to San Francisco, Baltimore and Houston by the 1950's.  Shortly after their 100th anniversary, the brewery went through a series of purchases, in 1965 to Heublein, then in 1973 to a group of distributors, who sold to Olympia Brewing in 1975 and again to Pabst in 1983.   The brewery itself was traded to Stroh's at this time, who ran it until closing it in 1997, ending a 137 year run.  The brewery sat idle and was left to decay and vandalism.  A 2005 fire damaged some of the building, which was actually the original stables and carpentry shop.  In 2024 a new owner came in and reimagined the site for a new brewery, building a taproom and restaurant out of the keg room and using the stables and shop as an outdoor biergarten.  It is now the home of St Paul Brewing.  Be careful as you drive there as you might miss it, tucked back in the bowels of the old building site.  

As an advocate and lover of the craft beer scene, I have become alarmed at the sign of the times in the industry.  It has been known for some time that people, in general, are drinking less beer.  In fact, I just read something today that says even the younger generation of Germans have gone away from beer.  Scheisse!  That same trend is at work here in the US too.  My own son and his friends are proof of this trend.  Craft beer is about 13.3% of the beer market, which is a dent in the big boring brewers, but not enough apparently.  Production has been down and a decrease in the number of breweries has shaped the business for the past two years.  2024 saw a 4% decrease in beer volume and 2025 is on pace for a 5%+ decrease over 2024.  Last year 529 breweries went out of business and the numbers for this year might be sobering when it is all said and done.  I suppose that economics says this was inevitable.  The microbrew craze had been going strong for 40 years and downturns happen.  Perhaps, in some places, microbreweries were overdone, not sure on that, but it seems possible.  If you look at my outdated pictures above, these are from www.vinepair.com and show the huge growth in breweries from 250 in 1990 to 7,190 in 2016.  Today it has grown to 9,269, but declining daily.  Other economic factors have played a role too.

It was a beautiful weekend to head up to the North Shore of Minnesota and Wisconsin.  The leaves were at peak color and the weather was cool, but not cold.  I had a board meeting up that way and after the meeting, like I usually do, while everyone else headed to dinner, I hit a brewery.  I had spied Warrior Brewing on my phone while looking for a new place to try before the meeting and it was directly on the way to dinner.  

Camden Town was a bit of a surprise.  When you get off the underground and come to the surface, you may think Camden Town is run down and a b it sketchy.  In reality, it is an older part of town, but has a vibrant artistic side and is known for its street markets, music and shops.  The Camden Market is a cool area of small, mostly independent shops and eateries that is a must-see and do when you go there.  It stretches across the street in two sections, where it follows along a canal and it is here you will find 3 Locks Brewing.  We were there very early as my son was looking for anime merch, which the area is full of and even though I had searched ahead of time, I really didn't look where the brewery was exactly.  We kind of stumbled upon it a few minutes before they opened.  Their taproom over looks the canal and has outside seating along it.  It really is a great setting for a brewery.  As you can see, I took a terribly blurry picture, so no, you aren't drunk.  Are you?  

I recently visited the UK for vacation and took my opportunity to try many beers, among other things.  The last time I was there the UK was in a bit of a sea change in the pub business.  There were about 58,000 pubs in the UK in 2000.  That number has declined to around 47,000 now.  Big breweries had stepped in and bought a huge chunk of the pubs in order to control beer sales.  I've seen some different numbers, but the six biggest owned about 75% of all the pubs.  In fact, Fuller, a well known brewery, sold it's beer making operation to the Asahi Group in 2019 so it could focus on it's pub operations.  Fuller made one of the best known British beers, London Pride, that it had brewed in London since 1958.  Asahi is a Japanese beer company, which you can easily find here in the states and I drank a lot when I was in Japan a few years ago.  There were marketing agreements in place, as part of the deal, but it shows you how the pubs is where the money is.  For awhile, there were laws put in place to limit the number of pubs the big brewers could own, but that has since been repealed.  For me, the drawback is that you can only find a small selection of beers available at any pub and the food choices were the same at all of them I visited.  There are about 3,800 pubs in London and I was in only about 8, but they were either owned by Greene King or Fuller.  The beers were good, but the choices were nil.

As I left Milwaukee after going to a con with my son, I decided to hit a brew pub.  The one I chose was closed for rebranding upon reaching the property.  Google Maps, which I despise, lied to us again.  It mentioned nothing about being closed and said it was moderately busy.  First they track your every move, then openly lie to you.  I hate Google, but that is for another time.  I chose a different brewery not too far away and we were starving, so it had to have food.  When you get to the building Brewfinity is in, you ,might just think they are out of business too as it looked like a shutdown warehouse out front, but a sign directs you to the left, so I drove around the building and found the brewery.  It is tucked away, but was a nice little space for a tap room.  There were just five other people in there on a very hot Saturday, so we grabbed a spot near the front.  The bartender came right over and gave us some menus.  Since I hadn't been there before, he asked me what kind of beer I like and directed me to their flagship beer, the Sailor's Delight, which is an American Amber.  I probably would've chose this beer anyway, so it was a good call.  Biscuity and malty, just like I like it.  The beer was a nice amber color and was really good.  It finished well, not too hoppy, and smelled  just right.  American Ambers are unique in that they use American hops and derive their sweetness from the malts they use.  They are fermented in a cleaner way than their British cousins and are distinct by their balance.  I get the feeling that the hey day of IPA's is over and that vacuum will be filled by amber ales.  They are far more drinkable, yet may struggle to earn their keep as a summer beer.  Perhaps less refreshing to some drinkers as a number of IPA's can be, but I tend to think they appeal to a far broader audience of beer enthusiasts.  Every brewery makes one, they just don't experiment as deeply and wrongly, in my opinion, as they did with a rash of IPA's.  

It was a sweltering weekend in Minnesota and a stop at a local brewery was definitely in the offing.  I wanted something different so I chose Waldmann's Brewery.  It was a good choice.  Nestled in a neighborhood of houses off the main road, you'll literally stumble upon an old stone house.  It was in the fall of 1857, before Minnesota was even a state, and before the Civil War, when Waldmann's was established.  It is in the oldest surviving commercial building in St Paul to be exact, so the history here is remarkable.  To be fair, there was a long 154 year break between when Waldmann's saloon came alive again in 2017 as Waldmann's Brewery, but that doesn't matter.  

It only took me three trips here to write a blog about it.  I was always out with co-workers and forgot or just didn't have time to take a pic or two.  This time it was just me and a vendor, so I remembered and got the job done.  When in Sioux City, I've always stayed at the hotel right across the street, so going to Marto was just a no-brainer.

Being a fan of the old Hartford Whalers, I had always wanted to go to Hartford.  The fact that there was a brewery on the old Colt firearms complex in Hartford was a win for everyone.  I would've loved to tour the Colt facility during its hayday.  Samuel Colt was born in Hartford in 1814 and began making guns in 1836.  He founded Colt firearms in 1855.  As it is for gun-makers it was feast or famine.  During wartime, Colt did great, but suffered in the aftermath.  Known for innovation, Colt was the first manufacturer to offer interchangeable parts for its guns and used powerful steam engines in its plants before others were doing it.  He also was the first to build a tenement for his workers with housing, daycare, churches and food.  He established a ten hour work day with a required one hour lunch break. 

On Memorial Day weekend I took my annual trip with my brothers.  This time is was the East Coast.  We hit six states during this trip and one of the better experiences was at East Regiment Beer Company in Salem.   It is nestled in the middle of downtown and was a welcome site for my hungry stomach.  

Phallic symbols are funny, but then again, I'm a juvenile.  Naming your brewery Big Wood is probably an homage to the mighty schlong, but you could try to get away saying it is about lumberjacks or something, though no guy would believe you.  I think they did call it Big Wood because it was funny and it took big wood to launch a brewery and do it their way.  If you have a rager for craft beer and want to sell a lot of merch, it goes hand in hand.  When you call your first beer, Morning Wood Coffee Stout, there is no doubt it was the culmination of a wet dream for Big Wood.

In Canada, eh.  On a recent trip to Toronto I didn't have to search far to find a brewery to hit.  Elsinore had a commanding view of the city from its perch on a hill.  The brewery was first opened in 1983 and runs a taproom out of it's huge facility, oddly enough near an old Royal Canadian mental asylum.  Crazy, right?  The brewery stands as a monolith of older times when beer was king.  The factory was large with two smoke stacks that didn't appear to be running while we were there.  It's almost spooky now as it runs at a much lower capacity than it once did, according to the bartender, a nice older guy with a funny accent, wearing all black.  I bet the place has many secrets to tell.

I love it when a brewery has a lot of history to it's setting.  This isn't possible for many, but it really adds to the experience for me and is what I think of when I think about brew pubs.  St Paul Brewing has a home run in this regard.  Hamm's Brewing started in St Paul in 1865 by a German immigrant named, Theodore Hamm.  Hamm actually acquired the small brewery through holding the deed to a foreclosed loan from the prior owner, Andrew Keller.  Hamm's has a long tradition in Minnesota and I remember seeing Hamm's Beer commercials on tv as a kid.  An animated bear with the famous saying, "from the land of sky blue waters." were quite memorable for a kid.  At one point, Hamm's was the 5th largest brewery in the country, having expanded to San Francisco, Baltimore and Houston by the 1950's.  Shortly after their 100th anniversary, the brewery went through a series of purchases, in 1965 to Heublein, then in 1973 to a group of distributors, who sold to Olympia Brewing in 1975 and again to Pabst in 1983.   The brewery itself was traded to Stroh's at this time, who ran it until closing it in 1997, ending a 137 year run.  The brewery sat idle and was left to decay and vandalism.  A 2005 fire damaged some of the building, which was actually the original stables and carpentry shop.  In 2024 a new owner came in and reimagined the site for a new brewery, building a taproom and restaurant out of the keg room and using the stables and shop as an outdoor biergarten.  It is now the home of St Paul Brewing.  Be careful as you drive there as you might miss it, tucked back in the bowels of the old building site.  

As an advocate and lover of the craft beer scene, I have become alarmed at the sign of the times in the industry.  It has been known for some time that people, in general, are drinking less beer.  In fact, I just read something today that says even the younger generation of Germans have gone away from beer.  Scheisse!  That same trend is at work here in the US too.  My own son and his friends are proof of this trend.  Craft beer is about 13.3% of the beer market, which is a dent in the big boring brewers, but not enough apparently.  Production has been down and a decrease in the number of breweries has shaped the business for the past two years.  2024 saw a 4% decrease in beer volume and 2025 is on pace for a 5%+ decrease over 2024.  Last year 529 breweries went out of business and the numbers for this year might be sobering when it is all said and done.  I suppose that economics says this was inevitable.  The microbrew craze had been going strong for 40 years and downturns happen.  Perhaps, in some places, microbreweries were overdone, not sure on that, but it seems possible.  If you look at my outdated pictures above, these are from www.vinepair.com and show the huge growth in breweries from 250 in 1990 to 7,190 in 2016.  Today it has grown to 9,269, but declining daily.  Other economic factors have played a role too.

It was a beautiful weekend to head up to the North Shore of Minnesota and Wisconsin.  The leaves were at peak color and the weather was cool, but not cold.  I had a board meeting up that way and after the meeting, like I usually do, while everyone else headed to dinner, I hit a brewery.  I had spied Warrior Brewing on my phone while looking for a new place to try before the meeting and it was directly on the way to dinner.  

Camden Town was a bit of a surprise.  When you get off the underground and come to the surface, you may think Camden Town is run down and a b it sketchy.  In reality, it is an older part of town, but has a vibrant artistic side and is known for its street markets, music and shops.  The Camden Market is a cool area of small, mostly independent shops and eateries that is a must-see and do when you go there.  It stretches across the street in two sections, where it follows along a canal and it is here you will find 3 Locks Brewing.  We were there very early as my son was looking for anime merch, which the area is full of and even though I had searched ahead of time, I really didn't look where the brewery was exactly.  We kind of stumbled upon it a few minutes before they opened.  Their taproom over looks the canal and has outside seating along it.  It really is a great setting for a brewery.  As you can see, I took a terribly blurry picture, so no, you aren't drunk.  Are you?  

I recently visited the UK for vacation and took my opportunity to try many beers, among other things.  The last time I was there the UK was in a bit of a sea change in the pub business.  There were about 58,000 pubs in the UK in 2000.  That number has declined to around 47,000 now.  Big breweries had stepped in and bought a huge chunk of the pubs in order to control beer sales.  I've seen some different numbers, but the six biggest owned about 75% of all the pubs.  In fact, Fuller, a well known brewery, sold it's beer making operation to the Asahi Group in 2019 so it could focus on it's pub operations.  Fuller made one of the best known British beers, London Pride, that it had brewed in London since 1958.  Asahi is a Japanese beer company, which you can easily find here in the states and I drank a lot when I was in Japan a few years ago.  There were marketing agreements in place, as part of the deal, but it shows you how the pubs is where the money is.  For awhile, there were laws put in place to limit the number of pubs the big brewers could own, but that has since been repealed.  For me, the drawback is that you can only find a small selection of beers available at any pub and the food choices were the same at all of them I visited.  There are about 3,800 pubs in London and I was in only about 8, but they were either owned by Greene King or Fuller.  The beers were good, but the choices were nil.

As I left Milwaukee after going to a con with my son, I decided to hit a brew pub.  The one I chose was closed for rebranding upon reaching the property.  Google Maps, which I despise, lied to us again.  It mentioned nothing about being closed and said it was moderately busy.  First they track your every move, then openly lie to you.  I hate Google, but that is for another time.  I chose a different brewery not too far away and we were starving, so it had to have food.  When you get to the building Brewfinity is in, you ,might just think they are out of business too as it looked like a shutdown warehouse out front, but a sign directs you to the left, so I drove around the building and found the brewery.  It is tucked away, but was a nice little space for a tap room.  There were just five other people in there on a very hot Saturday, so we grabbed a spot near the front.  The bartender came right over and gave us some menus.  Since I hadn't been there before, he asked me what kind of beer I like and directed me to their flagship beer, the Sailor's Delight, which is an American Amber.  I probably would've chose this beer anyway, so it was a good call.  Biscuity and malty, just like I like it.  The beer was a nice amber color and was really good.  It finished well, not too hoppy, and smelled  just right.  American Ambers are unique in that they use American hops and derive their sweetness from the malts they use.  They are fermented in a cleaner way than their British cousins and are distinct by their balance.  I get the feeling that the hey day of IPA's is over and that vacuum will be filled by amber ales.  They are far more drinkable, yet may struggle to earn their keep as a summer beer.  Perhaps less refreshing to some drinkers as a number of IPA's can be, but I tend to think they appeal to a far broader audience of beer enthusiasts.  Every brewery makes one, they just don't experiment as deeply and wrongly, in my opinion, as they did with a rash of IPA's.  

It was a sweltering weekend in Minnesota and a stop at a local brewery was definitely in the offing.  I wanted something different so I chose Waldmann's Brewery.  It was a good choice.  Nestled in a neighborhood of houses off the main road, you'll literally stumble upon an old stone house.  It was in the fall of 1857, before Minnesota was even a state, and before the Civil War, when Waldmann's was established.  It is in the oldest surviving commercial building in St Paul to be exact, so the history here is remarkable.  To be fair, there was a long 154 year break between when Waldmann's saloon came alive again in 2017 as Waldmann's Brewery, but that doesn't matter.  

It only took me three trips here to write a blog about it.  I was always out with co-workers and forgot or just didn't have time to take a pic or two.  This time it was just me and a vendor, so I remembered and got the job done.  When in Sioux City, I've always stayed at the hotel right across the street, so going to Marto was just a no-brainer.

Being a fan of the old Hartford Whalers, I had always wanted to go to Hartford.  The fact that there was a brewery on the old Colt firearms complex in Hartford was a win for everyone.  I would've loved to tour the Colt facility during its hayday.  Samuel Colt was born in Hartford in 1814 and began making guns in 1836.  He founded Colt firearms in 1855.  As it is for gun-makers it was feast or famine.  During wartime, Colt did great, but suffered in the aftermath.  Known for innovation, Colt was the first manufacturer to offer interchangeable parts for its guns and used powerful steam engines in its plants before others were doing it.  He also was the first to build a tenement for his workers with housing, daycare, churches and food.  He established a ten hour work day with a required one hour lunch break. 

On Memorial Day weekend I took my annual trip with my brothers.  This time is was the East Coast.  We hit six states during this trip and one of the better experiences was at East Regiment Beer Company in Salem.   It is nestled in the middle of downtown and was a welcome site for my hungry stomach.  

Phallic symbols are funny, but then again, I'm a juvenile.  Naming your brewery Big Wood is probably an homage to the mighty schlong, but you could try to get away saying it is about lumberjacks or something, though no guy would believe you.  I think they did call it Big Wood because it was funny and it took big wood to launch a brewery and do it their way.  If you have a rager for craft beer and want to sell a lot of merch, it goes hand in hand.  When you call your first beer, Morning Wood Coffee Stout, there is no doubt it was the culmination of a wet dream for Big Wood.

In Canada, eh.  On a recent trip to Toronto I didn't have to search far to find a brewery to hit.  Elsinore had a commanding view of the city from its perch on a hill.  The brewery was first opened in 1983 and runs a taproom out of it's huge facility, oddly enough near an old Royal Canadian mental asylum.  Crazy, right?  The brewery stands as a monolith of older times when beer was king.  The factory was large with two smoke stacks that didn't appear to be running while we were there.  It's almost spooky now as it runs at a much lower capacity than it once did, according to the bartender, a nice older guy with a funny accent, wearing all black.  I bet the place has many secrets to tell.

I love it when a brewery has a lot of history to it's setting.  This isn't possible for many, but it really adds to the experience for me and is what I think of when I think about brew pubs.  St Paul Brewing has a home run in this regard.  Hamm's Brewing started in St Paul in 1865 by a German immigrant named, Theodore Hamm.  Hamm actually acquired the small brewery through holding the deed to a foreclosed loan from the prior owner, Andrew Keller.  Hamm's has a long tradition in Minnesota and I remember seeing Hamm's Beer commercials on tv as a kid.  An animated bear with the famous saying, "from the land of sky blue waters." were quite memorable for a kid.  At one point, Hamm's was the 5th largest brewery in the country, having expanded to San Francisco, Baltimore and Houston by the 1950's.  Shortly after their 100th anniversary, the brewery went through a series of purchases, in 1965 to Heublein, then in 1973 to a group of distributors, who sold to Olympia Brewing in 1975 and again to Pabst in 1983.   The brewery itself was traded to Stroh's at this time, who ran it until closing it in 1997, ending a 137 year run.  The brewery sat idle and was left to decay and vandalism.  A 2005 fire damaged some of the building, which was actually the original stables and carpentry shop.  In 2024 a new owner came in and reimagined the site for a new brewery, building a taproom and restaurant out of the keg room and using the stables and shop as an outdoor biergarten.  It is now the home of St Paul Brewing.  Be careful as you drive there as you might miss it, tucked back in the bowels of the old building site.  

As an advocate and lover of the craft beer scene, I have become alarmed at the sign of the times in the industry.  It has been known for some time that people, in general, are drinking less beer.  In fact, I just read something today that says even the younger generation of Germans have gone away from beer.  Scheisse!  That same trend is at work here in the US too.  My own son and his friends are proof of this trend.  Craft beer is about 13.3% of the beer market, which is a dent in the big boring brewers, but not enough apparently.  Production has been down and a decrease in the number of breweries has shaped the business for the past two years.  2024 saw a 4% decrease in beer volume and 2025 is on pace for a 5%+ decrease over 2024.  Last year 529 breweries went out of business and the numbers for this year might be sobering when it is all said and done.  I suppose that economics says this was inevitable.  The microbrew craze had been going strong for 40 years and downturns happen.  Perhaps, in some places, microbreweries were overdone, not sure on that, but it seems possible.  If you look at my outdated pictures above, these are from www.vinepair.com and show the huge growth in breweries from 250 in 1990 to 7,190 in 2016.  Today it has grown to 9,269, but declining daily.  Other economic factors have played a role too.

It was a beautiful weekend to head up to the North Shore of Minnesota and Wisconsin.  The leaves were at peak color and the weather was cool, but not cold.  I had a board meeting up that way and after the meeting, like I usually do, while everyone else headed to dinner, I hit a brewery.  I had spied Warrior Brewing on my phone while looking for a new place to try before the meeting and it was directly on the way to dinner.  

Camden Town was a bit of a surprise.  When you get off the underground and come to the surface, you may think Camden Town is run down and a b it sketchy.  In reality, it is an older part of town, but has a vibrant artistic side and is known for its street markets, music and shops.  The Camden Market is a cool area of small, mostly independent shops and eateries that is a must-see and do when you go there.  It stretches across the street in two sections, where it follows along a canal and it is here you will find 3 Locks Brewing.  We were there very early as my son was looking for anime merch, which the area is full of and even though I had searched ahead of time, I really didn't look where the brewery was exactly.  We kind of stumbled upon it a few minutes before they opened.  Their taproom over looks the canal and has outside seating along it.  It really is a great setting for a brewery.  As you can see, I took a terribly blurry picture, so no, you aren't drunk.  Are you?  

I recently visited the UK for vacation and took my opportunity to try many beers, among other things.  The last time I was there the UK was in a bit of a sea change in the pub business.  There were about 58,000 pubs in the UK in 2000.  That number has declined to around 47,000 now.  Big breweries had stepped in and bought a huge chunk of the pubs in order to control beer sales.  I've seen some different numbers, but the six biggest owned about 75% of all the pubs.  In fact, Fuller, a well known brewery, sold it's beer making operation to the Asahi Group in 2019 so it could focus on it's pub operations.  Fuller made one of the best known British beers, London Pride, that it had brewed in London since 1958.  Asahi is a Japanese beer company, which you can easily find here in the states and I drank a lot when I was in Japan a few years ago.  There were marketing agreements in place, as part of the deal, but it shows you how the pubs is where the money is.  For awhile, there were laws put in place to limit the number of pubs the big brewers could own, but that has since been repealed.  For me, the drawback is that you can only find a small selection of beers available at any pub and the food choices were the same at all of them I visited.  There are about 3,800 pubs in London and I was in only about 8, but they were either owned by Greene King or Fuller.  The beers were good, but the choices were nil.

As I left Milwaukee after going to a con with my son, I decided to hit a brew pub.  The one I chose was closed for rebranding upon reaching the property.  Google Maps, which I despise, lied to us again.  It mentioned nothing about being closed and said it was moderately busy.  First they track your every move, then openly lie to you.  I hate Google, but that is for another time.  I chose a different brewery not too far away and we were starving, so it had to have food.  When you get to the building Brewfinity is in, you ,might just think they are out of business too as it looked like a shutdown warehouse out front, but a sign directs you to the left, so I drove around the building and found the brewery.  It is tucked away, but was a nice little space for a tap room.  There were just five other people in there on a very hot Saturday, so we grabbed a spot near the front.  The bartender came right over and gave us some menus.  Since I hadn't been there before, he asked me what kind of beer I like and directed me to their flagship beer, the Sailor's Delight, which is an American Amber.  I probably would've chose this beer anyway, so it was a good call.  Biscuity and malty, just like I like it.  The beer was a nice amber color and was really good.  It finished well, not too hoppy, and smelled  just right.  American Ambers are unique in that they use American hops and derive their sweetness from the malts they use.  They are fermented in a cleaner way than their British cousins and are distinct by their balance.  I get the feeling that the hey day of IPA's is over and that vacuum will be filled by amber ales.  They are far more drinkable, yet may struggle to earn their keep as a summer beer.  Perhaps less refreshing to some drinkers as a number of IPA's can be, but I tend to think they appeal to a far broader audience of beer enthusiasts.  Every brewery makes one, they just don't experiment as deeply and wrongly, in my opinion, as they did with a rash of IPA's.  

It was a sweltering weekend in Minnesota and a stop at a local brewery was definitely in the offing.  I wanted something different so I chose Waldmann's Brewery.  It was a good choice.  Nestled in a neighborhood of houses off the main road, you'll literally stumble upon an old stone house.  It was in the fall of 1857, before Minnesota was even a state, and before the Civil War, when Waldmann's was established.  It is in the oldest surviving commercial building in St Paul to be exact, so the history here is remarkable.  To be fair, there was a long 154 year break between when Waldmann's saloon came alive again in 2017 as Waldmann's Brewery, but that doesn't matter.  

It only took me three trips here to write a blog about it.  I was always out with co-workers and forgot or just didn't have time to take a pic or two.  This time it was just me and a vendor, so I remembered and got the job done.  When in Sioux City, I've always stayed at the hotel right across the street, so going to Marto was just a no-brainer.

Being a fan of the old Hartford Whalers, I had always wanted to go to Hartford.  The fact that there was a brewery on the old Colt firearms complex in Hartford was a win for everyone.  I would've loved to tour the Colt facility during its hayday.  Samuel Colt was born in Hartford in 1814 and began making guns in 1836.  He founded Colt firearms in 1855.  As it is for gun-makers it was feast or famine.  During wartime, Colt did great, but suffered in the aftermath.  Known for innovation, Colt was the first manufacturer to offer interchangeable parts for its guns and used powerful steam engines in its plants before others were doing it.  He also was the first to build a tenement for his workers with housing, daycare, churches and food.  He established a ten hour work day with a required one hour lunch break. 

On Memorial Day weekend I took my annual trip with my brothers.  This time is was the East Coast.  We hit six states during this trip and one of the better experiences was at East Regiment Beer Company in Salem.   It is nestled in the middle of downtown and was a welcome site for my hungry stomach.  

Phallic symbols are funny, but then again, I'm a juvenile.  Naming your brewery Big Wood is probably an homage to the mighty schlong, but you could try to get away saying it is about lumberjacks or something, though no guy would believe you.  I think they did call it Big Wood because it was funny and it took big wood to launch a brewery and do it their way.  If you have a rager for craft beer and want to sell a lot of merch, it goes hand in hand.  When you call your first beer, Morning Wood Coffee Stout, there is no doubt it was the culmination of a wet dream for Big Wood.

In Canada, eh.  On a recent trip to Toronto I didn't have to search far to find a brewery to hit.  Elsinore had a commanding view of the city from its perch on a hill.  The brewery was first opened in 1983 and runs a taproom out of it's huge facility, oddly enough near an old Royal Canadian mental asylum.  Crazy, right?  The brewery stands as a monolith of older times when beer was king.  The factory was large with two smoke stacks that didn't appear to be running while we were there.  It's almost spooky now as it runs at a much lower capacity than it once did, according to the bartender, a nice older guy with a funny accent, wearing all black.  I bet the place has many secrets to tell.

I love it when a brewery has a lot of history to it's setting.  This isn't possible for many, but it really adds to the experience for me and is what I think of when I think about brew pubs.  St Paul Brewing has a home run in this regard.  Hamm's Brewing started in St Paul in 1865 by a German immigrant named, Theodore Hamm.  Hamm actually acquired the small brewery through holding the deed to a foreclosed loan from the prior owner, Andrew Keller.  Hamm's has a long tradition in Minnesota and I remember seeing Hamm's Beer commercials on tv as a kid.  An animated bear with the famous saying, "from the land of sky blue waters." were quite memorable for a kid.  At one point, Hamm's was the 5th largest brewery in the country, having expanded to San Francisco, Baltimore and Houston by the 1950's.  Shortly after their 100th anniversary, the brewery went through a series of purchases, in 1965 to Heublein, then in 1973 to a group of distributors, who sold to Olympia Brewing in 1975 and again to Pabst in 1983.   The brewery itself was traded to Stroh's at this time, who ran it until closing it in 1997, ending a 137 year run.  The brewery sat idle and was left to decay and vandalism.  A 2005 fire damaged some of the building, which was actually the original stables and carpentry shop.  In 2024 a new owner came in and reimagined the site for a new brewery, building a taproom and restaurant out of the keg room and using the stables and shop as an outdoor biergarten.  It is now the home of St Paul Brewing.  Be careful as you drive there as you might miss it, tucked back in the bowels of the old building site.  

As an advocate and lover of the craft beer scene, I have become alarmed at the sign of the times in the industry.  It has been known for some time that people, in general, are drinking less beer.  In fact, I just read something today that says even the younger generation of Germans have gone away from beer.  Scheisse!  That same trend is at work here in the US too.  My own son and his friends are proof of this trend.  Craft beer is about 13.3% of the beer market, which is a dent in the big boring brewers, but not enough apparently.  Production has been down and a decrease in the number of breweries has shaped the business for the past two years.  2024 saw a 4% decrease in beer volume and 2025 is on pace for a 5%+ decrease over 2024.  Last year 529 breweries went out of business and the numbers for this year might be sobering when it is all said and done.  I suppose that economics says this was inevitable.  The microbrew craze had been going strong for 40 years and downturns happen.  Perhaps, in some places, microbreweries were overdone, not sure on that, but it seems possible.  If you look at my outdated pictures above, these are from www.vinepair.com and show the huge growth in breweries from 250 in 1990 to 7,190 in 2016.  Today it has grown to 9,269, but declining daily.  Other economic factors have played a role too.

It was a beautiful weekend to head up to the North Shore of Minnesota and Wisconsin.  The leaves were at peak color and the weather was cool, but not cold.  I had a board meeting up that way and after the meeting, like I usually do, while everyone else headed to dinner, I hit a brewery.  I had spied Warrior Brewing on my phone while looking for a new place to try before the meeting and it was directly on the way to dinner.  

Camden Town was a bit of a surprise.  When you get off the underground and come to the surface, you may think Camden Town is run down and a b it sketchy.  In reality, it is an older part of town, but has a vibrant artistic side and is known for its street markets, music and shops.  The Camden Market is a cool area of small, mostly independent shops and eateries that is a must-see and do when you go there.  It stretches across the street in two sections, where it follows along a canal and it is here you will find 3 Locks Brewing.  We were there very early as my son was looking for anime merch, which the area is full of and even though I had searched ahead of time, I really didn't look where the brewery was exactly.  We kind of stumbled upon it a few minutes before they opened.  Their taproom over looks the canal and has outside seating along it.  It really is a great setting for a brewery.  As you can see, I took a terribly blurry picture, so no, you aren't drunk.  Are you?  

I recently visited the UK for vacation and took my opportunity to try many beers, among other things.  The last time I was there the UK was in a bit of a sea change in the pub business.  There were about 58,000 pubs in the UK in 2000.  That number has declined to around 47,000 now.  Big breweries had stepped in and bought a huge chunk of the pubs in order to control beer sales.  I've seen some different numbers, but the six biggest owned about 75% of all the pubs.  In fact, Fuller, a well known brewery, sold it's beer making operation to the Asahi Group in 2019 so it could focus on it's pub operations.  Fuller made one of the best known British beers, London Pride, that it had brewed in London since 1958.  Asahi is a Japanese beer company, which you can easily find here in the states and I drank a lot when I was in Japan a few years ago.  There were marketing agreements in place, as part of the deal, but it shows you how the pubs is where the money is.  For awhile, there were laws put in place to limit the number of pubs the big brewers could own, but that has since been repealed.  For me, the drawback is that you can only find a small selection of beers available at any pub and the food choices were the same at all of them I visited.  There are about 3,800 pubs in London and I was in only about 8, but they were either owned by Greene King or Fuller.  The beers were good, but the choices were nil.

As I left Milwaukee after going to a con with my son, I decided to hit a brew pub.  The one I chose was closed for rebranding upon reaching the property.  Google Maps, which I despise, lied to us again.  It mentioned nothing about being closed and said it was moderately busy.  First they track your every move, then openly lie to you.  I hate Google, but that is for another time.  I chose a different brewery not too far away and we were starving, so it had to have food.  When you get to the building Brewfinity is in, you ,might just think they are out of business too as it looked like a shutdown warehouse out front, but a sign directs you to the left, so I drove around the building and found the brewery.  It is tucked away, but was a nice little space for a tap room.  There were just five other people in there on a very hot Saturday, so we grabbed a spot near the front.  The bartender came right over and gave us some menus.  Since I hadn't been there before, he asked me what kind of beer I like and directed me to their flagship beer, the Sailor's Delight, which is an American Amber.  I probably would've chose this beer anyway, so it was a good call.  Biscuity and malty, just like I like it.  The beer was a nice amber color and was really good.  It finished well, not too hoppy, and smelled  just right.  American Ambers are unique in that they use American hops and derive their sweetness from the malts they use.  They are fermented in a cleaner way than their British cousins and are distinct by their balance.  I get the feeling that the hey day of IPA's is over and that vacuum will be filled by amber ales.  They are far more drinkable, yet may struggle to earn their keep as a summer beer.  Perhaps less refreshing to some drinkers as a number of IPA's can be, but I tend to think they appeal to a far broader audience of beer enthusiasts.  Every brewery makes one, they just don't experiment as deeply and wrongly, in my opinion, as they did with a rash of IPA's.  

It was a sweltering weekend in Minnesota and a stop at a local brewery was definitely in the offing.  I wanted something different so I chose Waldmann's Brewery.  It was a good choice.  Nestled in a neighborhood of houses off the main road, you'll literally stumble upon an old stone house.  It was in the fall of 1857, before Minnesota was even a state, and before the Civil War, when Waldmann's was established.  It is in the oldest surviving commercial building in St Paul to be exact, so the history here is remarkable.  To be fair, there was a long 154 year break between when Waldmann's saloon came alive again in 2017 as Waldmann's Brewery, but that doesn't matter.  

It only took me three trips here to write a blog about it.  I was always out with co-workers and forgot or just didn't have time to take a pic or two.  This time it was just me and a vendor, so I remembered and got the job done.  When in Sioux City, I've always stayed at the hotel right across the street, so going to Marto was just a no-brainer.

Being a fan of the old Hartford Whalers, I had always wanted to go to Hartford.  The fact that there was a brewery on the old Colt firearms complex in Hartford was a win for everyone.  I would've loved to tour the Colt facility during its hayday.  Samuel Colt was born in Hartford in 1814 and began making guns in 1836.  He founded Colt firearms in 1855.  As it is for gun-makers it was feast or famine.  During wartime, Colt did great, but suffered in the aftermath.  Known for innovation, Colt was the first manufacturer to offer interchangeable parts for its guns and used powerful steam engines in its plants before others were doing it.  He also was the first to build a tenement for his workers with housing, daycare, churches and food.  He established a ten hour work day with a required one hour lunch break. 

On Memorial Day weekend I took my annual trip with my brothers.  This time is was the East Coast.  We hit six states during this trip and one of the better experiences was at East Regiment Beer Company in Salem.   It is nestled in the middle of downtown and was a welcome site for my hungry stomach.  

Phallic symbols are funny, but then again, I'm a juvenile.  Naming your brewery Big Wood is probably an homage to the mighty schlong, but you could try to get away saying it is about lumberjacks or something, though no guy would believe you.  I think they did call it Big Wood because it was funny and it took big wood to launch a brewery and do it their way.  If you have a rager for craft beer and want to sell a lot of merch, it goes hand in hand.  When you call your first beer, Morning Wood Coffee Stout, there is no doubt it was the culmination of a wet dream for Big Wood.

In Canada, eh.  On a recent trip to Toronto I didn't have to search far to find a brewery to hit.  Elsinore had a commanding view of the city from its perch on a hill.  The brewery was first opened in 1983 and runs a taproom out of it's huge facility, oddly enough near an old Royal Canadian mental asylum.  Crazy, right?  The brewery stands as a monolith of older times when beer was king.  The factory was large with two smoke stacks that didn't appear to be running while we were there.  It's almost spooky now as it runs at a much lower capacity than it once did, according to the bartender, a nice older guy with a funny accent, wearing all black.  I bet the place has many secrets to tell.

I love it when a brewery has a lot of history to it's setting.  This isn't possible for many, but it really adds to the experience for me and is what I think of when I think about brew pubs.  St Paul Brewing has a home run in this regard.  Hamm's Brewing started in St Paul in 1865 by a German immigrant named, Theodore Hamm.  Hamm actually acquired the small brewery through holding the deed to a foreclosed loan from the prior owner, Andrew Keller.  Hamm's has a long tradition in Minnesota and I remember seeing Hamm's Beer commercials on tv as a kid.  An animated bear with the famous saying, "from the land of sky blue waters." were quite memorable for a kid.  At one point, Hamm's was the 5th largest brewery in the country, having expanded to San Francisco, Baltimore and Houston by the 1950's.  Shortly after their 100th anniversary, the brewery went through a series of purchases, in 1965 to Heublein, then in 1973 to a group of distributors, who sold to Olympia Brewing in 1975 and again to Pabst in 1983.   The brewery itself was traded to Stroh's at this time, who ran it until closing it in 1997, ending a 137 year run.  The brewery sat idle and was left to decay and vandalism.  A 2005 fire damaged some of the building, which was actually the original stables and carpentry shop.  In 2024 a new owner came in and reimagined the site for a new brewery, building a taproom and restaurant out of the keg room and using the stables and shop as an outdoor biergarten.  It is now the home of St Paul Brewing.  Be careful as you drive there as you might miss it, tucked back in the bowels of the old building site.  

As an advocate and lover of the craft beer scene, I have become alarmed at the sign of the times in the industry.  It has been known for some time that people, in general, are drinking less beer.  In fact, I just read something today that says even the younger generation of Germans have gone away from beer.  Scheisse!  That same trend is at work here in the US too.  My own son and his friends are proof of this trend.  Craft beer is about 13.3% of the beer market, which is a dent in the big boring brewers, but not enough apparently.  Production has been down and a decrease in the number of breweries has shaped the business for the past two years.  2024 saw a 4% decrease in beer volume and 2025 is on pace for a 5%+ decrease over 2024.  Last year 529 breweries went out of business and the numbers for this year might be sobering when it is all said and done.  I suppose that economics says this was inevitable.  The microbrew craze had been going strong for 40 years and downturns happen.  Perhaps, in some places, microbreweries were overdone, not sure on that, but it seems possible.  If you look at my outdated pictures above, these are from www.vinepair.com and show the huge growth in breweries from 250 in 1990 to 7,190 in 2016.  Today it has grown to 9,269, but declining daily.  Other economic factors have played a role too.

It was a beautiful weekend to head up to the North Shore of Minnesota and Wisconsin.  The leaves were at peak color and the weather was cool, but not cold.  I had a board meeting up that way and after the meeting, like I usually do, while everyone else headed to dinner, I hit a brewery.  I had spied Warrior Brewing on my phone while looking for a new place to try before the meeting and it was directly on the way to dinner.  

Camden Town was a bit of a surprise.  When you get off the underground and come to the surface, you may think Camden Town is run down and a b it sketchy.  In reality, it is an older part of town, but has a vibrant artistic side and is known for its street markets, music and shops.  The Camden Market is a cool area of small, mostly independent shops and eateries that is a must-see and do when you go there.  It stretches across the street in two sections, where it follows along a canal and it is here you will find 3 Locks Brewing.  We were there very early as my son was looking for anime merch, which the area is full of and even though I had searched ahead of time, I really didn't look where the brewery was exactly.  We kind of stumbled upon it a few minutes before they opened.  Their taproom over looks the canal and has outside seating along it.  It really is a great setting for a brewery.  As you can see, I took a terribly blurry picture, so no, you aren't drunk.  Are you?  

I recently visited the UK for vacation and took my opportunity to try many beers, among other things.  The last time I was there the UK was in a bit of a sea change in the pub business.  There were about 58,000 pubs in the UK in 2000.  That number has declined to around 47,000 now.  Big breweries had stepped in and bought a huge chunk of the pubs in order to control beer sales.  I've seen some different numbers, but the six biggest owned about 75% of all the pubs.  In fact, Fuller, a well known brewery, sold it's beer making operation to the Asahi Group in 2019 so it could focus on it's pub operations.  Fuller made one of the best known British beers, London Pride, that it had brewed in London since 1958.  Asahi is a Japanese beer company, which you can easily find here in the states and I drank a lot when I was in Japan a few years ago.  There were marketing agreements in place, as part of the deal, but it shows you how the pubs is where the money is.  For awhile, there were laws put in place to limit the number of pubs the big brewers could own, but that has since been repealed.  For me, the drawback is that you can only find a small selection of beers available at any pub and the food choices were the same at all of them I visited.  There are about 3,800 pubs in London and I was in only about 8, but they were either owned by Greene King or Fuller.  The beers were good, but the choices were nil.

As I left Milwaukee after going to a con with my son, I decided to hit a brew pub.  The one I chose was closed for rebranding upon reaching the property.  Google Maps, which I despise, lied to us again.  It mentioned nothing about being closed and said it was moderately busy.  First they track your every move, then openly lie to you.  I hate Google, but that is for another time.  I chose a different brewery not too far away and we were starving, so it had to have food.  When you get to the building Brewfinity is in, you ,might just think they are out of business too as it looked like a shutdown warehouse out front, but a sign directs you to the left, so I drove around the building and found the brewery.  It is tucked away, but was a nice little space for a tap room.  There were just five other people in there on a very hot Saturday, so we grabbed a spot near the front.  The bartender came right over and gave us some menus.  Since I hadn't been there before, he asked me what kind of beer I like and directed me to their flagship beer, the Sailor's Delight, which is an American Amber.  I probably would've chose this beer anyway, so it was a good call.  Biscuity and malty, just like I like it.  The beer was a nice amber color and was really good.  It finished well, not too hoppy, and smelled  just right.  American Ambers are unique in that they use American hops and derive their sweetness from the malts they use.  They are fermented in a cleaner way than their British cousins and are distinct by their balance.  I get the feeling that the hey day of IPA's is over and that vacuum will be filled by amber ales.  They are far more drinkable, yet may struggle to earn their keep as a summer beer.  Perhaps less refreshing to some drinkers as a number of IPA's can be, but I tend to think they appeal to a far broader audience of beer enthusiasts.  Every brewery makes one, they just don't experiment as deeply and wrongly, in my opinion, as they did with a rash of IPA's.  

It was a sweltering weekend in Minnesota and a stop at a local brewery was definitely in the offing.  I wanted something different so I chose Waldmann's Brewery.  It was a good choice.  Nestled in a neighborhood of houses off the main road, you'll literally stumble upon an old stone house.  It was in the fall of 1857, before Minnesota was even a state, and before the Civil War, when Waldmann's was established.  It is in the oldest surviving commercial building in St Paul to be exact, so the history here is remarkable.  To be fair, there was a long 154 year break between when Waldmann's saloon came alive again in 2017 as Waldmann's Brewery, but that doesn't matter.  

It only took me three trips here to write a blog about it.  I was always out with co-workers and forgot or just didn't have time to take a pic or two.  This time it was just me and a vendor, so I remembered and got the job done.  When in Sioux City, I've always stayed at the hotel right across the street, so going to Marto was just a no-brainer.

Being a fan of the old Hartford Whalers, I had always wanted to go to Hartford.  The fact that there was a brewery on the old Colt firearms complex in Hartford was a win for everyone.  I would've loved to tour the Colt facility during its hayday.  Samuel Colt was born in Hartford in 1814 and began making guns in 1836.  He founded Colt firearms in 1855.  As it is for gun-makers it was feast or famine.  During wartime, Colt did great, but suffered in the aftermath.  Known for innovation, Colt was the first manufacturer to offer interchangeable parts for its guns and used powerful steam engines in its plants before others were doing it.  He also was the first to build a tenement for his workers with housing, daycare, churches and food.  He established a ten hour work day with a required one hour lunch break. 

On Memorial Day weekend I took my annual trip with my brothers.  This time is was the East Coast.  We hit six states during this trip and one of the better experiences was at East Regiment Beer Company in Salem.   It is nestled in the middle of downtown and was a welcome site for my hungry stomach.  

Phallic symbols are funny, but then again, I'm a juvenile.  Naming your brewery Big Wood is probably an homage to the mighty schlong, but you could try to get away saying it is about lumberjacks or something, though no guy would believe you.  I think they did call it Big Wood because it was funny and it took big wood to launch a brewery and do it their way.  If you have a rager for craft beer and want to sell a lot of merch, it goes hand in hand.  When you call your first beer, Morning Wood Coffee Stout, there is no doubt it was the culmination of a wet dream for Big Wood.

In Canada, eh.  On a recent trip to Toronto I didn't have to search far to find a brewery to hit.  Elsinore had a commanding view of the city from its perch on a hill.  The brewery was first opened in 1983 and runs a taproom out of it's huge facility, oddly enough near an old Royal Canadian mental asylum.  Crazy, right?  The brewery stands as a monolith of older times when beer was king.  The factory was large with two smoke stacks that didn't appear to be running while we were there.  It's almost spooky now as it runs at a much lower capacity than it once did, according to the bartender, a nice older guy with a funny accent, wearing all black.  I bet the place has many secrets to tell.

I love it when a brewery has a lot of history to it's setting.  This isn't possible for many, but it really adds to the experience for me and is what I think of when I think about brew pubs.  St Paul Brewing has a home run in this regard.  Hamm's Brewing started in St Paul in 1865 by a German immigrant named, Theodore Hamm.  Hamm actually acquired the small brewery through holding the deed to a foreclosed loan from the prior owner, Andrew Keller.  Hamm's has a long tradition in Minnesota and I remember seeing Hamm's Beer commercials on tv as a kid.  An animated bear with the famous saying, "from the land of sky blue waters." were quite memorable for a kid.  At one point, Hamm's was the 5th largest brewery in the country, having expanded to San Francisco, Baltimore and Houston by the 1950's.  Shortly after their 100th anniversary, the brewery went through a series of purchases, in 1965 to Heublein, then in 1973 to a group of distributors, who sold to Olympia Brewing in 1975 and again to Pabst in 1983.   The brewery itself was traded to Stroh's at this time, who ran it until closing it in 1997, ending a 137 year run.  The brewery sat idle and was left to decay and vandalism.  A 2005 fire damaged some of the building, which was actually the original stables and carpentry shop.  In 2024 a new owner came in and reimagined the site for a new brewery, building a taproom and restaurant out of the keg room and using the stables and shop as an outdoor biergarten.  It is now the home of St Paul Brewing.  Be careful as you drive there as you might miss it, tucked back in the bowels of the old building site.  

As an advocate and lover of the craft beer scene, I have become alarmed at the sign of the times in the industry.  It has been known for some time that people, in general, are drinking less beer.  In fact, I just read something today that says even the younger generation of Germans have gone away from beer.  Scheisse!  That same trend is at work here in the US too.  My own son and his friends are proof of this trend.  Craft beer is about 13.3% of the beer market, which is a dent in the big boring brewers, but not enough apparently.  Production has been down and a decrease in the number of breweries has shaped the business for the past two years.  2024 saw a 4% decrease in beer volume and 2025 is on pace for a 5%+ decrease over 2024.  Last year 529 breweries went out of business and the numbers for this year might be sobering when it is all said and done.  I suppose that economics says this was inevitable.  The microbrew craze had been going strong for 40 years and downturns happen.  Perhaps, in some places, microbreweries were overdone, not sure on that, but it seems possible.  If you look at my outdated pictures above, these are from www.vinepair.com and show the huge growth in breweries from 250 in 1990 to 7,190 in 2016.  Today it has grown to 9,269, but declining daily.  Other economic factors have played a role too.

It was a beautiful weekend to head up to the North Shore of Minnesota and Wisconsin.  The leaves were at peak color and the weather was cool, but not cold.  I had a board meeting up that way and after the meeting, like I usually do, while everyone else headed to dinner, I hit a brewery.  I had spied Warrior Brewing on my phone while looking for a new place to try before the meeting and it was directly on the way to dinner.  

Camden Town was a bit of a surprise.  When you get off the underground and come to the surface, you may think Camden Town is run down and a b it sketchy.  In reality, it is an older part of town, but has a vibrant artistic side and is known for its street markets, music and shops.  The Camden Market is a cool area of small, mostly independent shops and eateries that is a must-see and do when you go there.  It stretches across the street in two sections, where it follows along a canal and it is here you will find 3 Locks Brewing.  We were there very early as my son was looking for anime merch, which the area is full of and even though I had searched ahead of time, I really didn't look where the brewery was exactly.  We kind of stumbled upon it a few minutes before they opened.  Their taproom over looks the canal and has outside seating along it.  It really is a great setting for a brewery.  As you can see, I took a terribly blurry picture, so no, you aren't drunk.  Are you?  

I recently visited the UK for vacation and took my opportunity to try many beers, among other things.  The last time I was there the UK was in a bit of a sea change in the pub business.  There were about 58,000 pubs in the UK in 2000.  That number has declined to around 47,000 now.  Big breweries had stepped in and bought a huge chunk of the pubs in order to control beer sales.  I've seen some different numbers, but the six biggest owned about 75% of all the pubs.  In fact, Fuller, a well known brewery, sold it's beer making operation to the Asahi Group in 2019 so it could focus on it's pub operations.  Fuller made one of the best known British beers, London Pride, that it had brewed in London since 1958.  Asahi is a Japanese beer company, which you can easily find here in the states and I drank a lot when I was in Japan a few years ago.  There were marketing agreements in place, as part of the deal, but it shows you how the pubs is where the money is.  For awhile, there were laws put in place to limit the number of pubs the big brewers could own, but that has since been repealed.  For me, the drawback is that you can only find a small selection of beers available at any pub and the food choices were the same at all of them I visited.  There are about 3,800 pubs in London and I was in only about 8, but they were either owned by Greene King or Fuller.  The beers were good, but the choices were nil.

As I left Milwaukee after going to a con with my son, I decided to hit a brew pub.  The one I chose was closed for rebranding upon reaching the property.  Google Maps, which I despise, lied to us again.  It mentioned nothing about being closed and said it was moderately busy.  First they track your every move, then openly lie to you.  I hate Google, but that is for another time.  I chose a different brewery not too far away and we were starving, so it had to have food.  When you get to the building Brewfinity is in, you ,might just think they are out of business too as it looked like a shutdown warehouse out front, but a sign directs you to the left, so I drove around the building and found the brewery.  It is tucked away, but was a nice little space for a tap room.  There were just five other people in there on a very hot Saturday, so we grabbed a spot near the front.  The bartender came right over and gave us some menus.  Since I hadn't been there before, he asked me what kind of beer I like and directed me to their flagship beer, the Sailor's Delight, which is an American Amber.  I probably would've chose this beer anyway, so it was a good call.  Biscuity and malty, just like I like it.  The beer was a nice amber color and was really good.  It finished well, not too hoppy, and smelled  just right.  American Ambers are unique in that they use American hops and derive their sweetness from the malts they use.  They are fermented in a cleaner way than their British cousins and are distinct by their balance.  I get the feeling that the hey day of IPA's is over and that vacuum will be filled by amber ales.  They are far more drinkable, yet may struggle to earn their keep as a summer beer.  Perhaps less refreshing to some drinkers as a number of IPA's can be, but I tend to think they appeal to a far broader audience of beer enthusiasts.  Every brewery makes one, they just don't experiment as deeply and wrongly, in my opinion, as they did with a rash of IPA's.  

It was a sweltering weekend in Minnesota and a stop at a local brewery was definitely in the offing.  I wanted something different so I chose Waldmann's Brewery.  It was a good choice.  Nestled in a neighborhood of houses off the main road, you'll literally stumble upon an old stone house.  It was in the fall of 1857, before Minnesota was even a state, and before the Civil War, when Waldmann's was established.  It is in the oldest surviving commercial building in St Paul to be exact, so the history here is remarkable.  To be fair, there was a long 154 year break between when Waldmann's saloon came alive again in 2017 as Waldmann's Brewery, but that doesn't matter.  

It only took me three trips here to write a blog about it.  I was always out with co-workers and forgot or just didn't have time to take a pic or two.  This time it was just me and a vendor, so I remembered and got the job done.  When in Sioux City, I've always stayed at the hotel right across the street, so going to Marto was just a no-brainer.

Being a fan of the old Hartford Whalers, I had always wanted to go to Hartford.  The fact that there was a brewery on the old Colt firearms complex in Hartford was a win for everyone.  I would've loved to tour the Colt facility during its hayday.  Samuel Colt was born in Hartford in 1814 and began making guns in 1836.  He founded Colt firearms in 1855.  As it is for gun-makers it was feast or famine.  During wartime, Colt did great, but suffered in the aftermath.  Known for innovation, Colt was the first manufacturer to offer interchangeable parts for its guns and used powerful steam engines in its plants before others were doing it.  He also was the first to build a tenement for his workers with housing, daycare, churches and food.  He established a ten hour work day with a required one hour lunch break. 

On Memorial Day weekend I took my annual trip with my brothers.  This time is was the East Coast.  We hit six states during this trip and one of the better experiences was at East Regiment Beer Company in Salem.   It is nestled in the middle of downtown and was a welcome site for my hungry stomach.  

Phallic symbols are funny, but then again, I'm a juvenile.  Naming your brewery Big Wood is probably an homage to the mighty schlong, but you could try to get away saying it is about lumberjacks or something, though no guy would believe you.  I think they did call it Big Wood because it was funny and it took big wood to launch a brewery and do it their way.  If you have a rager for craft beer and want to sell a lot of merch, it goes hand in hand.  When you call your first beer, Morning Wood Coffee Stout, there is no doubt it was the culmination of a wet dream for Big Wood.

In Canada, eh.  On a recent trip to Toronto I didn't have to search far to find a brewery to hit.  Elsinore had a commanding view of the city from its perch on a hill.  The brewery was first opened in 1983 and runs a taproom out of it's huge facility, oddly enough near an old Royal Canadian mental asylum.  Crazy, right?  The brewery stands as a monolith of older times when beer was king.  The factory was large with two smoke stacks that didn't appear to be running while we were there.  It's almost spooky now as it runs at a much lower capacity than it once did, according to the bartender, a nice older guy with a funny accent, wearing all black.  I bet the place has many secrets to tell.

I love it when a brewery has a lot of history to it's setting.  This isn't possible for many, but it really adds to the experience for me and is what I think of when I think about brew pubs.  St Paul Brewing has a home run in this regard.  Hamm's Brewing started in St Paul in 1865 by a German immigrant named, Theodore Hamm.  Hamm actually acquired the small brewery through holding the deed to a foreclosed loan from the prior owner, Andrew Keller.  Hamm's has a long tradition in Minnesota and I remember seeing Hamm's Beer commercials on tv as a kid.  An animated bear with the famous saying, "from the land of sky blue waters." were quite memorable for a kid.  At one point, Hamm's was the 5th largest brewery in the country, having expanded to San Francisco, Baltimore and Houston by the 1950's.  Shortly after their 100th anniversary, the brewery went through a series of purchases, in 1965 to Heublein, then in 1973 to a group of distributors, who sold to Olympia Brewing in 1975 and again to Pabst in 1983.   The brewery itself was traded to Stroh's at this time, who ran it until closing it in 1997, ending a 137 year run.  The brewery sat idle and was left to decay and vandalism.  A 2005 fire damaged some of the building, which was actually the original stables and carpentry shop.  In 2024 a new owner came in and reimagined the site for a new brewery, building a taproom and restaurant out of the keg room and using the stables and shop as an outdoor biergarten.  It is now the home of St Paul Brewing.  Be careful as you drive there as you might miss it, tucked back in the bowels of the old building site.  

As an advocate and lover of the craft beer scene, I have become alarmed at the sign of the times in the industry.  It has been known for some time that people, in general, are drinking less beer.  In fact, I just read something today that says even the younger generation of Germans have gone away from beer.  Scheisse!  That same trend is at work here in the US too.  My own son and his friends are proof of this trend.  Craft beer is about 13.3% of the beer market, which is a dent in the big boring brewers, but not enough apparently.  Production has been down and a decrease in the number of breweries has shaped the business for the past two years.  2024 saw a 4% decrease in beer volume and 2025 is on pace for a 5%+ decrease over 2024.  Last year 529 breweries went out of business and the numbers for this year might be sobering when it is all said and done.  I suppose that economics says this was inevitable.  The microbrew craze had been going strong for 40 years and downturns happen.  Perhaps, in some places, microbreweries were overdone, not sure on that, but it seems possible.  If you look at my outdated pictures above, these are from www.vinepair.com and show the huge growth in breweries from 250 in 1990 to 7,190 in 2016.  Today it has grown to 9,269, but declining daily.  Other economic factors have played a role too.

It was a beautiful weekend to head up to the North Shore of Minnesota and Wisconsin.  The leaves were at peak color and the weather was cool, but not cold.  I had a board meeting up that way and after the meeting, like I usually do, while everyone else headed to dinner, I hit a brewery.  I had spied Warrior Brewing on my phone while looking for a new place to try before the meeting and it was directly on the way to dinner.  

Camden Town was a bit of a surprise.  When you get off the underground and come to the surface, you may think Camden Town is run down and a b it sketchy.  In reality, it is an older part of town, but has a vibrant artistic side and is known for its street markets, music and shops.  The Camden Market is a cool area of small, mostly independent shops and eateries that is a must-see and do when you go there.  It stretches across the street in two sections, where it follows along a canal and it is here you will find 3 Locks Brewing.  We were there very early as my son was looking for anime merch, which the area is full of and even though I had searched ahead of time, I really didn't look where the brewery was exactly.  We kind of stumbled upon it a few minutes before they opened.  Their taproom over looks the canal and has outside seating along it.  It really is a great setting for a brewery.  As you can see, I took a terribly blurry picture, so no, you aren't drunk.  Are you?  

I recently visited the UK for vacation and took my opportunity to try many beers, among other things.  The last time I was there the UK was in a bit of a sea change in the pub business.  There were about 58,000 pubs in the UK in 2000.  That number has declined to around 47,000 now.  Big breweries had stepped in and bought a huge chunk of the pubs in order to control beer sales.  I've seen some different numbers, but the six biggest owned about 75% of all the pubs.  In fact, Fuller, a well known brewery, sold it's beer making operation to the Asahi Group in 2019 so it could focus on it's pub operations.  Fuller made one of the best known British beers, London Pride, that it had brewed in London since 1958.  Asahi is a Japanese beer company, which you can easily find here in the states and I drank a lot when I was in Japan a few years ago.  There were marketing agreements in place, as part of the deal, but it shows you how the pubs is where the money is.  For awhile, there were laws put in place to limit the number of pubs the big brewers could own, but that has since been repealed.  For me, the drawback is that you can only find a small selection of beers available at any pub and the food choices were the same at all of them I visited.  There are about 3,800 pubs in London and I was in only about 8, but they were either owned by Greene King or Fuller.  The beers were good, but the choices were nil.

As I left Milwaukee after going to a con with my son, I decided to hit a brew pub.  The one I chose was closed for rebranding upon reaching the property.  Google Maps, which I despise, lied to us again.  It mentioned nothing about being closed and said it was moderately busy.  First they track your every move, then openly lie to you.  I hate Google, but that is for another time.  I chose a different brewery not too far away and we were starving, so it had to have food.  When you get to the building Brewfinity is in, you ,might just think they are out of business too as it looked like a shutdown warehouse out front, but a sign directs you to the left, so I drove around the building and found the brewery.  It is tucked away, but was a nice little space for a tap room.  There were just five other people in there on a very hot Saturday, so we grabbed a spot near the front.  The bartender came right over and gave us some menus.  Since I hadn't been there before, he asked me what kind of beer I like and directed me to their flagship beer, the Sailor's Delight, which is an American Amber.  I probably would've chose this beer anyway, so it was a good call.  Biscuity and malty, just like I like it.  The beer was a nice amber color and was really good.  It finished well, not too hoppy, and smelled  just right.  American Ambers are unique in that they use American hops and derive their sweetness from the malts they use.  They are fermented in a cleaner way than their British cousins and are distinct by their balance.  I get the feeling that the hey day of IPA's is over and that vacuum will be filled by amber ales.  They are far more drinkable, yet may struggle to earn their keep as a summer beer.  Perhaps less refreshing to some drinkers as a number of IPA's can be, but I tend to think they appeal to a far broader audience of beer enthusiasts.  Every brewery makes one, they just don't experiment as deeply and wrongly, in my opinion, as they did with a rash of IPA's.  

It was a sweltering weekend in Minnesota and a stop at a local brewery was definitely in the offing.  I wanted something different so I chose Waldmann's Brewery.  It was a good choice.  Nestled in a neighborhood of houses off the main road, you'll literally stumble upon an old stone house.  It was in the fall of 1857, before Minnesota was even a state, and before the Civil War, when Waldmann's was established.  It is in the oldest surviving commercial building in St Paul to be exact, so the history here is remarkable.  To be fair, there was a long 154 year break between when Waldmann's saloon came alive again in 2017 as Waldmann's Brewery, but that doesn't matter.  

It only took me three trips here to write a blog about it.  I was always out with co-workers and forgot or just didn't have time to take a pic or two.  This time it was just me and a vendor, so I remembered and got the job done.  When in Sioux City, I've always stayed at the hotel right across the street, so going to Marto was just a no-brainer.

Being a fan of the old Hartford Whalers, I had always wanted to go to Hartford.  The fact that there was a brewery on the old Colt firearms complex in Hartford was a win for everyone.  I would've loved to tour the Colt facility during its hayday.  Samuel Colt was born in Hartford in 1814 and began making guns in 1836.  He founded Colt firearms in 1855.  As it is for gun-makers it was feast or famine.  During wartime, Colt did great, but suffered in the aftermath.  Known for innovation, Colt was the first manufacturer to offer interchangeable parts for its guns and used powerful steam engines in its plants before others were doing it.  He also was the first to build a tenement for his workers with housing, daycare, churches and food.  He established a ten hour work day with a required one hour lunch break. 

On Memorial Day weekend I took my annual trip with my brothers.  This time is was the East Coast.  We hit six states during this trip and one of the better experiences was at East Regiment Beer Company in Salem.   It is nestled in the middle of downtown and was a welcome site for my hungry stomach.  

Phallic symbols are funny, but then again, I'm a juvenile.  Naming your brewery Big Wood is probably an homage to the mighty schlong, but you could try to get away saying it is about lumberjacks or something, though no guy would believe you.  I think they did call it Big Wood because it was funny and it took big wood to launch a brewery and do it their way.  If you have a rager for craft beer and want to sell a lot of merch, it goes hand in hand.  When you call your first beer, Morning Wood Coffee Stout, there is no doubt it was the culmination of a wet dream for Big Wood.

In Canada, eh.  On a recent trip to Toronto I didn't have to search far to find a brewery to hit.  Elsinore had a commanding view of the city from its perch on a hill.  The brewery was first opened in 1983 and runs a taproom out of it's huge facility, oddly enough near an old Royal Canadian mental asylum.  Crazy, right?  The brewery stands as a monolith of older times when beer was king.  The factory was large with two smoke stacks that didn't appear to be running while we were there.  It's almost spooky now as it runs at a much lower capacity than it once did, according to the bartender, a nice older guy with a funny accent, wearing all black.  I bet the place has many secrets to tell.

I love it when a brewery has a lot of history to it's setting.  This isn't possible for many, but it really adds to the experience for me and is what I think of when I think about brew pubs.  St Paul Brewing has a home run in this regard.  Hamm's Brewing started in St Paul in 1865 by a German immigrant named, Theodore Hamm.  Hamm actually acquired the small brewery through holding the deed to a foreclosed loan from the prior owner, Andrew Keller.  Hamm's has a long tradition in Minnesota and I remember seeing Hamm's Beer commercials on tv as a kid.  An animated bear with the famous saying, "from the land of sky blue waters." were quite memorable for a kid.  At one point, Hamm's was the 5th largest brewery in the country, having expanded to San Francisco, Baltimore and Houston by the 1950's.  Shortly after their 100th anniversary, the brewery went through a series of purchases, in 1965 to Heublein, then in 1973 to a group of distributors, who sold to Olympia Brewing in 1975 and again to Pabst in 1983.   The brewery itself was traded to Stroh's at this time, who ran it until closing it in 1997, ending a 137 year run.  The brewery sat idle and was left to decay and vandalism.  A 2005 fire damaged some of the building, which was actually the original stables and carpentry shop.  In 2024 a new owner came in and reimagined the site for a new brewery, building a taproom and restaurant out of the keg room and using the stables and shop as an outdoor biergarten.  It is now the home of St Paul Brewing.  Be careful as you drive there as you might miss it, tucked back in the bowels of the old building site.  

As an advocate and lover of the craft beer scene, I have become alarmed at the sign of the times in the industry.  It has been known for some time that people, in general, are drinking less beer.  In fact, I just read something today that says even the younger generation of Germans have gone away from beer.  Scheisse!  That same trend is at work here in the US too.  My own son and his friends are proof of this trend.  Craft beer is about 13.3% of the beer market, which is a dent in the big boring brewers, but not enough apparently.  Production has been down and a decrease in the number of breweries has shaped the business for the past two years.  2024 saw a 4% decrease in beer volume and 2025 is on pace for a 5%+ decrease over 2024.  Last year 529 breweries went out of business and the numbers for this year might be sobering when it is all said and done.  I suppose that economics says this was inevitable.  The microbrew craze had been going strong for 40 years and downturns happen.  Perhaps, in some places, microbreweries were overdone, not sure on that, but it seems possible.  If you look at my outdated pictures above, these are from www.vinepair.com and show the huge growth in breweries from 250 in 1990 to 7,190 in 2016.  Today it has grown to 9,269, but declining daily.  Other economic factors have played a role too.

It was a beautiful weekend to head up to the North Shore of Minnesota and Wisconsin.  The leaves were at peak color and the weather was cool, but not cold.  I had a board meeting up that way and after the meeting, like I usually do, while everyone else headed to dinner, I hit a brewery.  I had spied Warrior Brewing on my phone while looking for a new place to try before the meeting and it was directly on the way to dinner.  

Camden Town was a bit of a surprise.  When you get off the underground and come to the surface, you may think Camden Town is run down and a b it sketchy.  In reality, it is an older part of town, but has a vibrant artistic side and is known for its street markets, music and shops.  The Camden Market is a cool area of small, mostly independent shops and eateries that is a must-see and do when you go there.  It stretches across the street in two sections, where it follows along a canal and it is here you will find 3 Locks Brewing.  We were there very early as my son was looking for anime merch, which the area is full of and even though I had searched ahead of time, I really didn't look where the brewery was exactly.  We kind of stumbled upon it a few minutes before they opened.  Their taproom over looks the canal and has outside seating along it.  It really is a great setting for a brewery.  As you can see, I took a terribly blurry picture, so no, you aren't drunk.  Are you?  

I recently visited the UK for vacation and took my opportunity to try many beers, among other things.  The last time I was there the UK was in a bit of a sea change in the pub business.  There were about 58,000 pubs in the UK in 2000.  That number has declined to around 47,000 now.  Big breweries had stepped in and bought a huge chunk of the pubs in order to control beer sales.  I've seen some different numbers, but the six biggest owned about 75% of all the pubs.  In fact, Fuller, a well known brewery, sold it's beer making operation to the Asahi Group in 2019 so it could focus on it's pub operations.  Fuller made one of the best known British beers, London Pride, that it had brewed in London since 1958.  Asahi is a Japanese beer company, which you can easily find here in the states and I drank a lot when I was in Japan a few years ago.  There were marketing agreements in place, as part of the deal, but it shows you how the pubs is where the money is.  For awhile, there were laws put in place to limit the number of pubs the big brewers could own, but that has since been repealed.  For me, the drawback is that you can only find a small selection of beers available at any pub and the food choices were the same at all of them I visited.  There are about 3,800 pubs in London and I was in only about 8, but they were either owned by Greene King or Fuller.  The beers were good, but the choices were nil.

As I left Milwaukee after going to a con with my son, I decided to hit a brew pub.  The one I chose was closed for rebranding upon reaching the property.  Google Maps, which I despise, lied to us again.  It mentioned nothing about being closed and said it was moderately busy.  First they track your every move, then openly lie to you.  I hate Google, but that is for another time.  I chose a different brewery not too far away and we were starving, so it had to have food.  When you get to the building Brewfinity is in, you ,might just think they are out of business too as it looked like a shutdown warehouse out front, but a sign directs you to the left, so I drove around the building and found the brewery.  It is tucked away, but was a nice little space for a tap room.  There were just five other people in there on a very hot Saturday, so we grabbed a spot near the front.  The bartender came right over and gave us some menus.  Since I hadn't been there before, he asked me what kind of beer I like and directed me to their flagship beer, the Sailor's Delight, which is an American Amber.  I probably would've chose this beer anyway, so it was a good call.  Biscuity and malty, just like I like it.  The beer was a nice amber color and was really good.  It finished well, not too hoppy, and smelled  just right.  American Ambers are unique in that they use American hops and derive their sweetness from the malts they use.  They are fermented in a cleaner way than their British cousins and are distinct by their balance.  I get the feeling that the hey day of IPA's is over and that vacuum will be filled by amber ales.  They are far more drinkable, yet may struggle to earn their keep as a summer beer.  Perhaps less refreshing to some drinkers as a number of IPA's can be, but I tend to think they appeal to a far broader audience of beer enthusiasts.  Every brewery makes one, they just don't experiment as deeply and wrongly, in my opinion, as they did with a rash of IPA's.  

It was a sweltering weekend in Minnesota and a stop at a local brewery was definitely in the offing.  I wanted something different so I chose Waldmann's Brewery.  It was a good choice.  Nestled in a neighborhood of houses off the main road, you'll literally stumble upon an old stone house.  It was in the fall of 1857, before Minnesota was even a state, and before the Civil War, when Waldmann's was established.  It is in the oldest surviving commercial building in St Paul to be exact, so the history here is remarkable.  To be fair, there was a long 154 year break between when Waldmann's saloon came alive again in 2017 as Waldmann's Brewery, but that doesn't matter.  

It only took me three trips here to write a blog about it.  I was always out with co-workers and forgot or just didn't have time to take a pic or two.  This time it was just me and a vendor, so I remembered and got the job done.  When in Sioux City, I've always stayed at the hotel right across the street, so going to Marto was just a no-brainer.

Being a fan of the old Hartford Whalers, I had always wanted to go to Hartford.  The fact that there was a brewery on the old Colt firearms complex in Hartford was a win for everyone.  I would've loved to tour the Colt facility during its hayday.  Samuel Colt was born in Hartford in 1814 and began making guns in 1836.  He founded Colt firearms in 1855.  As it is for gun-makers it was feast or famine.  During wartime, Colt did great, but suffered in the aftermath.  Known for innovation, Colt was the first manufacturer to offer interchangeable parts for its guns and used powerful steam engines in its plants before others were doing it.  He also was the first to build a tenement for his workers with housing, daycare, churches and food.  He established a ten hour work day with a required one hour lunch break. 

On Memorial Day weekend I took my annual trip with my brothers.  This time is was the East Coast.  We hit six states during this trip and one of the better experiences was at East Regiment Beer Company in Salem.   It is nestled in the middle of downtown and was a welcome site for my hungry stomach.  

Phallic symbols are funny, but then again, I'm a juvenile.  Naming your brewery Big Wood is probably an homage to the mighty schlong, but you could try to get away saying it is about lumberjacks or something, though no guy would believe you.  I think they did call it Big Wood because it was funny and it took big wood to launch a brewery and do it their way.  If you have a rager for craft beer and want to sell a lot of merch, it goes hand in hand.  When you call your first beer, Morning Wood Coffee Stout, there is no doubt it was the culmination of a wet dream for Big Wood.

In Canada, eh.  On a recent trip to Toronto I didn't have to search far to find a brewery to hit.  Elsinore had a commanding view of the city from its perch on a hill.  The brewery was first opened in 1983 and runs a taproom out of it's huge facility, oddly enough near an old Royal Canadian mental asylum.  Crazy, right?  The brewery stands as a monolith of older times when beer was king.  The factory was large with two smoke stacks that didn't appear to be running while we were there.  It's almost spooky now as it runs at a much lower capacity than it once did, according to the bartender, a nice older guy with a funny accent, wearing all black.  I bet the place has many secrets to tell.

I love it when a brewery has a lot of history to it's setting.  This isn't possible for many, but it really adds to the experience for me and is what I think of when I think about brew pubs.  St Paul Brewing has a home run in this regard.  Hamm's Brewing started in St Paul in 1865 by a German immigrant named, Theodore Hamm.  Hamm actually acquired the small brewery through holding the deed to a foreclosed loan from the prior owner, Andrew Keller.  Hamm's has a long tradition in Minnesota and I remember seeing Hamm's Beer commercials on tv as a kid.  An animated bear with the famous saying, "from the land of sky blue waters." were quite memorable for a kid.  At one point, Hamm's was the 5th largest brewery in the country, having expanded to San Francisco, Baltimore and Houston by the 1950's.  Shortly after their 100th anniversary, the brewery went through a series of purchases, in 1965 to Heublein, then in 1973 to a group of distributors, who sold to Olympia Brewing in 1975 and again to Pabst in 1983.   The brewery itself was traded to Stroh's at this time, who ran it until closing it in 1997, ending a 137 year run.  The brewery sat idle and was left to decay and vandalism.  A 2005 fire damaged some of the building, which was actually the original stables and carpentry shop.  In 2024 a new owner came in and reimagined the site for a new brewery, building a taproom and restaurant out of the keg room and using the stables and shop as an outdoor biergarten.  It is now the home of St Paul Brewing.  Be careful as you drive there as you might miss it, tucked back in the bowels of the old building site.  

As an advocate and lover of the craft beer scene, I have become alarmed at the sign of the times in the industry.  It has been known for some time that people, in general, are drinking less beer.  In fact, I just read something today that says even the younger generation of Germans have gone away from beer.  Scheisse!  That same trend is at work here in the US too.  My own son and his friends are proof of this trend.  Craft beer is about 13.3% of the beer market, which is a dent in the big boring brewers, but not enough apparently.  Production has been down and a decrease in the number of breweries has shaped the business for the past two years.  2024 saw a 4% decrease in beer volume and 2025 is on pace for a 5%+ decrease over 2024.  Last year 529 breweries went out of business and the numbers for this year might be sobering when it is all said and done.  I suppose that economics says this was inevitable.  The microbrew craze had been going strong for 40 years and downturns happen.  Perhaps, in some places, microbreweries were overdone, not sure on that, but it seems possible.  If you look at my outdated pictures above, these are from www.vinepair.com and show the huge growth in breweries from 250 in 1990 to 7,190 in 2016.  Today it has grown to 9,269, but declining daily.  Other economic factors have played a role too.

It was a beautiful weekend to head up to the North Shore of Minnesota and Wisconsin.  The leaves were at peak color and the weather was cool, but not cold.  I had a board meeting up that way and after the meeting, like I usually do, while everyone else headed to dinner, I hit a brewery.  I had spied Warrior Brewing on my phone while looking for a new place to try before the meeting and it was directly on the way to dinner.  

Camden Town was a bit of a surprise.  When you get off the underground and come to the surface, you may think Camden Town is run down and a b it sketchy.  In reality, it is an older part of town, but has a vibrant artistic side and is known for its street markets, music and shops.  The Camden Market is a cool area of small, mostly independent shops and eateries that is a must-see and do when you go there.  It stretches across the street in two sections, where it follows along a canal and it is here you will find 3 Locks Brewing.  We were there very early as my son was looking for anime merch, which the area is full of and even though I had searched ahead of time, I really didn't look where the brewery was exactly.  We kind of stumbled upon it a few minutes before they opened.  Their taproom over looks the canal and has outside seating along it.  It really is a great setting for a brewery.  As you can see, I took a terribly blurry picture, so no, you aren't drunk.  Are you?  

I recently visited the UK for vacation and took my opportunity to try many beers, among other things.  The last time I was there the UK was in a bit of a sea change in the pub business.  There were about 58,000 pubs in the UK in 2000.  That number has declined to around 47,000 now.  Big breweries had stepped in and bought a huge chunk of the pubs in order to control beer sales.  I've seen some different numbers, but the six biggest owned about 75% of all the pubs.  In fact, Fuller, a well known brewery, sold it's beer making operation to the Asahi Group in 2019 so it could focus on it's pub operations.  Fuller made one of the best known British beers, London Pride, that it had brewed in London since 1958.  Asahi is a Japanese beer company, which you can easily find here in the states and I drank a lot when I was in Japan a few years ago.  There were marketing agreements in place, as part of the deal, but it shows you how the pubs is where the money is.  For awhile, there were laws put in place to limit the number of pubs the big brewers could own, but that has since been repealed.  For me, the drawback is that you can only find a small selection of beers available at any pub and the food choices were the same at all of them I visited.  There are about 3,800 pubs in London and I was in only about 8, but they were either owned by Greene King or Fuller.  The beers were good, but the choices were nil.

As I left Milwaukee after going to a con with my son, I decided to hit a brew pub.  The one I chose was closed for rebranding upon reaching the property.  Google Maps, which I despise, lied to us again.  It mentioned nothing about being closed and said it was moderately busy.  First they track your every move, then openly lie to you.  I hate Google, but that is for another time.  I chose a different brewery not too far away and we were starving, so it had to have food.  When you get to the building Brewfinity is in, you ,might just think they are out of business too as it looked like a shutdown warehouse out front, but a sign directs you to the left, so I drove around the building and found the brewery.  It is tucked away, but was a nice little space for a tap room.  There were just five other people in there on a very hot Saturday, so we grabbed a spot near the front.  The bartender came right over and gave us some menus.  Since I hadn't been there before, he asked me what kind of beer I like and directed me to their flagship beer, the Sailor's Delight, which is an American Amber.  I probably would've chose this beer anyway, so it was a good call.  Biscuity and malty, just like I like it.  The beer was a nice amber color and was really good.  It finished well, not too hoppy, and smelled  just right.  American Ambers are unique in that they use American hops and derive their sweetness from the malts they use.  They are fermented in a cleaner way than their British cousins and are distinct by their balance.  I get the feeling that the hey day of IPA's is over and that vacuum will be filled by amber ales.  They are far more drinkable, yet may struggle to earn their keep as a summer beer.  Perhaps less refreshing to some drinkers as a number of IPA's can be, but I tend to think they appeal to a far broader audience of beer enthusiasts.  Every brewery makes one, they just don't experiment as deeply and wrongly, in my opinion, as they did with a rash of IPA's.  

It was a sweltering weekend in Minnesota and a stop at a local brewery was definitely in the offing.  I wanted something different so I chose Waldmann's Brewery.  It was a good choice.  Nestled in a neighborhood of houses off the main road, you'll literally stumble upon an old stone house.  It was in the fall of 1857, before Minnesota was even a state, and before the Civil War, when Waldmann's was established.  It is in the oldest surviving commercial building in St Paul to be exact, so the history here is remarkable.  To be fair, there was a long 154 year break between when Waldmann's saloon came alive again in 2017 as Waldmann's Brewery, but that doesn't matter.  

It only took me three trips here to write a blog about it.  I was always out with co-workers and forgot or just didn't have time to take a pic or two.  This time it was just me and a vendor, so I remembered and got the job done.  When in Sioux City, I've always stayed at the hotel right across the street, so going to Marto was just a no-brainer.

Being a fan of the old Hartford Whalers, I had always wanted to go to Hartford.  The fact that there was a brewery on the old Colt firearms complex in Hartford was a win for everyone.  I would've loved to tour the Colt facility during its hayday.  Samuel Colt was born in Hartford in 1814 and began making guns in 1836.  He founded Colt firearms in 1855.  As it is for gun-makers it was feast or famine.  During wartime, Colt did great, but suffered in the aftermath.  Known for innovation, Colt was the first manufacturer to offer interchangeable parts for its guns and used powerful steam engines in its plants before others were doing it.  He also was the first to build a tenement for his workers with housing, daycare, churches and food.  He established a ten hour work day with a required one hour lunch break. 

On Memorial Day weekend I took my annual trip with my brothers.  This time is was the East Coast.  We hit six states during this trip and one of the better experiences was at East Regiment Beer Company in Salem.   It is nestled in the middle of downtown and was a welcome site for my hungry stomach.  

Phallic symbols are funny, but then again, I'm a juvenile.  Naming your brewery Big Wood is probably an homage to the mighty schlong, but you could try to get away saying it is about lumberjacks or something, though no guy would believe you.  I think they did call it Big Wood because it was funny and it took big wood to launch a brewery and do it their way.  If you have a rager for craft beer and want to sell a lot of merch, it goes hand in hand.  When you call your first beer, Morning Wood Coffee Stout, there is no doubt it was the culmination of a wet dream for Big Wood.

In Canada, eh.  On a recent trip to Toronto I didn't have to search far to find a brewery to hit.  Elsinore had a commanding view of the city from its perch on a hill.  The brewery was first opened in 1983 and runs a taproom out of it's huge facility, oddly enough near an old Royal Canadian mental asylum.  Crazy, right?  The brewery stands as a monolith of older times when beer was king.  The factory was large with two smoke stacks that didn't appear to be running while we were there.  It's almost spooky now as it runs at a much lower capacity than it once did, according to the bartender, a nice older guy with a funny accent, wearing all black.  I bet the place has many secrets to tell.

I love it when a brewery has a lot of history to it's setting.  This isn't possible for many, but it really adds to the experience for me and is what I think of when I think about brew pubs.  St Paul Brewing has a home run in this regard.  Hamm's Brewing started in St Paul in 1865 by a German immigrant named, Theodore Hamm.  Hamm actually acquired the small brewery through holding the deed to a foreclosed loan from the prior owner, Andrew Keller.  Hamm's has a long tradition in Minnesota and I remember seeing Hamm's Beer commercials on tv as a kid.  An animated bear with the famous saying, "from the land of sky blue waters." were quite memorable for a kid.  At one point, Hamm's was the 5th largest brewery in the country, having expanded to San Francisco, Baltimore and Houston by the 1950's.  Shortly after their 100th anniversary, the brewery went through a series of purchases, in 1965 to Heublein, then in 1973 to a group of distributors, who sold to Olympia Brewing in 1975 and again to Pabst in 1983.   The brewery itself was traded to Stroh's at this time, who ran it until closing it in 1997, ending a 137 year run.  The brewery sat idle and was left to decay and vandalism.  A 2005 fire damaged some of the building, which was actually the original stables and carpentry shop.  In 2024 a new owner came in and reimagined the site for a new brewery, building a taproom and restaurant out of the keg room and using the stables and shop as an outdoor biergarten.  It is now the home of St Paul Brewing.  Be careful as you drive there as you might miss it, tucked back in the bowels of the old building site.  

As an advocate and lover of the craft beer scene, I have become alarmed at the sign of the times in the industry.  It has been known for some time that people, in general, are drinking less beer.  In fact, I just read something today that says even the younger generation of Germans have gone away from beer.  Scheisse!  That same trend is at work here in the US too.  My own son and his friends are proof of this trend.  Craft beer is about 13.3% of the beer market, which is a dent in the big boring brewers, but not enough apparently.  Production has been down and a decrease in the number of breweries has shaped the business for the past two years.  2024 saw a 4% decrease in beer volume and 2025 is on pace for a 5%+ decrease over 2024.  Last year 529 breweries went out of business and the numbers for this year might be sobering when it is all said and done.  I suppose that economics says this was inevitable.  The microbrew craze had been going strong for 40 years and downturns happen.  Perhaps, in some places, microbreweries were overdone, not sure on that, but it seems possible.  If you look at my outdated pictures above, these are from www.vinepair.com and show the huge growth in breweries from 250 in 1990 to 7,190 in 2016.  Today it has grown to 9,269, but declining daily.  Other economic factors have played a role too.

It was a beautiful weekend to head up to the North Shore of Minnesota and Wisconsin.  The leaves were at peak color and the weather was cool, but not cold.  I had a board meeting up that way and after the meeting, like I usually do, while everyone else headed to dinner, I hit a brewery.  I had spied Warrior Brewing on my phone while looking for a new place to try before the meeting and it was directly on the way to dinner.  

Camden Town was a bit of a surprise.  When you get off the underground and come to the surface, you may think Camden Town is run down and a b it sketchy.  In reality, it is an older part of town, but has a vibrant artistic side and is known for its street markets, music and shops.  The Camden Market is a cool area of small, mostly independent shops and eateries that is a must-see and do when you go there.  It stretches across the street in two sections, where it follows along a canal and it is here you will find 3 Locks Brewing.  We were there very early as my son was looking for anime merch, which the area is full of and even though I had searched ahead of time, I really didn't look where the brewery was exactly.  We kind of stumbled upon it a few minutes before they opened.  Their taproom over looks the canal and has outside seating along it.  It really is a great setting for a brewery.  As you can see, I took a terribly blurry picture, so no, you aren't drunk.  Are you?  

I recently visited the UK for vacation and took my opportunity to try many beers, among other things.  The last time I was there the UK was in a bit of a sea change in the pub business.  There were about 58,000 pubs in the UK in 2000.  That number has declined to around 47,000 now.  Big breweries had stepped in and bought a huge chunk of the pubs in order to control beer sales.  I've seen some different numbers, but the six biggest owned about 75% of all the pubs.  In fact, Fuller, a well known brewery, sold it's beer making operation to the Asahi Group in 2019 so it could focus on it's pub operations.  Fuller made one of the best known British beers, London Pride, that it had brewed in London since 1958.  Asahi is a Japanese beer company, which you can easily find here in the states and I drank a lot when I was in Japan a few years ago.  There were marketing agreements in place, as part of the deal, but it shows you how the pubs is where the money is.  For awhile, there were laws put in place to limit the number of pubs the big brewers could own, but that has since been repealed.  For me, the drawback is that you can only find a small selection of beers available at any pub and the food choices were the same at all of them I visited.  There are about 3,800 pubs in London and I was in only about 8, but they were either owned by Greene King or Fuller.  The beers were good, but the choices were nil.

As I left Milwaukee after going to a con with my son, I decided to hit a brew pub.  The one I chose was closed for rebranding upon reaching the property.  Google Maps, which I despise, lied to us again.  It mentioned nothing about being closed and said it was moderately busy.  First they track your every move, then openly lie to you.  I hate Google, but that is for another time.  I chose a different brewery not too far away and we were starving, so it had to have food.  When you get to the building Brewfinity is in, you ,might just think they are out of business too as it looked like a shutdown warehouse out front, but a sign directs you to the left, so I drove around the building and found the brewery.  It is tucked away, but was a nice little space for a tap room.  There were just five other people in there on a very hot Saturday, so we grabbed a spot near the front.  The bartender came right over and gave us some menus.  Since I hadn't been there before, he asked me what kind of beer I like and directed me to their flagship beer, the Sailor's Delight, which is an American Amber.  I probably would've chose this beer anyway, so it was a good call.  Biscuity and malty, just like I like it.  The beer was a nice amber color and was really good.  It finished well, not too hoppy, and smelled  just right.  American Ambers are unique in that they use American hops and derive their sweetness from the malts they use.  They are fermented in a cleaner way than their British cousins and are distinct by their balance.  I get the feeling that the hey day of IPA's is over and that vacuum will be filled by amber ales.  They are far more drinkable, yet may struggle to earn their keep as a summer beer.  Perhaps less refreshing to some drinkers as a number of IPA's can be, but I tend to think they appeal to a far broader audience of beer enthusiasts.  Every brewery makes one, they just don't experiment as deeply and wrongly, in my opinion, as they did with a rash of IPA's.  

It was a sweltering weekend in Minnesota and a stop at a local brewery was definitely in the offing.  I wanted something different so I chose Waldmann's Brewery.  It was a good choice.  Nestled in a neighborhood of houses off the main road, you'll literally stumble upon an old stone house.  It was in the fall of 1857, before Minnesota was even a state, and before the Civil War, when Waldmann's was established.  It is in the oldest surviving commercial building in St Paul to be exact, so the history here is remarkable.  To be fair, there was a long 154 year break between when Waldmann's saloon came alive again in 2017 as Waldmann's Brewery, but that doesn't matter.  

It only took me three trips here to write a blog about it.  I was always out with co-workers and forgot or just didn't have time to take a pic or two.  This time it was just me and a vendor, so I remembered and got the job done.  When in Sioux City, I've always stayed at the hotel right across the street, so going to Marto was just a no-brainer.

Being a fan of the old Hartford Whalers, I had always wanted to go to Hartford.  The fact that there was a brewery on the old Colt firearms complex in Hartford was a win for everyone.  I would've loved to tour the Colt facility during its hayday.  Samuel Colt was born in Hartford in 1814 and began making guns in 1836.  He founded Colt firearms in 1855.  As it is for gun-makers it was feast or famine.  During wartime, Colt did great, but suffered in the aftermath.  Known for innovation, Colt was the first manufacturer to offer interchangeable parts for its guns and used powerful steam engines in its plants before others were doing it.  He also was the first to build a tenement for his workers with housing, daycare, churches and food.  He established a ten hour work day with a required one hour lunch break. 

On Memorial Day weekend I took my annual trip with my brothers.  This time is was the East Coast.  We hit six states during this trip and one of the better experiences was at East Regiment Beer Company in Salem.   It is nestled in the middle of downtown and was a welcome site for my hungry stomach.  

Phallic symbols are funny, but then again, I'm a juvenile.  Naming your brewery Big Wood is probably an homage to the mighty schlong, but you could try to get away saying it is about lumberjacks or something, though no guy would believe you.  I think they did call it Big Wood because it was funny and it took big wood to launch a brewery and do it their way.  If you have a rager for craft beer and want to sell a lot of merch, it goes hand in hand.  When you call your first beer, Morning Wood Coffee Stout, there is no doubt it was the culmination of a wet dream for Big Wood.

In Canada, eh.  On a recent trip to Toronto I didn't have to search far to find a brewery to hit.  Elsinore had a commanding view of the city from its perch on a hill.  The brewery was first opened in 1983 and runs a taproom out of it's huge facility, oddly enough near an old Royal Canadian mental asylum.  Crazy, right?  The brewery stands as a monolith of older times when beer was king.  The factory was large with two smoke stacks that didn't appear to be running while we were there.  It's almost spooky now as it runs at a much lower capacity than it once did, according to the bartender, a nice older guy with a funny accent, wearing all black.  I bet the place has many secrets to tell.

I love it when a brewery has a lot of history to it's setting.  This isn't possible for many, but it really adds to the experience for me and is what I think of when I think about brew pubs.  St Paul Brewing has a home run in this regard.  Hamm's Brewing started in St Paul in 1865 by a German immigrant named, Theodore Hamm.  Hamm actually acquired the small brewery through holding the deed to a foreclosed loan from the prior owner, Andrew Keller.  Hamm's has a long tradition in Minnesota and I remember seeing Hamm's Beer commercials on tv as a kid.  An animated bear with the famous saying, "from the land of sky blue waters." were quite memorable for a kid.  At one point, Hamm's was the 5th largest brewery in the country, having expanded to San Francisco, Baltimore and Houston by the 1950's.  Shortly after their 100th anniversary, the brewery went through a series of purchases, in 1965 to Heublein, then in 1973 to a group of distributors, who sold to Olympia Brewing in 1975 and again to Pabst in 1983.   The brewery itself was traded to Stroh's at this time, who ran it until closing it in 1997, ending a 137 year run.  The brewery sat idle and was left to decay and vandalism.  A 2005 fire damaged some of the building, which was actually the original stables and carpentry shop.  In 2024 a new owner came in and reimagined the site for a new brewery, building a taproom and restaurant out of the keg room and using the stables and shop as an outdoor biergarten.  It is now the home of St Paul Brewing.  Be careful as you drive there as you might miss it, tucked back in the bowels of the old building site.  

As an advocate and lover of the craft beer scene, I have become alarmed at the sign of the times in the industry.  It has been known for some time that people, in general, are drinking less beer.  In fact, I just read something today that says even the younger generation of Germans have gone away from beer.  Scheisse!  That same trend is at work here in the US too.  My own son and his friends are proof of this trend.  Craft beer is about 13.3% of the beer market, which is a dent in the big boring brewers, but not enough apparently.  Production has been down and a decrease in the number of breweries has shaped the business for the past two years.  2024 saw a 4% decrease in beer volume and 2025 is on pace for a 5%+ decrease over 2024.  Last year 529 breweries went out of business and the numbers for this year might be sobering when it is all said and done.  I suppose that economics says this was inevitable.  The microbrew craze had been going strong for 40 years and downturns happen.  Perhaps, in some places, microbreweries were overdone, not sure on that, but it seems possible.  If you look at my outdated pictures above, these are from www.vinepair.com and show the huge growth in breweries from 250 in 1990 to 7,190 in 2016.  Today it has grown to 9,269, but declining daily.  Other economic factors have played a role too.

It was a beautiful weekend to head up to the North Shore of Minnesota and Wisconsin.  The leaves were at peak color and the weather was cool, but not cold.  I had a board meeting up that way and after the meeting, like I usually do, while everyone else headed to dinner, I hit a brewery.  I had spied Warrior Brewing on my phone while looking for a new place to try before the meeting and it was directly on the way to dinner.  

Camden Town was a bit of a surprise.  When you get off the underground and come to the surface, you may think Camden Town is run down and a b it sketchy.  In reality, it is an older part of town, but has a vibrant artistic side and is known for its street markets, music and shops.  The Camden Market is a cool area of small, mostly independent shops and eateries that is a must-see and do when you go there.  It stretches across the street in two sections, where it follows along a canal and it is here you will find 3 Locks Brewing.  We were there very early as my son was looking for anime merch, which the area is full of and even though I had searched ahead of time, I really didn't look where the brewery was exactly.  We kind of stumbled upon it a few minutes before they opened.  Their taproom over looks the canal and has outside seating along it.  It really is a great setting for a brewery.  As you can see, I took a terribly blurry picture, so no, you aren't drunk.  Are you?  

I recently visited the UK for vacation and took my opportunity to try many beers, among other things.  The last time I was there the UK was in a bit of a sea change in the pub business.  There were about 58,000 pubs in the UK in 2000.  That number has declined to around 47,000 now.  Big breweries had stepped in and bought a huge chunk of the pubs in order to control beer sales.  I've seen some different numbers, but the six biggest owned about 75% of all the pubs.  In fact, Fuller, a well known brewery, sold it's beer making operation to the Asahi Group in 2019 so it could focus on it's pub operations.  Fuller made one of the best known British beers, London Pride, that it had brewed in London since 1958.  Asahi is a Japanese beer company, which you can easily find here in the states and I drank a lot when I was in Japan a few years ago.  There were marketing agreements in place, as part of the deal, but it shows you how the pubs is where the money is.  For awhile, there were laws put in place to limit the number of pubs the big brewers could own, but that has since been repealed.  For me, the drawback is that you can only find a small selection of beers available at any pub and the food choices were the same at all of them I visited.  There are about 3,800 pubs in London and I was in only about 8, but they were either owned by Greene King or Fuller.  The beers were good, but the choices were nil.

As I left Milwaukee after going to a con with my son, I decided to hit a brew pub.  The one I chose was closed for rebranding upon reaching the property.  Google Maps, which I despise, lied to us again.  It mentioned nothing about being closed and said it was moderately busy.  First they track your every move, then openly lie to you.  I hate Google, but that is for another time.  I chose a different brewery not too far away and we were starving, so it had to have food.  When you get to the building Brewfinity is in, you ,might just think they are out of business too as it looked like a shutdown warehouse out front, but a sign directs you to the left, so I drove around the building and found the brewery.  It is tucked away, but was a nice little space for a tap room.  There were just five other people in there on a very hot Saturday, so we grabbed a spot near the front.  The bartender came right over and gave us some menus.  Since I hadn't been there before, he asked me what kind of beer I like and directed me to their flagship beer, the Sailor's Delight, which is an American Amber.  I probably would've chose this beer anyway, so it was a good call.  Biscuity and malty, just like I like it.  The beer was a nice amber color and was really good.  It finished well, not too hoppy, and smelled  just right.  American Ambers are unique in that they use American hops and derive their sweetness from the malts they use.  They are fermented in a cleaner way than their British cousins and are distinct by their balance.  I get the feeling that the hey day of IPA's is over and that vacuum will be filled by amber ales.  They are far more drinkable, yet may struggle to earn their keep as a summer beer.  Perhaps less refreshing to some drinkers as a number of IPA's can be, but I tend to think they appeal to a far broader audience of beer enthusiasts.  Every brewery makes one, they just don't experiment as deeply and wrongly, in my opinion, as they did with a rash of IPA's.  

It was a sweltering weekend in Minnesota and a stop at a local brewery was definitely in the offing.  I wanted something different so I chose Waldmann's Brewery.  It was a good choice.  Nestled in a neighborhood of houses off the main road, you'll literally stumble upon an old stone house.  It was in the fall of 1857, before Minnesota was even a state, and before the Civil War, when Waldmann's was established.  It is in the oldest surviving commercial building in St Paul to be exact, so the history here is remarkable.  To be fair, there was a long 154 year break between when Waldmann's saloon came alive again in 2017 as Waldmann's Brewery, but that doesn't matter.  

It only took me three trips here to write a blog about it.  I was always out with co-workers and forgot or just didn't have time to take a pic or two.  This time it was just me and a vendor, so I remembered and got the job done.  When in Sioux City, I've always stayed at the hotel right across the street, so going to Marto was just a no-brainer.

Being a fan of the old Hartford Whalers, I had always wanted to go to Hartford.  The fact that there was a brewery on the old Colt firearms complex in Hartford was a win for everyone.  I would've loved to tour the Colt facility during its hayday.  Samuel Colt was born in Hartford in 1814 and began making guns in 1836.  He founded Colt firearms in 1855.  As it is for gun-makers it was feast or famine.  During wartime, Colt did great, but suffered in the aftermath.  Known for innovation, Colt was the first manufacturer to offer interchangeable parts for its guns and used powerful steam engines in its plants before others were doing it.  He also was the first to build a tenement for his workers with housing, daycare, churches and food.  He established a ten hour work day with a required one hour lunch break. 

On Memorial Day weekend I took my annual trip with my brothers.  This time is was the East Coast.  We hit six states during this trip and one of the better experiences was at East Regiment Beer Company in Salem.   It is nestled in the middle of downtown and was a welcome site for my hungry stomach.  

Phallic symbols are funny, but then again, I'm a juvenile.  Naming your brewery Big Wood is probably an homage to the mighty schlong, but you could try to get away saying it is about lumberjacks or something, though no guy would believe you.  I think they did call it Big Wood because it was funny and it took big wood to launch a brewery and do it their way.  If you have a rager for craft beer and want to sell a lot of merch, it goes hand in hand.  When you call your first beer, Morning Wood Coffee Stout, there is no doubt it was the culmination of a wet dream for Big Wood.

In Canada, eh.  On a recent trip to Toronto I didn't have to search far to find a brewery to hit.  Elsinore had a commanding view of the city from its perch on a hill.  The brewery was first opened in 1983 and runs a taproom out of it's huge facility, oddly enough near an old Royal Canadian mental asylum.  Crazy, right?  The brewery stands as a monolith of older times when beer was king.  The factory was large with two smoke stacks that didn't appear to be running while we were there.  It's almost spooky now as it runs at a much lower capacity than it once did, according to the bartender, a nice older guy with a funny accent, wearing all black.  I bet the place has many secrets to tell.

I love it when a brewery has a lot of history to it's setting.  This isn't possible for many, but it really adds to the experience for me and is what I think of when I think about brew pubs.  St Paul Brewing has a home run in this regard.  Hamm's Brewing started in St Paul in 1865 by a German immigrant named, Theodore Hamm.  Hamm actually acquired the small brewery through holding the deed to a foreclosed loan from the prior owner, Andrew Keller.  Hamm's has a long tradition in Minnesota and I remember seeing Hamm's Beer commercials on tv as a kid.  An animated bear with the famous saying, "from the land of sky blue waters." were quite memorable for a kid.  At one point, Hamm's was the 5th largest brewery in the country, having expanded to San Francisco, Baltimore and Houston by the 1950's.  Shortly after their 100th anniversary, the brewery went through a series of purchases, in 1965 to Heublein, then in 1973 to a group of distributors, who sold to Olympia Brewing in 1975 and again to Pabst in 1983.   The brewery itself was traded to Stroh's at this time, who ran it until closing it in 1997, ending a 137 year run.  The brewery sat idle and was left to decay and vandalism.  A 2005 fire damaged some of the building, which was actually the original stables and carpentry shop.  In 2024 a new owner came in and reimagined the site for a new brewery, building a taproom and restaurant out of the keg room and using the stables and shop as an outdoor biergarten.  It is now the home of St Paul Brewing.  Be careful as you drive there as you might miss it, tucked back in the bowels of the old building site.  

As an advocate and lover of the craft beer scene, I have become alarmed at the sign of the times in the industry.  It has been known for some time that people, in general, are drinking less beer.  In fact, I just read something today that says even the younger generation of Germans have gone away from beer.  Scheisse!  That same trend is at work here in the US too.  My own son and his friends are proof of this trend.  Craft beer is about 13.3% of the beer market, which is a dent in the big boring brewers, but not enough apparently.  Production has been down and a decrease in the number of breweries has shaped the business for the past two years.  2024 saw a 4% decrease in beer volume and 2025 is on pace for a 5%+ decrease over 2024.  Last year 529 breweries went out of business and the numbers for this year might be sobering when it is all said and done.  I suppose that economics says this was inevitable.  The microbrew craze had been going strong for 40 years and downturns happen.  Perhaps, in some places, microbreweries were overdone, not sure on that, but it seems possible.  If you look at my outdated pictures above, these are from www.vinepair.com and show the huge growth in breweries from 250 in 1990 to 7,190 in 2016.  Today it has grown to 9,269, but declining daily.  Other economic factors have played a role too.

It was a beautiful weekend to head up to the North Shore of Minnesota and Wisconsin.  The leaves were at peak color and the weather was cool, but not cold.  I had a board meeting up that way and after the meeting, like I usually do, while everyone else headed to dinner, I hit a brewery.  I had spied Warrior Brewing on my phone while looking for a new place to try before the meeting and it was directly on the way to dinner.  

Camden Town was a bit of a surprise.  When you get off the underground and come to the surface, you may think Camden Town is run down and a b it sketchy.  In reality, it is an older part of town, but has a vibrant artistic side and is known for its street markets, music and shops.  The Camden Market is a cool area of small, mostly independent shops and eateries that is a must-see and do when you go there.  It stretches across the street in two sections, where it follows along a canal and it is here you will find 3 Locks Brewing.  We were there very early as my son was looking for anime merch, which the area is full of and even though I had searched ahead of time, I really didn't look where the brewery was exactly.  We kind of stumbled upon it a few minutes before they opened.  Their taproom over looks the canal and has outside seating along it.  It really is a great setting for a brewery.  As you can see, I took a terribly blurry picture, so no, you aren't drunk.  Are you?  

I recently visited the UK for vacation and took my opportunity to try many beers, among other things.  The last time I was there the UK was in a bit of a sea change in the pub business.  There were about 58,000 pubs in the UK in 2000.  That number has declined to around 47,000 now.  Big breweries had stepped in and bought a huge chunk of the pubs in order to control beer sales.  I've seen some different numbers, but the six biggest owned about 75% of all the pubs.  In fact, Fuller, a well known brewery, sold it's beer making operation to the Asahi Group in 2019 so it could focus on it's pub operations.  Fuller made one of the best known British beers, London Pride, that it had brewed in London since 1958.  Asahi is a Japanese beer company, which you can easily find here in the states and I drank a lot when I was in Japan a few years ago.  There were marketing agreements in place, as part of the deal, but it shows you how the pubs is where the money is.  For awhile, there were laws put in place to limit the number of pubs the big brewers could own, but that has since been repealed.  For me, the drawback is that you can only find a small selection of beers available at any pub and the food choices were the same at all of them I visited.  There are about 3,800 pubs in London and I was in only about 8, but they were either owned by Greene King or Fuller.  The beers were good, but the choices were nil.

As I left Milwaukee after going to a con with my son, I decided to hit a brew pub.  The one I chose was closed for rebranding upon reaching the property.  Google Maps, which I despise, lied to us again.  It mentioned nothing about being closed and said it was moderately busy.  First they track your every move, then openly lie to you.  I hate Google, but that is for another time.  I chose a different brewery not too far away and we were starving, so it had to have food.  When you get to the building Brewfinity is in, you ,might just think they are out of business too as it looked like a shutdown warehouse out front, but a sign directs you to the left, so I drove around the building and found the brewery.  It is tucked away, but was a nice little space for a tap room.  There were just five other people in there on a very hot Saturday, so we grabbed a spot near the front.  The bartender came right over and gave us some menus.  Since I hadn't been there before, he asked me what kind of beer I like and directed me to their flagship beer, the Sailor's Delight, which is an American Amber.  I probably would've chose this beer anyway, so it was a good call.  Biscuity and malty, just like I like it.  The beer was a nice amber color and was really good.  It finished well, not too hoppy, and smelled  just right.  American Ambers are unique in that they use American hops and derive their sweetness from the malts they use.  They are fermented in a cleaner way than their British cousins and are distinct by their balance.  I get the feeling that the hey day of IPA's is over and that vacuum will be filled by amber ales.  They are far more drinkable, yet may struggle to earn their keep as a summer beer.  Perhaps less refreshing to some drinkers as a number of IPA's can be, but I tend to think they appeal to a far broader audience of beer enthusiasts.  Every brewery makes one, they just don't experiment as deeply and wrongly, in my opinion, as they did with a rash of IPA's.  

It was a sweltering weekend in Minnesota and a stop at a local brewery was definitely in the offing.  I wanted something different so I chose Waldmann's Brewery.  It was a good choice.  Nestled in a neighborhood of houses off the main road, you'll literally stumble upon an old stone house.  It was in the fall of 1857, before Minnesota was even a state, and before the Civil War, when Waldmann's was established.  It is in the oldest surviving commercial building in St Paul to be exact, so the history here is remarkable.  To be fair, there was a long 154 year break between when Waldmann's saloon came alive again in 2017 as Waldmann's Brewery, but that doesn't matter.  

It only took me three trips here to write a blog about it.  I was always out with co-workers and forgot or just didn't have time to take a pic or two.  This time it was just me and a vendor, so I remembered and got the job done.  When in Sioux City, I've always stayed at the hotel right across the street, so going to Marto was just a no-brainer.

Being a fan of the old Hartford Whalers, I had always wanted to go to Hartford.  The fact that there was a brewery on the old Colt firearms complex in Hartford was a win for everyone.  I would've loved to tour the Colt facility during its hayday.  Samuel Colt was born in Hartford in 1814 and began making guns in 1836.  He founded Colt firearms in 1855.  As it is for gun-makers it was feast or famine.  During wartime, Colt did great, but suffered in the aftermath.  Known for innovation, Colt was the first manufacturer to offer interchangeable parts for its guns and used powerful steam engines in its plants before others were doing it.  He also was the first to build a tenement for his workers with housing, daycare, churches and food.  He established a ten hour work day with a required one hour lunch break. 

On Memorial Day weekend I took my annual trip with my brothers.  This time is was the East Coast.  We hit six states during this trip and one of the better experiences was at East Regiment Beer Company in Salem.   It is nestled in the middle of downtown and was a welcome site for my hungry stomach.  

Phallic symbols are funny, but then again, I'm a juvenile.  Naming your brewery Big Wood is probably an homage to the mighty schlong, but you could try to get away saying it is about lumberjacks or something, though no guy would believe you.  I think they did call it Big Wood because it was funny and it took big wood to launch a brewery and do it their way.  If you have a rager for craft beer and want to sell a lot of merch, it goes hand in hand.  When you call your first beer, Morning Wood Coffee Stout, there is no doubt it was the culmination of a wet dream for Big Wood.

In Canada, eh.  On a recent trip to Toronto I didn't have to search far to find a brewery to hit.  Elsinore had a commanding view of the city from its perch on a hill.  The brewery was first opened in 1983 and runs a taproom out of it's huge facility, oddly enough near an old Royal Canadian mental asylum.  Crazy, right?  The brewery stands as a monolith of older times when beer was king.  The factory was large with two smoke stacks that didn't appear to be running while we were there.  It's almost spooky now as it runs at a much lower capacity than it once did, according to the bartender, a nice older guy with a funny accent, wearing all black.  I bet the place has many secrets to tell.

I love it when a brewery has a lot of history to it's setting.  This isn't possible for many, but it really adds to the experience for me and is what I think of when I think about brew pubs.  St Paul Brewing has a home run in this regard.  Hamm's Brewing started in St Paul in 1865 by a German immigrant named, Theodore Hamm.  Hamm actually acquired the small brewery through holding the deed to a foreclosed loan from the prior owner, Andrew Keller.  Hamm's has a long tradition in Minnesota and I remember seeing Hamm's Beer commercials on tv as a kid.  An animated bear with the famous saying, "from the land of sky blue waters." were quite memorable for a kid.  At one point, Hamm's was the 5th largest brewery in the country, having expanded to San Francisco, Baltimore and Houston by the 1950's.  Shortly after their 100th anniversary, the brewery went through a series of purchases, in 1965 to Heublein, then in 1973 to a group of distributors, who sold to Olympia Brewing in 1975 and again to Pabst in 1983.   The brewery itself was traded to Stroh's at this time, who ran it until closing it in 1997, ending a 137 year run.  The brewery sat idle and was left to decay and vandalism.  A 2005 fire damaged some of the building, which was actually the original stables and carpentry shop.  In 2024 a new owner came in and reimagined the site for a new brewery, building a taproom and restaurant out of the keg room and using the stables and shop as an outdoor biergarten.  It is now the home of St Paul Brewing.  Be careful as you drive there as you might miss it, tucked back in the bowels of the old building site.  

As an advocate and lover of the craft beer scene, I have become alarmed at the sign of the times in the industry.  It has been known for some time that people, in general, are drinking less beer.  In fact, I just read something today that says even the younger generation of Germans have gone away from beer.  Scheisse!  That same trend is at work here in the US too.  My own son and his friends are proof of this trend.  Craft beer is about 13.3% of the beer market, which is a dent in the big boring brewers, but not enough apparently.  Production has been down and a decrease in the number of breweries has shaped the business for the past two years.  2024 saw a 4% decrease in beer volume and 2025 is on pace for a 5%+ decrease over 2024.  Last year 529 breweries went out of business and the numbers for this year might be sobering when it is all said and done.  I suppose that economics says this was inevitable.  The microbrew craze had been going strong for 40 years and downturns happen.  Perhaps, in some places, microbreweries were overdone, not sure on that, but it seems possible.  If you look at my outdated pictures above, these are from www.vinepair.com and show the huge growth in breweries from 250 in 1990 to 7,190 in 2016.  Today it has grown to 9,269, but declining daily.  Other economic factors have played a role too.

It was a beautiful weekend to head up to the North Shore of Minnesota and Wisconsin.  The leaves were at peak color and the weather was cool, but not cold.  I had a board meeting up that way and after the meeting, like I usually do, while everyone else headed to dinner, I hit a brewery.  I had spied Warrior Brewing on my phone while looking for a new place to try before the meeting and it was directly on the way to dinner.  

Camden Town was a bit of a surprise.  When you get off the underground and come to the surface, you may think Camden Town is run down and a b it sketchy.  In reality, it is an older part of town, but has a vibrant artistic side and is known for its street markets, music and shops.  The Camden Market is a cool area of small, mostly independent shops and eateries that is a must-see and do when you go there.  It stretches across the street in two sections, where it follows along a canal and it is here you will find 3 Locks Brewing.  We were there very early as my son was looking for anime merch, which the area is full of and even though I had searched ahead of time, I really didn't look where the brewery was exactly.  We kind of stumbled upon it a few minutes before they opened.  Their taproom over looks the canal and has outside seating along it.  It really is a great setting for a brewery.  As you can see, I took a terribly blurry picture, so no, you aren't drunk.  Are you?  

I recently visited the UK for vacation and took my opportunity to try many beers, among other things.  The last time I was there the UK was in a bit of a sea change in the pub business.  There were about 58,000 pubs in the UK in 2000.  That number has declined to around 47,000 now.  Big breweries had stepped in and bought a huge chunk of the pubs in order to control beer sales.  I've seen some different numbers, but the six biggest owned about 75% of all the pubs.  In fact, Fuller, a well known brewery, sold it's beer making operation to the Asahi Group in 2019 so it could focus on it's pub operations.  Fuller made one of the best known British beers, London Pride, that it had brewed in London since 1958.  Asahi is a Japanese beer company, which you can easily find here in the states and I drank a lot when I was in Japan a few years ago.  There were marketing agreements in place, as part of the deal, but it shows you how the pubs is where the money is.  For awhile, there were laws put in place to limit the number of pubs the big brewers could own, but that has since been repealed.  For me, the drawback is that you can only find a small selection of beers available at any pub and the food choices were the same at all of them I visited.  There are about 3,800 pubs in London and I was in only about 8, but they were either owned by Greene King or Fuller.  The beers were good, but the choices were nil.

As I left Milwaukee after going to a con with my son, I decided to hit a brew pub.  The one I chose was closed for rebranding upon reaching the property.  Google Maps, which I despise, lied to us again.  It mentioned nothing about being closed and said it was moderately busy.  First they track your every move, then openly lie to you.  I hate Google, but that is for another time.  I chose a different brewery not too far away and we were starving, so it had to have food.  When you get to the building Brewfinity is in, you ,might just think they are out of business too as it looked like a shutdown warehouse out front, but a sign directs you to the left, so I drove around the building and found the brewery.  It is tucked away, but was a nice little space for a tap room.  There were just five other people in there on a very hot Saturday, so we grabbed a spot near the front.  The bartender came right over and gave us some menus.  Since I hadn't been there before, he asked me what kind of beer I like and directed me to their flagship beer, the Sailor's Delight, which is an American Amber.  I probably would've chose this beer anyway, so it was a good call.  Biscuity and malty, just like I like it.  The beer was a nice amber color and was really good.  It finished well, not too hoppy, and smelled  just right.  American Ambers are unique in that they use American hops and derive their sweetness from the malts they use.  They are fermented in a cleaner way than their British cousins and are distinct by their balance.  I get the feeling that the hey day of IPA's is over and that vacuum will be filled by amber ales.  They are far more drinkable, yet may struggle to earn their keep as a summer beer.  Perhaps less refreshing to some drinkers as a number of IPA's can be, but I tend to think they appeal to a far broader audience of beer enthusiasts.  Every brewery makes one, they just don't experiment as deeply and wrongly, in my opinion, as they did with a rash of IPA's.  

It was a sweltering weekend in Minnesota and a stop at a local brewery was definitely in the offing.  I wanted something different so I chose Waldmann's Brewery.  It was a good choice.  Nestled in a neighborhood of houses off the main road, you'll literally stumble upon an old stone house.  It was in the fall of 1857, before Minnesota was even a state, and before the Civil War, when Waldmann's was established.  It is in the oldest surviving commercial building in St Paul to be exact, so the history here is remarkable.  To be fair, there was a long 154 year break between when Waldmann's saloon came alive again in 2017 as Waldmann's Brewery, but that doesn't matter.  

It only took me three trips here to write a blog about it.  I was always out with co-workers and forgot or just didn't have time to take a pic or two.  This time it was just me and a vendor, so I remembered and got the job done.  When in Sioux City, I've always stayed at the hotel right across the street, so going to Marto was just a no-brainer.

Being a fan of the old Hartford Whalers, I had always wanted to go to Hartford.  The fact that there was a brewery on the old Colt firearms complex in Hartford was a win for everyone.  I would've loved to tour the Colt facility during its hayday.  Samuel Colt was born in Hartford in 1814 and began making guns in 1836.  He founded Colt firearms in 1855.  As it is for gun-makers it was feast or famine.  During wartime, Colt did great, but suffered in the aftermath.  Known for innovation, Colt was the first manufacturer to offer interchangeable parts for its guns and used powerful steam engines in its plants before others were doing it.  He also was the first to build a tenement for his workers with housing, daycare, churches and food.  He established a ten hour work day with a required one hour lunch break. 

On Memorial Day weekend I took my annual trip with my brothers.  This time is was the East Coast.  We hit six states during this trip and one of the better experiences was at East Regiment Beer Company in Salem.   It is nestled in the middle of downtown and was a welcome site for my hungry stomach.  

Phallic symbols are funny, but then again, I'm a juvenile.  Naming your brewery Big Wood is probably an homage to the mighty schlong, but you could try to get away saying it is about lumberjacks or something, though no guy would believe you.  I think they did call it Big Wood because it was funny and it took big wood to launch a brewery and do it their way.  If you have a rager for craft beer and want to sell a lot of merch, it goes hand in hand.  When you call your first beer, Morning Wood Coffee Stout, there is no doubt it was the culmination of a wet dream for Big Wood.

In Canada, eh.  On a recent trip to Toronto I didn't have to search far to find a brewery to hit.  Elsinore had a commanding view of the city from its perch on a hill.  The brewery was first opened in 1983 and runs a taproom out of it's huge facility, oddly enough near an old Royal Canadian mental asylum.  Crazy, right?  The brewery stands as a monolith of older times when beer was king.  The factory was large with two smoke stacks that didn't appear to be running while we were there.  It's almost spooky now as it runs at a much lower capacity than it once did, according to the bartender, a nice older guy with a funny accent, wearing all black.  I bet the place has many secrets to tell.

I love it when a brewery has a lot of history to it's setting.  This isn't possible for many, but it really adds to the experience for me and is what I think of when I think about brew pubs.  St Paul Brewing has a home run in this regard.  Hamm's Brewing started in St Paul in 1865 by a German immigrant named, Theodore Hamm.  Hamm actually acquired the small brewery through holding the deed to a foreclosed loan from the prior owner, Andrew Keller.  Hamm's has a long tradition in Minnesota and I remember seeing Hamm's Beer commercials on tv as a kid.  An animated bear with the famous saying, "from the land of sky blue waters." were quite memorable for a kid.  At one point, Hamm's was the 5th largest brewery in the country, having expanded to San Francisco, Baltimore and Houston by the 1950's.  Shortly after their 100th anniversary, the brewery went through a series of purchases, in 1965 to Heublein, then in 1973 to a group of distributors, who sold to Olympia Brewing in 1975 and again to Pabst in 1983.   The brewery itself was traded to Stroh's at this time, who ran it until closing it in 1997, ending a 137 year run.  The brewery sat idle and was left to decay and vandalism.  A 2005 fire damaged some of the building, which was actually the original stables and carpentry shop.  In 2024 a new owner came in and reimagined the site for a new brewery, building a taproom and restaurant out of the keg room and using the stables and shop as an outdoor biergarten.  It is now the home of St Paul Brewing.  Be careful as you drive there as you might miss it, tucked back in the bowels of the old building site.  

As an advocate and lover of the craft beer scene, I have become alarmed at the sign of the times in the industry.  It has been known for some time that people, in general, are drinking less beer.  In fact, I just read something today that says even the younger generation of Germans have gone away from beer.  Scheisse!  That same trend is at work here in the US too.  My own son and his friends are proof of this trend.  Craft beer is about 13.3% of the beer market, which is a dent in the big boring brewers, but not enough apparently.  Production has been down and a decrease in the number of breweries has shaped the business for the past two years.  2024 saw a 4% decrease in beer volume and 2025 is on pace for a 5%+ decrease over 2024.  Last year 529 breweries went out of business and the numbers for this year might be sobering when it is all said and done.  I suppose that economics says this was inevitable.  The microbrew craze had been going strong for 40 years and downturns happen.  Perhaps, in some places, microbreweries were overdone, not sure on that, but it seems possible.  If you look at my outdated pictures above, these are from www.vinepair.com and show the huge growth in breweries from 250 in 1990 to 7,190 in 2016.  Today it has grown to 9,269, but declining daily.  Other economic factors have played a role too.

It was a beautiful weekend to head up to the North Shore of Minnesota and Wisconsin.  The leaves were at peak color and the weather was cool, but not cold.  I had a board meeting up that way and after the meeting, like I usually do, while everyone else headed to dinner, I hit a brewery.  I had spied Warrior Brewing on my phone while looking for a new place to try before the meeting and it was directly on the way to dinner.  

Camden Town was a bit of a surprise.  When you get off the underground and come to the surface, you may think Camden Town is run down and a b it sketchy.  In reality, it is an older part of town, but has a vibrant artistic side and is known for its street markets, music and shops.  The Camden Market is a cool area of small, mostly independent shops and eateries that is a must-see and do when you go there.  It stretches across the street in two sections, where it follows along a canal and it is here you will find 3 Locks Brewing.  We were there very early as my son was looking for anime merch, which the area is full of and even though I had searched ahead of time, I really didn't look where the brewery was exactly.  We kind of stumbled upon it a few minutes before they opened.  Their taproom over looks the canal and has outside seating along it.  It really is a great setting for a brewery.  As you can see, I took a terribly blurry picture, so no, you aren't drunk.  Are you?  

I recently visited the UK for vacation and took my opportunity to try many beers, among other things.  The last time I was there the UK was in a bit of a sea change in the pub business.  There were about 58,000 pubs in the UK in 2000.  That number has declined to around 47,000 now.  Big breweries had stepped in and bought a huge chunk of the pubs in order to control beer sales.  I've seen some different numbers, but the six biggest owned about 75% of all the pubs.  In fact, Fuller, a well known brewery, sold it's beer making operation to the Asahi Group in 2019 so it could focus on it's pub operations.  Fuller made one of the best known British beers, London Pride, that it had brewed in London since 1958.  Asahi is a Japanese beer company, which you can easily find here in the states and I drank a lot when I was in Japan a few years ago.  There were marketing agreements in place, as part of the deal, but it shows you how the pubs is where the money is.  For awhile, there were laws put in place to limit the number of pubs the big brewers could own, but that has since been repealed.  For me, the drawback is that you can only find a small selection of beers available at any pub and the food choices were the same at all of them I visited.  There are about 3,800 pubs in London and I was in only about 8, but they were either owned by Greene King or Fuller.  The beers were good, but the choices were nil.

As I left Milwaukee after going to a con with my son, I decided to hit a brew pub.  The one I chose was closed for rebranding upon reaching the property.  Google Maps, which I despise, lied to us again.  It mentioned nothing about being closed and said it was moderately busy.  First they track your every move, then openly lie to you.  I hate Google, but that is for another time.  I chose a different brewery not too far away and we were starving, so it had to have food.  When you get to the building Brewfinity is in, you ,might just think they are out of business too as it looked like a shutdown warehouse out front, but a sign directs you to the left, so I drove around the building and found the brewery.  It is tucked away, but was a nice little space for a tap room.  There were just five other people in there on a very hot Saturday, so we grabbed a spot near the front.  The bartender came right over and gave us some menus.  Since I hadn't been there before, he asked me what kind of beer I like and directed me to their flagship beer, the Sailor's Delight, which is an American Amber.  I probably would've chose this beer anyway, so it was a good call.  Biscuity and malty, just like I like it.  The beer was a nice amber color and was really good.  It finished well, not too hoppy, and smelled  just right.  American Ambers are unique in that they use American hops and derive their sweetness from the malts they use.  They are fermented in a cleaner way than their British cousins and are distinct by their balance.  I get the feeling that the hey day of IPA's is over and that vacuum will be filled by amber ales.  They are far more drinkable, yet may struggle to earn their keep as a summer beer.  Perhaps less refreshing to some drinkers as a number of IPA's can be, but I tend to think they appeal to a far broader audience of beer enthusiasts.  Every brewery makes one, they just don't experiment as deeply and wrongly, in my opinion, as they did with a rash of IPA's.  

It was a sweltering weekend in Minnesota and a stop at a local brewery was definitely in the offing.  I wanted something different so I chose Waldmann's Brewery.  It was a good choice.  Nestled in a neighborhood of houses off the main road, you'll literally stumble upon an old stone house.  It was in the fall of 1857, before Minnesota was even a state, and before the Civil War, when Waldmann's was established.  It is in the oldest surviving commercial building in St Paul to be exact, so the history here is remarkable.  To be fair, there was a long 154 year break between when Waldmann's saloon came alive again in 2017 as Waldmann's Brewery, but that doesn't matter.  

It only took me three trips here to write a blog about it.  I was always out with co-workers and forgot or just didn't have time to take a pic or two.  This time it was just me and a vendor, so I remembered and got the job done.  When in Sioux City, I've always stayed at the hotel right across the street, so going to Marto was just a no-brainer.

Being a fan of the old Hartford Whalers, I had always wanted to go to Hartford.  The fact that there was a brewery on the old Colt firearms complex in Hartford was a win for everyone.  I would've loved to tour the Colt facility during its hayday.  Samuel Colt was born in Hartford in 1814 and began making guns in 1836.  He founded Colt firearms in 1855.  As it is for gun-makers it was feast or famine.  During wartime, Colt did great, but suffered in the aftermath.  Known for innovation, Colt was the first manufacturer to offer interchangeable parts for its guns and used powerful steam engines in its plants before others were doing it.  He also was the first to build a tenement for his workers with housing, daycare, churches and food.  He established a ten hour work day with a required one hour lunch break. 

On Memorial Day weekend I took my annual trip with my brothers.  This time is was the East Coast.  We hit six states during this trip and one of the better experiences was at East Regiment Beer Company in Salem.   It is nestled in the middle of downtown and was a welcome site for my hungry stomach.  

Phallic symbols are funny, but then again, I'm a juvenile.  Naming your brewery Big Wood is probably an homage to the mighty schlong, but you could try to get away saying it is about lumberjacks or something, though no guy would believe you.  I think they did call it Big Wood because it was funny and it took big wood to launch a brewery and do it their way.  If you have a rager for craft beer and want to sell a lot of merch, it goes hand in hand.  When you call your first beer, Morning Wood Coffee Stout, there is no doubt it was the culmination of a wet dream for Big Wood.

In Canada, eh.  On a recent trip to Toronto I didn't have to search far to find a brewery to hit.  Elsinore had a commanding view of the city from its perch on a hill.  The brewery was first opened in 1983 and runs a taproom out of it's huge facility, oddly enough near an old Royal Canadian mental asylum.  Crazy, right?  The brewery stands as a monolith of older times when beer was king.  The factory was large with two smoke stacks that didn't appear to be running while we were there.  It's almost spooky now as it runs at a much lower capacity than it once did, according to the bartender, a nice older guy with a funny accent, wearing all black.  I bet the place has many secrets to tell.

I love it when a brewery has a lot of history to it's setting.  This isn't possible for many, but it really adds to the experience for me and is what I think of when I think about brew pubs.  St Paul Brewing has a home run in this regard.  Hamm's Brewing started in St Paul in 1865 by a German immigrant named, Theodore Hamm.  Hamm actually acquired the small brewery through holding the deed to a foreclosed loan from the prior owner, Andrew Keller.  Hamm's has a long tradition in Minnesota and I remember seeing Hamm's Beer commercials on tv as a kid.  An animated bear with the famous saying, "from the land of sky blue waters." were quite memorable for a kid.  At one point, Hamm's was the 5th largest brewery in the country, having expanded to San Francisco, Baltimore and Houston by the 1950's.  Shortly after their 100th anniversary, the brewery went through a series of purchases, in 1965 to Heublein, then in 1973 to a group of distributors, who sold to Olympia Brewing in 1975 and again to Pabst in 1983.   The brewery itself was traded to Stroh's at this time, who ran it until closing it in 1997, ending a 137 year run.  The brewery sat idle and was left to decay and vandalism.  A 2005 fire damaged some of the building, which was actually the original stables and carpentry shop.  In 2024 a new owner came in and reimagined the site for a new brewery, building a taproom and restaurant out of the keg room and using the stables and shop as an outdoor biergarten.  It is now the home of St Paul Brewing.  Be careful as you drive there as you might miss it, tucked back in the bowels of the old building site.  

As an advocate and lover of the craft beer scene, I have become alarmed at the sign of the times in the industry.  It has been known for some time that people, in general, are drinking less beer.  In fact, I just read something today that says even the younger generation of Germans have gone away from beer.  Scheisse!  That same trend is at work here in the US too.  My own son and his friends are proof of this trend.  Craft beer is about 13.3% of the beer market, which is a dent in the big boring brewers, but not enough apparently.  Production has been down and a decrease in the number of breweries has shaped the business for the past two years.  2024 saw a 4% decrease in beer volume and 2025 is on pace for a 5%+ decrease over 2024.  Last year 529 breweries went out of business and the numbers for this year might be sobering when it is all said and done.  I suppose that economics says this was inevitable.  The microbrew craze had been going strong for 40 years and downturns happen.  Perhaps, in some places, microbreweries were overdone, not sure on that, but it seems possible.  If you look at my outdated pictures above, these are from www.vinepair.com and show the huge growth in breweries from 250 in 1990 to 7,190 in 2016.  Today it has grown to 9,269, but declining daily.  Other economic factors have played a role too.

It was a beautiful weekend to head up to the North Shore of Minnesota and Wisconsin.  The leaves were at peak color and the weather was cool, but not cold.  I had a board meeting up that way and after the meeting, like I usually do, while everyone else headed to dinner, I hit a brewery.  I had spied Warrior Brewing on my phone while looking for a new place to try before the meeting and it was directly on the way to dinner.  

Camden Town was a bit of a surprise.  When you get off the underground and come to the surface, you may think Camden Town is run down and a b it sketchy.  In reality, it is an older part of town, but has a vibrant artistic side and is known for its street markets, music and shops.  The Camden Market is a cool area of small, mostly independent shops and eateries that is a must-see and do when you go there.  It stretches across the street in two sections, where it follows along a canal and it is here you will find 3 Locks Brewing.  We were there very early as my son was looking for anime merch, which the area is full of and even though I had searched ahead of time, I really didn't look where the brewery was exactly.  We kind of stumbled upon it a few minutes before they opened.  Their taproom over looks the canal and has outside seating along it.  It really is a great setting for a brewery.  As you can see, I took a terribly blurry picture, so no, you aren't drunk.  Are you?  

I recently visited the UK for vacation and took my opportunity to try many beers, among other things.  The last time I was there the UK was in a bit of a sea change in the pub business.  There were about 58,000 pubs in the UK in 2000.  That number has declined to around 47,000 now.  Big breweries had stepped in and bought a huge chunk of the pubs in order to control beer sales.  I've seen some different numbers, but the six biggest owned about 75% of all the pubs.  In fact, Fuller, a well known brewery, sold it's beer making operation to the Asahi Group in 2019 so it could focus on it's pub operations.  Fuller made one of the best known British beers, London Pride, that it had brewed in London since 1958.  Asahi is a Japanese beer company, which you can easily find here in the states and I drank a lot when I was in Japan a few years ago.  There were marketing agreements in place, as part of the deal, but it shows you how the pubs is where the money is.  For awhile, there were laws put in place to limit the number of pubs the big brewers could own, but that has since been repealed.  For me, the drawback is that you can only find a small selection of beers available at any pub and the food choices were the same at all of them I visited.  There are about 3,800 pubs in London and I was in only about 8, but they were either owned by Greene King or Fuller.  The beers were good, but the choices were nil.

As I left Milwaukee after going to a con with my son, I decided to hit a brew pub.  The one I chose was closed for rebranding upon reaching the property.  Google Maps, which I despise, lied to us again.  It mentioned nothing about being closed and said it was moderately busy.  First they track your every move, then openly lie to you.  I hate Google, but that is for another time.  I chose a different brewery not too far away and we were starving, so it had to have food.  When you get to the building Brewfinity is in, you ,might just think they are out of business too as it looked like a shutdown warehouse out front, but a sign directs you to the left, so I drove around the building and found the brewery.  It is tucked away, but was a nice little space for a tap room.  There were just five other people in there on a very hot Saturday, so we grabbed a spot near the front.  The bartender came right over and gave us some menus.  Since I hadn't been there before, he asked me what kind of beer I like and directed me to their flagship beer, the Sailor's Delight, which is an American Amber.  I probably would've chose this beer anyway, so it was a good call.  Biscuity and malty, just like I like it.  The beer was a nice amber color and was really good.  It finished well, not too hoppy, and smelled  just right.  American Ambers are unique in that they use American hops and derive their sweetness from the malts they use.  They are fermented in a cleaner way than their British cousins and are distinct by their balance.  I get the feeling that the hey day of IPA's is over and that vacuum will be filled by amber ales.  They are far more drinkable, yet may struggle to earn their keep as a summer beer.  Perhaps less refreshing to some drinkers as a number of IPA's can be, but I tend to think they appeal to a far broader audience of beer enthusiasts.  Every brewery makes one, they just don't experiment as deeply and wrongly, in my opinion, as they did with a rash of IPA's.  

It was a sweltering weekend in Minnesota and a stop at a local brewery was definitely in the offing.  I wanted something different so I chose Waldmann's Brewery.  It was a good choice.  Nestled in a neighborhood of houses off the main road, you'll literally stumble upon an old stone house.  It was in the fall of 1857, before Minnesota was even a state, and before the Civil War, when Waldmann's was established.  It is in the oldest surviving commercial building in St Paul to be exact, so the history here is remarkable.  To be fair, there was a long 154 year break between when Waldmann's saloon came alive again in 2017 as Waldmann's Brewery, but that doesn't matter.  

It only took me three trips here to write a blog about it.  I was always out with co-workers and forgot or just didn't have time to take a pic or two.  This time it was just me and a vendor, so I remembered and got the job done.  When in Sioux City, I've always stayed at the hotel right across the street, so going to Marto was just a no-brainer.

Being a fan of the old Hartford Whalers, I had always wanted to go to Hartford.  The fact that there was a brewery on the old Colt firearms complex in Hartford was a win for everyone.  I would've loved to tour the Colt facility during its hayday.  Samuel Colt was born in Hartford in 1814 and began making guns in 1836.  He founded Colt firearms in 1855.  As it is for gun-makers it was feast or famine.  During wartime, Colt did great, but suffered in the aftermath.  Known for innovation, Colt was the first manufacturer to offer interchangeable parts for its guns and used powerful steam engines in its plants before others were doing it.  He also was the first to build a tenement for his workers with housing, daycare, churches and food.  He established a ten hour work day with a required one hour lunch break. 

On Memorial Day weekend I took my annual trip with my brothers.  This time is was the East Coast.  We hit six states during this trip and one of the better experiences was at East Regiment Beer Company in Salem.   It is nestled in the middle of downtown and was a welcome site for my hungry stomach.  

I have written about the endless subversion of America by the Chinese Communist Party for years and I will continue to do so.  Every facet of society is in grave danger and I'm sure some things none of us have yet conceived.  China is the most dangerous, heartless enemy that the US and the world has seen.  They will stop at nothing.  We dawdle, while they strategize and plan.  I do not think we are ready for the onslaught to come.  I've mentioned before about the bastardization of the anchor baby statement in our Constitution.  When that law was written no one envisioned a foreign power using it to wipe us out, but it is high time we did.  I believe, as do many, that the numerous lawsuits filed by America-hating liberals against Trump's Executive Order halting anchor baby status will lose in the Supreme Court.  Why?  Simple.  Original intent isn't just something we think happened during the 14th Amendment debate, but we know it for certain from the National Archives.  Here is an excerpt from Common Law America.  https://commonlawamerica.wordpress.com/2025/01/22/why-the-14th-amendment-does-not-allow-for-anchor-babies/

Trump Derangement Syndrome is a world-wide sickness.  He can't do anything without being called a bevy of unflattering names that, by now, have lost all of their meaning.  Sometimes, he does things that are not apparent as well, even to our allies.  You really have to pay attention to the words being said by the people in the administration and think far bigger than you might of.  I'm unsure if Trump is really as smart as he now seems to me, or if he has some brilliant advisors that have really gotten in his ear, but the grasp of geo-politics and resetting the world order that is taking place is awe-inspiring.  Unfortunately, it can come at a cost.  We'll see if the cost is worth it.  

It almost sounds cliche to say that the Democrats are socialists.  They, collectively, say and do extreme left wing things every single day.  Their policies are the most un-American things you can think of.  If you wanted to come up with things that hurt Americans, you just have to read their platform, listen to them talk to their friends in the press and see what they really do when they seize power.  It is no longer socialism we are looking at, but full blown Communism that we are now seeing and I'll prove it.  Every primary this year has seen the most extreme candidate beat the, so called moderate ones.  There are no moderates in the Democrat Party any longer, except for John Fetterman.  Mamdani is a Communist.  AOC is a Communist.  The Squad are all extremists and Communists.  BLM is Marxist with communists scattered within it.  Obama is a Communist, came from a background of fundamentalist Muslims and Marxist Black Liberation orthodoxy and hung out on campus with communists.  Joe Biden got his political start by being funded by the Communist Party of America.  CCP operatives have infiltrated the Hochul campaign, the Clinton campaign, slept with that fucking moron Eric Swalwell, Jacob Frey is a Communist, Tim Walz has all kinds of ties to the CCP.  The people that fund all of the riots and upheaval are communists.  The anarchists and blue-haired nut jobs that burn, riot and follow around ICE officers and block city streets are all communists.  Government control of everything in your life is communist.  Locking you down, forcing you to take the jab, fining and jailing you for keeping your business open is communist.  Trying to jail your political opponents is communist.  Killing your political opponents is communist.  All of these things have been done or tried by Democrats.

I feel like I'm the only one raising the alarm on the pending war with China.  I feel like not even the government is taking it seriously.  Every day, all the time, there are more and more stories of their attacks and subversion of our country.  We probably only hear about a tenth of it.  It does, in fact, never end.  Just this week a biolab was discovered in Las Vegas that has ties to the CCP.  I hate the using of the word ties because that makes it sound like a loosely related thing.  It isn't.  It is 100% operated by Chinese operatives that most likely walked across our southern border during the the stolen era of the sock-puppet known as Joe Biden.  

I haven't posted lately.  There's so much going on that I'm not sure what to take on.  I have several geo-political things in the works, there is always more Chinese espionage against us to talk about and of course, Minnesota.  Minnesota is such a mess that I could do a post everyday with more fraud, more corruption, more subversion of our country that it is mind blowing.  The first thing I'm going to mention is Ilhan Omar.

If you're like me and simply do not believe the timeline of human development as Big Archaeology wants us to believe, you will gravitate to stories that support your viewpoint.  The best part is, in the past decade there have been zero stories to support Big Archaeology and thousands that support everything they told us wasn't true.  I've even become such a big skeptic of their views that there is part of me that believes we've been lied to, not just misinformed.  The lies are from things that "they" do not want us to know.  Your average archaeologist just does their work and tries their best to come up with the answers, so not all of them are liars or wrong, but they are some of the most arrogant and strident people you will ever encounter.  They hate people that challenge their views, especially people who aren't in their fraternity.  Unfortunately, they've been wrong so much and still stick to their views that the more we find, the more they are wrong.  The best of us have to admit when we're wrong and science is not a science if it is proven wrong.  So, you're wrong, deal with it.  Enough of the rant.  The reason it comes up is because Big Archaeology ignores every single hypothesis when it comes to things they cannot fathom.  Sumerian texts, written in cuneiform, and the Indian texts, and dozens of other texts and scrolls all talk about the Annunaki.  Big Archaeology says they are all myths.  They actually believe that when people first began to write things that they would make up fake stories.  They also think all of the reliefs and etchings found in Sumer and Egypt just depict lies or made up mischaracterizations of their gods.  There have been no giants or aliens found, so they say it was just a myth, even though there have been thousands of giant skeletons found and even alien bodies, which they refuse to test, see Queen Puabi.  Queen Puabi was the first queen of the First Dynasty in Sumer whose tomb was found in the city of Ur in the 1920's.  Her skull was very elongated and it had hair still on it.   Head binding was not a thing in Sumer and she had no orbital suture on her skull.  She is most likely Annunaki or a hybrid, but "they" refuse to test her DNA.  They, the black hidden governments, who put archaeologists on their payrolls, mock, ridicule and deny of these things we've found around the world.  Those things soon disappear or like with Queen Puabi, are kept from us.  Why?  My guess is, they already know.  

I'm not sure I can add anything that hasn't already been said about the assassination of Charlie Kirk, but I feel compelled to.  Many people have expressed that this murder is different and most cannot quantify why.  I feel the same.  This is different and I feel like a tidal wave is coming.  

Most historians write that the Battle of Brooklyn Heights, maybe more commonly known as the Battle of Long Island, was just another disaster for the Continental Army.   To be sure, as a military engagement it was, but it is so much more, in my opinion.  It was August of 1776, having lost most major engagements, barely escaping, the colonial army forced the British to leave the Boston area in March because they fortified Dorchester Heights with the cannon they seized from Fort Ticonderoga.  It was an untenable situation for the British.  Guessing correctly, the newly minted commander of the Continental Army, George Washington, supposed that the next logical place for the British to go was New York City.  He marched his army to New York in hopes of engaging the British to keep them from getting a foothold in New York.  Outnumber 2 to 1, Washington had around 20,000 troops, while the British mustered more than 30,000 plus a large naval contingent.  It would be the largest battle of the entire war.  

Wow, one day after my last post on China's latest subversion of the US, another story drops.  Two Chinese nationals were arrested for recruiting members of the US Navy to spy for China and collect information on other Navy recruits and bases.  Yuance Chen, from Happy Valley, Oregon, and Liren Lai, who traveled to Houston on a tourist visa in April, were arrested on Friday. Both face charges of overseeing and carrying out various clandestine intelligence tasks in the U.S. on behalf of the Ministry of State Security.  As I've repeatedly said, every single Chinese national in the US and abroad is a spy.

“China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man!” “The fact that they have this great division between the China Sea and the mountains in the East – I mean in the West.”

Minnesota sure knows how to pick political turds.  Some of the most inept, corrupt and just plain terrible politicians in the country seem to find their way up the toilet wall and out of the bowl to serve in Minnesota.  Just think about it...Tim Walz, Ilhan Omar, Mark Dayton, Al Franken, Jesse Ventura and Keith Ellison.  You may not know Keith Ellison if you're not from the Midwest.  Keith Ellison doesn't deserve to be serving the people of Minnesota, but like all the other political turds I mentioned earlier, the people of Minnesota deserve Keith Ellison because they keep voting for him.  It does make one wonder why, with other choices at their disposal, would voters champion someone so devoid of character and utterly riddled with personal issues?  Minnesota is hopelessly Democrat to the core.  It suffers from hundreds of thousands of white voters who vote the way their parents always did forty years ago, for the DFL, and they can't see past the failures of the left to change their ways.  The large urban areas are the only places left that vote consistently Democrat and they carry the state in each and every election.  The pointy-headed white, educated, psuedo-intellectuals in Minneapolis, St Paul, Duluth and Rochester are really the ones that make Minnesota the perennial embarrassing political joke that it maintains itself as.  Remember 1984?  This is the Keith Ellison base; guilt-ridden white voters and minorities that have bought into the long, failed lies of the left.  It's just proof positive that no matter how scandal plagued you are, if you have a D behind your name, you'll win.  Decades of failure also makes for a weak Republican bench.

Yet another egregious assault on the United States by the communists in China was divulged this week.  Daily now, we get stories of traitors spying for China and even Chinese spies being caught, but in the last week we have had an admission by the Chi Coms that they were behind cyber attacks on US infrastructure in reaction to our support for Taiwan and now something I'm sure they didn't want to admit.  We've caught them giving the Houthi's real-time satellite data in hopes that the Houthi's would sink a US warship.

Phallic symbols are funny, but then again, I'm a juvenile.  Naming your brewery Big Wood is probably an homage to the mighty schlong, but you could try to get away saying it is about lumberjacks or something, though no guy would believe you.  I think they did call it Big Wood because it was funny and it took big wood to launch a brewery and do it their way.  If you have a rager for craft beer and want to sell a lot of merch, it goes hand in hand.  When you call your first beer, Morning Wood Coffee Stout, there is no doubt it was the culmination of a wet dream for Big Wood.

In Canada, eh.  On a recent trip to Toronto I didn't have to search far to find a brewery to hit.  Elsinore had a commanding view of the city from its perch on a hill.  The brewery was first opened in 1983 and runs a taproom out of it's huge facility, oddly enough near an old Royal Canadian mental asylum.  Crazy, right?  The brewery stands as a monolith of older times when beer was king.  The factory was large with two smoke stacks that didn't appear to be running while we were there.  It's almost spooky now as it runs at a much lower capacity than it once did, according to the bartender, a nice older guy with a funny accent, wearing all black.  I bet the place has many secrets to tell.

I love it when a brewery has a lot of history to it's setting.  This isn't possible for many, but it really adds to the experience for me and is what I think of when I think about brew pubs.  St Paul Brewing has a home run in this regard.  Hamm's Brewing started in St Paul in 1865 by a German immigrant named, Theodore Hamm.  Hamm actually acquired the small brewery through holding the deed to a foreclosed loan from the prior owner, Andrew Keller.  Hamm's has a long tradition in Minnesota and I remember seeing Hamm's Beer commercials on tv as a kid.  An animated bear with the famous saying, "from the land of sky blue waters." were quite memorable for a kid.  At one point, Hamm's was the 5th largest brewery in the country, having expanded to San Francisco, Baltimore and Houston by the 1950's.  Shortly after their 100th anniversary, the brewery went through a series of purchases, in 1965 to Heublein, then in 1973 to a group of distributors, who sold to Olympia Brewing in 1975 and again to Pabst in 1983.   The brewery itself was traded to Stroh's at this time, who ran it until closing it in 1997, ending a 137 year run.  The brewery sat idle and was left to decay and vandalism.  A 2005 fire damaged some of the building, which was actually the original stables and carpentry shop.  In 2024 a new owner came in and reimagined the site for a new brewery, building a taproom and restaurant out of the keg room and using the stables and shop as an outdoor biergarten.  It is now the home of St Paul Brewing.  Be careful as you drive there as you might miss it, tucked back in the bowels of the old building site.  

As an advocate and lover of the craft beer scene, I have become alarmed at the sign of the times in the industry.  It has been known for some time that people, in general, are drinking less beer.  In fact, I just read something today that says even the younger generation of Germans have gone away from beer.  Scheisse!  That same trend is at work here in the US too.  My own son and his friends are proof of this trend.  Craft beer is about 13.3% of the beer market, which is a dent in the big boring brewers, but not enough apparently.  Production has been down and a decrease in the number of breweries has shaped the business for the past two years.  2024 saw a 4% decrease in beer volume and 2025 is on pace for a 5%+ decrease over 2024.  Last year 529 breweries went out of business and the numbers for this year might be sobering when it is all said and done.  I suppose that economics says this was inevitable.  The microbrew craze had been going strong for 40 years and downturns happen.  Perhaps, in some places, microbreweries were overdone, not sure on that, but it seems possible.  If you look at my outdated pictures above, these are from www.vinepair.com and show the huge growth in breweries from 250 in 1990 to 7,190 in 2016.  Today it has grown to 9,269, but declining daily.  Other economic factors have played a role too.

It was a beautiful weekend to head up to the North Shore of Minnesota and Wisconsin.  The leaves were at peak color and the weather was cool, but not cold.  I had a board meeting up that way and after the meeting, like I usually do, while everyone else headed to dinner, I hit a brewery.  I had spied Warrior Brewing on my phone while looking for a new place to try before the meeting and it was directly on the way to dinner.  

Camden Town was a bit of a surprise.  When you get off the underground and come to the surface, you may think Camden Town is run down and a b it sketchy.  In reality, it is an older part of town, but has a vibrant artistic side and is known for its street markets, music and shops.  The Camden Market is a cool area of small, mostly independent shops and eateries that is a must-see and do when you go there.  It stretches across the street in two sections, where it follows along a canal and it is here you will find 3 Locks Brewing.  We were there very early as my son was looking for anime merch, which the area is full of and even though I had searched ahead of time, I really didn't look where the brewery was exactly.  We kind of stumbled upon it a few minutes before they opened.  Their taproom over looks the canal and has outside seating along it.  It really is a great setting for a brewery.  As you can see, I took a terribly blurry picture, so no, you aren't drunk.  Are you?  

I recently visited the UK for vacation and took my opportunity to try many beers, among other things.  The last time I was there the UK was in a bit of a sea change in the pub business.  There were about 58,000 pubs in the UK in 2000.  That number has declined to around 47,000 now.  Big breweries had stepped in and bought a huge chunk of the pubs in order to control beer sales.  I've seen some different numbers, but the six biggest owned about 75% of all the pubs.  In fact, Fuller, a well known brewery, sold it's beer making operation to the Asahi Group in 2019 so it could focus on it's pub operations.  Fuller made one of the best known British beers, London Pride, that it had brewed in London since 1958.  Asahi is a Japanese beer company, which you can easily find here in the states and I drank a lot when I was in Japan a few years ago.  There were marketing agreements in place, as part of the deal, but it shows you how the pubs is where the money is.  For awhile, there were laws put in place to limit the number of pubs the big brewers could own, but that has since been repealed.  For me, the drawback is that you can only find a small selection of beers available at any pub and the food choices were the same at all of them I visited.  There are about 3,800 pubs in London and I was in only about 8, but they were either owned by Greene King or Fuller.  The beers were good, but the choices were nil.

As I left Milwaukee after going to a con with my son, I decided to hit a brew pub.  The one I chose was closed for rebranding upon reaching the property.  Google Maps, which I despise, lied to us again.  It mentioned nothing about being closed and said it was moderately busy.  First they track your every move, then openly lie to you.  I hate Google, but that is for another time.  I chose a different brewery not too far away and we were starving, so it had to have food.  When you get to the building Brewfinity is in, you ,might just think they are out of business too as it looked like a shutdown warehouse out front, but a sign directs you to the left, so I drove around the building and found the brewery.  It is tucked away, but was a nice little space for a tap room.  There were just five other people in there on a very hot Saturday, so we grabbed a spot near the front.  The bartender came right over and gave us some menus.  Since I hadn't been there before, he asked me what kind of beer I like and directed me to their flagship beer, the Sailor's Delight, which is an American Amber.  I probably would've chose this beer anyway, so it was a good call.  Biscuity and malty, just like I like it.  The beer was a nice amber color and was really good.  It finished well, not too hoppy, and smelled  just right.  American Ambers are unique in that they use American hops and derive their sweetness from the malts they use.  They are fermented in a cleaner way than their British cousins and are distinct by their balance.  I get the feeling that the hey day of IPA's is over and that vacuum will be filled by amber ales.  They are far more drinkable, yet may struggle to earn their keep as a summer beer.  Perhaps less refreshing to some drinkers as a number of IPA's can be, but I tend to think they appeal to a far broader audience of beer enthusiasts.  Every brewery makes one, they just don't experiment as deeply and wrongly, in my opinion, as they did with a rash of IPA's.  

It was a sweltering weekend in Minnesota and a stop at a local brewery was definitely in the offing.  I wanted something different so I chose Waldmann's Brewery.  It was a good choice.  Nestled in a neighborhood of houses off the main road, you'll literally stumble upon an old stone house.  It was in the fall of 1857, before Minnesota was even a state, and before the Civil War, when Waldmann's was established.  It is in the oldest surviving commercial building in St Paul to be exact, so the history here is remarkable.  To be fair, there was a long 154 year break between when Waldmann's saloon came alive again in 2017 as Waldmann's Brewery, but that doesn't matter.  

It only took me three trips here to write a blog about it.  I was always out with co-workers and forgot or just didn't have time to take a pic or two.  This time it was just me and a vendor, so I remembered and got the job done.  When in Sioux City, I've always stayed at the hotel right across the street, so going to Marto was just a no-brainer.

Being a fan of the old Hartford Whalers, I had always wanted to go to Hartford.  The fact that there was a brewery on the old Colt firearms complex in Hartford was a win for everyone.  I would've loved to tour the Colt facility during its hayday.  Samuel Colt was born in Hartford in 1814 and began making guns in 1836.  He founded Colt firearms in 1855.  As it is for gun-makers it was feast or famine.  During wartime, Colt did great, but suffered in the aftermath.  Known for innovation, Colt was the first manufacturer to offer interchangeable parts for its guns and used powerful steam engines in its plants before others were doing it.  He also was the first to build a tenement for his workers with housing, daycare, churches and food.  He established a ten hour work day with a required one hour lunch break. 

On Memorial Day weekend I took my annual trip with my brothers.  This time is was the East Coast.  We hit six states during this trip and one of the better experiences was at East Regiment Beer Company in Salem.   It is nestled in the middle of downtown and was a welcome site for my hungry stomach.  

Phallic symbols are funny, but then again, I'm a juvenile.  Naming your brewery Big Wood is probably an homage to the mighty schlong, but you could try to get away saying it is about lumberjacks or something, though no guy would believe you.  I think they did call it Big Wood because it was funny and it took big wood to launch a brewery and do it their way.  If you have a rager for craft beer and want to sell a lot of merch, it goes hand in hand.  When you call your first beer, Morning Wood Coffee Stout, there is no doubt it was the culmination of a wet dream for Big Wood.

In Canada, eh.  On a recent trip to Toronto I didn't have to search far to find a brewery to hit.  Elsinore had a commanding view of the city from its perch on a hill.  The brewery was first opened in 1983 and runs a taproom out of it's huge facility, oddly enough near an old Royal Canadian mental asylum.  Crazy, right?  The brewery stands as a monolith of older times when beer was king.  The factory was large with two smoke stacks that didn't appear to be running while we were there.  It's almost spooky now as it runs at a much lower capacity than it once did, according to the bartender, a nice older guy with a funny accent, wearing all black.  I bet the place has many secrets to tell.

I love it when a brewery has a lot of history to it's setting.  This isn't possible for many, but it really adds to the experience for me and is what I think of when I think about brew pubs.  St Paul Brewing has a home run in this regard.  Hamm's Brewing started in St Paul in 1865 by a German immigrant named, Theodore Hamm.  Hamm actually acquired the small brewery through holding the deed to a foreclosed loan from the prior owner, Andrew Keller.  Hamm's has a long tradition in Minnesota and I remember seeing Hamm's Beer commercials on tv as a kid.  An animated bear with the famous saying, "from the land of sky blue waters." were quite memorable for a kid.  At one point, Hamm's was the 5th largest brewery in the country, having expanded to San Francisco, Baltimore and Houston by the 1950's.  Shortly after their 100th anniversary, the brewery went through a series of purchases, in 1965 to Heublein, then in 1973 to a group of distributors, who sold to Olympia Brewing in 1975 and again to Pabst in 1983.   The brewery itself was traded to Stroh's at this time, who ran it until closing it in 1997, ending a 137 year run.  The brewery sat idle and was left to decay and vandalism.  A 2005 fire damaged some of the building, which was actually the original stables and carpentry shop.  In 2024 a new owner came in and reimagined the site for a new brewery, building a taproom and restaurant out of the keg room and using the stables and shop as an outdoor biergarten.  It is now the home of St Paul Brewing.  Be careful as you drive there as you might miss it, tucked back in the bowels of the old building site.  

As an advocate and lover of the craft beer scene, I have become alarmed at the sign of the times in the industry.  It has been known for some time that people, in general, are drinking less beer.  In fact, I just read something today that says even the younger generation of Germans have gone away from beer.  Scheisse!  That same trend is at work here in the US too.  My own son and his friends are proof of this trend.  Craft beer is about 13.3% of the beer market, which is a dent in the big boring brewers, but not enough apparently.  Production has been down and a decrease in the number of breweries has shaped the business for the past two years.  2024 saw a 4% decrease in beer volume and 2025 is on pace for a 5%+ decrease over 2024.  Last year 529 breweries went out of business and the numbers for this year might be sobering when it is all said and done.  I suppose that economics says this was inevitable.  The microbrew craze had been going strong for 40 years and downturns happen.  Perhaps, in some places, microbreweries were overdone, not sure on that, but it seems possible.  If you look at my outdated pictures above, these are from www.vinepair.com and show the huge growth in breweries from 250 in 1990 to 7,190 in 2016.  Today it has grown to 9,269, but declining daily.  Other economic factors have played a role too.

It was a beautiful weekend to head up to the North Shore of Minnesota and Wisconsin.  The leaves were at peak color and the weather was cool, but not cold.  I had a board meeting up that way and after the meeting, like I usually do, while everyone else headed to dinner, I hit a brewery.  I had spied Warrior Brewing on my phone while looking for a new place to try before the meeting and it was directly on the way to dinner.  

Camden Town was a bit of a surprise.  When you get off the underground and come to the surface, you may think Camden Town is run down and a b it sketchy.  In reality, it is an older part of town, but has a vibrant artistic side and is known for its street markets, music and shops.  The Camden Market is a cool area of small, mostly independent shops and eateries that is a must-see and do when you go there.  It stretches across the street in two sections, where it follows along a canal and it is here you will find 3 Locks Brewing.  We were there very early as my son was looking for anime merch, which the area is full of and even though I had searched ahead of time, I really didn't look where the brewery was exactly.  We kind of stumbled upon it a few minutes before they opened.  Their taproom over looks the canal and has outside seating along it.  It really is a great setting for a brewery.  As you can see, I took a terribly blurry picture, so no, you aren't drunk.  Are you?  

I recently visited the UK for vacation and took my opportunity to try many beers, among other things.  The last time I was there the UK was in a bit of a sea change in the pub business.  There were about 58,000 pubs in the UK in 2000.  That number has declined to around 47,000 now.  Big breweries had stepped in and bought a huge chunk of the pubs in order to control beer sales.  I've seen some different numbers, but the six biggest owned about 75% of all the pubs.  In fact, Fuller, a well known brewery, sold it's beer making operation to the Asahi Group in 2019 so it could focus on it's pub operations.  Fuller made one of the best known British beers, London Pride, that it had brewed in London since 1958.  Asahi is a Japanese beer company, which you can easily find here in the states and I drank a lot when I was in Japan a few years ago.  There were marketing agreements in place, as part of the deal, but it shows you how the pubs is where the money is.  For awhile, there were laws put in place to limit the number of pubs the big brewers could own, but that has since been repealed.  For me, the drawback is that you can only find a small selection of beers available at any pub and the food choices were the same at all of them I visited.  There are about 3,800 pubs in London and I was in only about 8, but they were either owned by Greene King or Fuller.  The beers were good, but the choices were nil.

As I left Milwaukee after going to a con with my son, I decided to hit a brew pub.  The one I chose was closed for rebranding upon reaching the property.  Google Maps, which I despise, lied to us again.  It mentioned nothing about being closed and said it was moderately busy.  First they track your every move, then openly lie to you.  I hate Google, but that is for another time.  I chose a different brewery not too far away and we were starving, so it had to have food.  When you get to the building Brewfinity is in, you ,might just think they are out of business too as it looked like a shutdown warehouse out front, but a sign directs you to the left, so I drove around the building and found the brewery.  It is tucked away, but was a nice little space for a tap room.  There were just five other people in there on a very hot Saturday, so we grabbed a spot near the front.  The bartender came right over and gave us some menus.  Since I hadn't been there before, he asked me what kind of beer I like and directed me to their flagship beer, the Sailor's Delight, which is an American Amber.  I probably would've chose this beer anyway, so it was a good call.  Biscuity and malty, just like I like it.  The beer was a nice amber color and was really good.  It finished well, not too hoppy, and smelled  just right.  American Ambers are unique in that they use American hops and derive their sweetness from the malts they use.  They are fermented in a cleaner way than their British cousins and are distinct by their balance.  I get the feeling that the hey day of IPA's is over and that vacuum will be filled by amber ales.  They are far more drinkable, yet may struggle to earn their keep as a summer beer.  Perhaps less refreshing to some drinkers as a number of IPA's can be, but I tend to think they appeal to a far broader audience of beer enthusiasts.  Every brewery makes one, they just don't experiment as deeply and wrongly, in my opinion, as they did with a rash of IPA's.  

It was a sweltering weekend in Minnesota and a stop at a local brewery was definitely in the offing.  I wanted something different so I chose Waldmann's Brewery.  It was a good choice.  Nestled in a neighborhood of houses off the main road, you'll literally stumble upon an old stone house.  It was in the fall of 1857, before Minnesota was even a state, and before the Civil War, when Waldmann's was established.  It is in the oldest surviving commercial building in St Paul to be exact, so the history here is remarkable.  To be fair, there was a long 154 year break between when Waldmann's saloon came alive again in 2017 as Waldmann's Brewery, but that doesn't matter.  

It only took me three trips here to write a blog about it.  I was always out with co-workers and forgot or just didn't have time to take a pic or two.  This time it was just me and a vendor, so I remembered and got the job done.  When in Sioux City, I've always stayed at the hotel right across the street, so going to Marto was just a no-brainer.

Being a fan of the old Hartford Whalers, I had always wanted to go to Hartford.  The fact that there was a brewery on the old Colt firearms complex in Hartford was a win for everyone.  I would've loved to tour the Colt facility during its hayday.  Samuel Colt was born in Hartford in 1814 and began making guns in 1836.  He founded Colt firearms in 1855.  As it is for gun-makers it was feast or famine.  During wartime, Colt did great, but suffered in the aftermath.  Known for innovation, Colt was the first manufacturer to offer interchangeable parts for its guns and used powerful steam engines in its plants before others were doing it.  He also was the first to build a tenement for his workers with housing, daycare, churches and food.  He established a ten hour work day with a required one hour lunch break. 

On Memorial Day weekend I took my annual trip with my brothers.  This time is was the East Coast.  We hit six states during this trip and one of the better experiences was at East Regiment Beer Company in Salem.   It is nestled in the middle of downtown and was a welcome site for my hungry stomach.  

Phallic symbols are funny, but then again, I'm a juvenile.  Naming your brewery Big Wood is probably an homage to the mighty schlong, but you could try to get away saying it is about lumberjacks or something, though no guy would believe you.  I think they did call it Big Wood because it was funny and it took big wood to launch a brewery and do it their way.  If you have a rager for craft beer and want to sell a lot of merch, it goes hand in hand.  When you call your first beer, Morning Wood Coffee Stout, there is no doubt it was the culmination of a wet dream for Big Wood.

In Canada, eh.  On a recent trip to Toronto I didn't have to search far to find a brewery to hit.  Elsinore had a commanding view of the city from its perch on a hill.  The brewery was first opened in 1983 and runs a taproom out of it's huge facility, oddly enough near an old Royal Canadian mental asylum.  Crazy, right?  The brewery stands as a monolith of older times when beer was king.  The factory was large with two smoke stacks that didn't appear to be running while we were there.  It's almost spooky now as it runs at a much lower capacity than it once did, according to the bartender, a nice older guy with a funny accent, wearing all black.  I bet the place has many secrets to tell.

I love it when a brewery has a lot of history to it's setting.  This isn't possible for many, but it really adds to the experience for me and is what I think of when I think about brew pubs.  St Paul Brewing has a home run in this regard.  Hamm's Brewing started in St Paul in 1865 by a German immigrant named, Theodore Hamm.  Hamm actually acquired the small brewery through holding the deed to a foreclosed loan from the prior owner, Andrew Keller.  Hamm's has a long tradition in Minnesota and I remember seeing Hamm's Beer commercials on tv as a kid.  An animated bear with the famous saying, "from the land of sky blue waters." were quite memorable for a kid.  At one point, Hamm's was the 5th largest brewery in the country, having expanded to San Francisco, Baltimore and Houston by the 1950's.  Shortly after their 100th anniversary, the brewery went through a series of purchases, in 1965 to Heublein, then in 1973 to a group of distributors, who sold to Olympia Brewing in 1975 and again to Pabst in 1983.   The brewery itself was traded to Stroh's at this time, who ran it until closing it in 1997, ending a 137 year run.  The brewery sat idle and was left to decay and vandalism.  A 2005 fire damaged some of the building, which was actually the original stables and carpentry shop.  In 2024 a new owner came in and reimagined the site for a new brewery, building a taproom and restaurant out of the keg room and using the stables and shop as an outdoor biergarten.  It is now the home of St Paul Brewing.  Be careful as you drive there as you might miss it, tucked back in the bowels of the old building site.  

As an advocate and lover of the craft beer scene, I have become alarmed at the sign of the times in the industry.  It has been known for some time that people, in general, are drinking less beer.  In fact, I just read something today that says even the younger generation of Germans have gone away from beer.  Scheisse!  That same trend is at work here in the US too.  My own son and his friends are proof of this trend.  Craft beer is about 13.3% of the beer market, which is a dent in the big boring brewers, but not enough apparently.  Production has been down and a decrease in the number of breweries has shaped the business for the past two years.  2024 saw a 4% decrease in beer volume and 2025 is on pace for a 5%+ decrease over 2024.  Last year 529 breweries went out of business and the numbers for this year might be sobering when it is all said and done.  I suppose that economics says this was inevitable.  The microbrew craze had been going strong for 40 years and downturns happen.  Perhaps, in some places, microbreweries were overdone, not sure on that, but it seems possible.  If you look at my outdated pictures above, these are from www.vinepair.com and show the huge growth in breweries from 250 in 1990 to 7,190 in 2016.  Today it has grown to 9,269, but declining daily.  Other economic factors have played a role too.

It was a beautiful weekend to head up to the North Shore of Minnesota and Wisconsin.  The leaves were at peak color and the weather was cool, but not cold.  I had a board meeting up that way and after the meeting, like I usually do, while everyone else headed to dinner, I hit a brewery.  I had spied Warrior Brewing on my phone while looking for a new place to try before the meeting and it was directly on the way to dinner.  

Camden Town was a bit of a surprise.  When you get off the underground and come to the surface, you may think Camden Town is run down and a b it sketchy.  In reality, it is an older part of town, but has a vibrant artistic side and is known for its street markets, music and shops.  The Camden Market is a cool area of small, mostly independent shops and eateries that is a must-see and do when you go there.  It stretches across the street in two sections, where it follows along a canal and it is here you will find 3 Locks Brewing.  We were there very early as my son was looking for anime merch, which the area is full of and even though I had searched ahead of time, I really didn't look where the brewery was exactly.  We kind of stumbled upon it a few minutes before they opened.  Their taproom over looks the canal and has outside seating along it.  It really is a great setting for a brewery.  As you can see, I took a terribly blurry picture, so no, you aren't drunk.  Are you?  

I recently visited the UK for vacation and took my opportunity to try many beers, among other things.  The last time I was there the UK was in a bit of a sea change in the pub business.  There were about 58,000 pubs in the UK in 2000.  That number has declined to around 47,000 now.  Big breweries had stepped in and bought a huge chunk of the pubs in order to control beer sales.  I've seen some different numbers, but the six biggest owned about 75% of all the pubs.  In fact, Fuller, a well known brewery, sold it's beer making operation to the Asahi Group in 2019 so it could focus on it's pub operations.  Fuller made one of the best known British beers, London Pride, that it had brewed in London since 1958.  Asahi is a Japanese beer company, which you can easily find here in the states and I drank a lot when I was in Japan a few years ago.  There were marketing agreements in place, as part of the deal, but it shows you how the pubs is where the money is.  For awhile, there were laws put in place to limit the number of pubs the big brewers could own, but that has since been repealed.  For me, the drawback is that you can only find a small selection of beers available at any pub and the food choices were the same at all of them I visited.  There are about 3,800 pubs in London and I was in only about 8, but they were either owned by Greene King or Fuller.  The beers were good, but the choices were nil.

As I left Milwaukee after going to a con with my son, I decided to hit a brew pub.  The one I chose was closed for rebranding upon reaching the property.  Google Maps, which I despise, lied to us again.  It mentioned nothing about being closed and said it was moderately busy.  First they track your every move, then openly lie to you.  I hate Google, but that is for another time.  I chose a different brewery not too far away and we were starving, so it had to have food.  When you get to the building Brewfinity is in, you ,might just think they are out of business too as it looked like a shutdown warehouse out front, but a sign directs you to the left, so I drove around the building and found the brewery.  It is tucked away, but was a nice little space for a tap room.  There were just five other people in there on a very hot Saturday, so we grabbed a spot near the front.  The bartender came right over and gave us some menus.  Since I hadn't been there before, he asked me what kind of beer I like and directed me to their flagship beer, the Sailor's Delight, which is an American Amber.  I probably would've chose this beer anyway, so it was a good call.  Biscuity and malty, just like I like it.  The beer was a nice amber color and was really good.  It finished well, not too hoppy, and smelled  just right.  American Ambers are unique in that they use American hops and derive their sweetness from the malts they use.  They are fermented in a cleaner way than their British cousins and are distinct by their balance.  I get the feeling that the hey day of IPA's is over and that vacuum will be filled by amber ales.  They are far more drinkable, yet may struggle to earn their keep as a summer beer.  Perhaps less refreshing to some drinkers as a number of IPA's can be, but I tend to think they appeal to a far broader audience of beer enthusiasts.  Every brewery makes one, they just don't experiment as deeply and wrongly, in my opinion, as they did with a rash of IPA's.  

It was a sweltering weekend in Minnesota and a stop at a local brewery was definitely in the offing.  I wanted something different so I chose Waldmann's Brewery.  It was a good choice.  Nestled in a neighborhood of houses off the main road, you'll literally stumble upon an old stone house.  It was in the fall of 1857, before Minnesota was even a state, and before the Civil War, when Waldmann's was established.  It is in the oldest surviving commercial building in St Paul to be exact, so the history here is remarkable.  To be fair, there was a long 154 year break between when Waldmann's saloon came alive again in 2017 as Waldmann's Brewery, but that doesn't matter.  

It only took me three trips here to write a blog about it.  I was always out with co-workers and forgot or just didn't have time to take a pic or two.  This time it was just me and a vendor, so I remembered and got the job done.  When in Sioux City, I've always stayed at the hotel right across the street, so going to Marto was just a no-brainer.

Being a fan of the old Hartford Whalers, I had always wanted to go to Hartford.  The fact that there was a brewery on the old Colt firearms complex in Hartford was a win for everyone.  I would've loved to tour the Colt facility during its hayday.  Samuel Colt was born in Hartford in 1814 and began making guns in 1836.  He founded Colt firearms in 1855.  As it is for gun-makers it was feast or famine.  During wartime, Colt did great, but suffered in the aftermath.  Known for innovation, Colt was the first manufacturer to offer interchangeable parts for its guns and used powerful steam engines in its plants before others were doing it.  He also was the first to build a tenement for his workers with housing, daycare, churches and food.  He established a ten hour work day with a required one hour lunch break. 

On Memorial Day weekend I took my annual trip with my brothers.  This time is was the East Coast.  We hit six states during this trip and one of the better experiences was at East Regiment Beer Company in Salem.   It is nestled in the middle of downtown and was a welcome site for my hungry stomach.  

Phallic symbols are funny, but then again, I'm a juvenile.  Naming your brewery Big Wood is probably an homage to the mighty schlong, but you could try to get away saying it is about lumberjacks or something, though no guy would believe you.  I think they did call it Big Wood because it was funny and it took big wood to launch a brewery and do it their way.  If you have a rager for craft beer and want to sell a lot of merch, it goes hand in hand.  When you call your first beer, Morning Wood Coffee Stout, there is no doubt it was the culmination of a wet dream for Big Wood.

In Canada, eh.  On a recent trip to Toronto I didn't have to search far to find a brewery to hit.  Elsinore had a commanding view of the city from its perch on a hill.  The brewery was first opened in 1983 and runs a taproom out of it's huge facility, oddly enough near an old Royal Canadian mental asylum.  Crazy, right?  The brewery stands as a monolith of older times when beer was king.  The factory was large with two smoke stacks that didn't appear to be running while we were there.  It's almost spooky now as it runs at a much lower capacity than it once did, according to the bartender, a nice older guy with a funny accent, wearing all black.  I bet the place has many secrets to tell.

I love it when a brewery has a lot of history to it's setting.  This isn't possible for many, but it really adds to the experience for me and is what I think of when I think about brew pubs.  St Paul Brewing has a home run in this regard.  Hamm's Brewing started in St Paul in 1865 by a German immigrant named, Theodore Hamm.  Hamm actually acquired the small brewery through holding the deed to a foreclosed loan from the prior owner, Andrew Keller.  Hamm's has a long tradition in Minnesota and I remember seeing Hamm's Beer commercials on tv as a kid.  An animated bear with the famous saying, "from the land of sky blue waters." were quite memorable for a kid.  At one point, Hamm's was the 5th largest brewery in the country, having expanded to San Francisco, Baltimore and Houston by the 1950's.  Shortly after their 100th anniversary, the brewery went through a series of purchases, in 1965 to Heublein, then in 1973 to a group of distributors, who sold to Olympia Brewing in 1975 and again to Pabst in 1983.   The brewery itself was traded to Stroh's at this time, who ran it until closing it in 1997, ending a 137 year run.  The brewery sat idle and was left to decay and vandalism.  A 2005 fire damaged some of the building, which was actually the original stables and carpentry shop.  In 2024 a new owner came in and reimagined the site for a new brewery, building a taproom and restaurant out of the keg room and using the stables and shop as an outdoor biergarten.  It is now the home of St Paul Brewing.  Be careful as you drive there as you might miss it, tucked back in the bowels of the old building site.  

As an advocate and lover of the craft beer scene, I have become alarmed at the sign of the times in the industry.  It has been known for some time that people, in general, are drinking less beer.  In fact, I just read something today that says even the younger generation of Germans have gone away from beer.  Scheisse!  That same trend is at work here in the US too.  My own son and his friends are proof of this trend.  Craft beer is about 13.3% of the beer market, which is a dent in the big boring brewers, but not enough apparently.  Production has been down and a decrease in the number of breweries has shaped the business for the past two years.  2024 saw a 4% decrease in beer volume and 2025 is on pace for a 5%+ decrease over 2024.  Last year 529 breweries went out of business and the numbers for this year might be sobering when it is all said and done.  I suppose that economics says this was inevitable.  The microbrew craze had been going strong for 40 years and downturns happen.  Perhaps, in some places, microbreweries were overdone, not sure on that, but it seems possible.  If you look at my outdated pictures above, these are from www.vinepair.com and show the huge growth in breweries from 250 in 1990 to 7,190 in 2016.  Today it has grown to 9,269, but declining daily.  Other economic factors have played a role too.

It was a beautiful weekend to head up to the North Shore of Minnesota and Wisconsin.  The leaves were at peak color and the weather was cool, but not cold.  I had a board meeting up that way and after the meeting, like I usually do, while everyone else headed to dinner, I hit a brewery.  I had spied Warrior Brewing on my phone while looking for a new place to try before the meeting and it was directly on the way to dinner.  

Camden Town was a bit of a surprise.  When you get off the underground and come to the surface, you may think Camden Town is run down and a b it sketchy.  In reality, it is an older part of town, but has a vibrant artistic side and is known for its street markets, music and shops.  The Camden Market is a cool area of small, mostly independent shops and eateries that is a must-see and do when you go there.  It stretches across the street in two sections, where it follows along a canal and it is here you will find 3 Locks Brewing.  We were there very early as my son was looking for anime merch, which the area is full of and even though I had searched ahead of time, I really didn't look where the brewery was exactly.  We kind of stumbled upon it a few minutes before they opened.  Their taproom over looks the canal and has outside seating along it.  It really is a great setting for a brewery.  As you can see, I took a terribly blurry picture, so no, you aren't drunk.  Are you?  

I recently visited the UK for vacation and took my opportunity to try many beers, among other things.  The last time I was there the UK was in a bit of a sea change in the pub business.  There were about 58,000 pubs in the UK in 2000.  That number has declined to around 47,000 now.  Big breweries had stepped in and bought a huge chunk of the pubs in order to control beer sales.  I've seen some different numbers, but the six biggest owned about 75% of all the pubs.  In fact, Fuller, a well known brewery, sold it's beer making operation to the Asahi Group in 2019 so it could focus on it's pub operations.  Fuller made one of the best known British beers, London Pride, that it had brewed in London since 1958.  Asahi is a Japanese beer company, which you can easily find here in the states and I drank a lot when I was in Japan a few years ago.  There were marketing agreements in place, as part of the deal, but it shows you how the pubs is where the money is.  For awhile, there were laws put in place to limit the number of pubs the big brewers could own, but that has since been repealed.  For me, the drawback is that you can only find a small selection of beers available at any pub and the food choices were the same at all of them I visited.  There are about 3,800 pubs in London and I was in only about 8, but they were either owned by Greene King or Fuller.  The beers were good, but the choices were nil.

As I left Milwaukee after going to a con with my son, I decided to hit a brew pub.  The one I chose was closed for rebranding upon reaching the property.  Google Maps, which I despise, lied to us again.  It mentioned nothing about being closed and said it was moderately busy.  First they track your every move, then openly lie to you.  I hate Google, but that is for another time.  I chose a different brewery not too far away and we were starving, so it had to have food.  When you get to the building Brewfinity is in, you ,might just think they are out of business too as it looked like a shutdown warehouse out front, but a sign directs you to the left, so I drove around the building and found the brewery.  It is tucked away, but was a nice little space for a tap room.  There were just five other people in there on a very hot Saturday, so we grabbed a spot near the front.  The bartender came right over and gave us some menus.  Since I hadn't been there before, he asked me what kind of beer I like and directed me to their flagship beer, the Sailor's Delight, which is an American Amber.  I probably would've chose this beer anyway, so it was a good call.  Biscuity and malty, just like I like it.  The beer was a nice amber color and was really good.  It finished well, not too hoppy, and smelled  just right.  American Ambers are unique in that they use American hops and derive their sweetness from the malts they use.  They are fermented in a cleaner way than their British cousins and are distinct by their balance.  I get the feeling that the hey day of IPA's is over and that vacuum will be filled by amber ales.  They are far more drinkable, yet may struggle to earn their keep as a summer beer.  Perhaps less refreshing to some drinkers as a number of IPA's can be, but I tend to think they appeal to a far broader audience of beer enthusiasts.  Every brewery makes one, they just don't experiment as deeply and wrongly, in my opinion, as they did with a rash of IPA's.  

It was a sweltering weekend in Minnesota and a stop at a local brewery was definitely in the offing.  I wanted something different so I chose Waldmann's Brewery.  It was a good choice.  Nestled in a neighborhood of houses off the main road, you'll literally stumble upon an old stone house.  It was in the fall of 1857, before Minnesota was even a state, and before the Civil War, when Waldmann's was established.  It is in the oldest surviving commercial building in St Paul to be exact, so the history here is remarkable.  To be fair, there was a long 154 year break between when Waldmann's saloon came alive again in 2017 as Waldmann's Brewery, but that doesn't matter.  

It only took me three trips here to write a blog about it.  I was always out with co-workers and forgot or just didn't have time to take a pic or two.  This time it was just me and a vendor, so I remembered and got the job done.  When in Sioux City, I've always stayed at the hotel right across the street, so going to Marto was just a no-brainer.

Being a fan of the old Hartford Whalers, I had always wanted to go to Hartford.  The fact that there was a brewery on the old Colt firearms complex in Hartford was a win for everyone.  I would've loved to tour the Colt facility during its hayday.  Samuel Colt was born in Hartford in 1814 and began making guns in 1836.  He founded Colt firearms in 1855.  As it is for gun-makers it was feast or famine.  During wartime, Colt did great, but suffered in the aftermath.  Known for innovation, Colt was the first manufacturer to offer interchangeable parts for its guns and used powerful steam engines in its plants before others were doing it.  He also was the first to build a tenement for his workers with housing, daycare, churches and food.  He established a ten hour work day with a required one hour lunch break. 

On Memorial Day weekend I took my annual trip with my brothers.  This time is was the East Coast.  We hit six states during this trip and one of the better experiences was at East Regiment Beer Company in Salem.   It is nestled in the middle of downtown and was a welcome site for my hungry stomach.  

Phallic symbols are funny, but then again, I'm a juvenile.  Naming your brewery Big Wood is probably an homage to the mighty schlong, but you could try to get away saying it is about lumberjacks or something, though no guy would believe you.  I think they did call it Big Wood because it was funny and it took big wood to launch a brewery and do it their way.  If you have a rager for craft beer and want to sell a lot of merch, it goes hand in hand.  When you call your first beer, Morning Wood Coffee Stout, there is no doubt it was the culmination of a wet dream for Big Wood.

In Canada, eh.  On a recent trip to Toronto I didn't have to search far to find a brewery to hit.  Elsinore had a commanding view of the city from its perch on a hill.  The brewery was first opened in 1983 and runs a taproom out of it's huge facility, oddly enough near an old Royal Canadian mental asylum.  Crazy, right?  The brewery stands as a monolith of older times when beer was king.  The factory was large with two smoke stacks that didn't appear to be running while we were there.  It's almost spooky now as it runs at a much lower capacity than it once did, according to the bartender, a nice older guy with a funny accent, wearing all black.  I bet the place has many secrets to tell.

I love it when a brewery has a lot of history to it's setting.  This isn't possible for many, but it really adds to the experience for me and is what I think of when I think about brew pubs.  St Paul Brewing has a home run in this regard.  Hamm's Brewing started in St Paul in 1865 by a German immigrant named, Theodore Hamm.  Hamm actually acquired the small brewery through holding the deed to a foreclosed loan from the prior owner, Andrew Keller.  Hamm's has a long tradition in Minnesota and I remember seeing Hamm's Beer commercials on tv as a kid.  An animated bear with the famous saying, "from the land of sky blue waters." were quite memorable for a kid.  At one point, Hamm's was the 5th largest brewery in the country, having expanded to San Francisco, Baltimore and Houston by the 1950's.  Shortly after their 100th anniversary, the brewery went through a series of purchases, in 1965 to Heublein, then in 1973 to a group of distributors, who sold to Olympia Brewing in 1975 and again to Pabst in 1983.   The brewery itself was traded to Stroh's at this time, who ran it until closing it in 1997, ending a 137 year run.  The brewery sat idle and was left to decay and vandalism.  A 2005 fire damaged some of the building, which was actually the original stables and carpentry shop.  In 2024 a new owner came in and reimagined the site for a new brewery, building a taproom and restaurant out of the keg room and using the stables and shop as an outdoor biergarten.  It is now the home of St Paul Brewing.  Be careful as you drive there as you might miss it, tucked back in the bowels of the old building site.  

As an advocate and lover of the craft beer scene, I have become alarmed at the sign of the times in the industry.  It has been known for some time that people, in general, are drinking less beer.  In fact, I just read something today that says even the younger generation of Germans have gone away from beer.  Scheisse!  That same trend is at work here in the US too.  My own son and his friends are proof of this trend.  Craft beer is about 13.3% of the beer market, which is a dent in the big boring brewers, but not enough apparently.  Production has been down and a decrease in the number of breweries has shaped the business for the past two years.  2024 saw a 4% decrease in beer volume and 2025 is on pace for a 5%+ decrease over 2024.  Last year 529 breweries went out of business and the numbers for this year might be sobering when it is all said and done.  I suppose that economics says this was inevitable.  The microbrew craze had been going strong for 40 years and downturns happen.  Perhaps, in some places, microbreweries were overdone, not sure on that, but it seems possible.  If you look at my outdated pictures above, these are from www.vinepair.com and show the huge growth in breweries from 250 in 1990 to 7,190 in 2016.  Today it has grown to 9,269, but declining daily.  Other economic factors have played a role too.

It was a beautiful weekend to head up to the North Shore of Minnesota and Wisconsin.  The leaves were at peak color and the weather was cool, but not cold.  I had a board meeting up that way and after the meeting, like I usually do, while everyone else headed to dinner, I hit a brewery.  I had spied Warrior Brewing on my phone while looking for a new place to try before the meeting and it was directly on the way to dinner.  

Camden Town was a bit of a surprise.  When you get off the underground and come to the surface, you may think Camden Town is run down and a b it sketchy.  In reality, it is an older part of town, but has a vibrant artistic side and is known for its street markets, music and shops.  The Camden Market is a cool area of small, mostly independent shops and eateries that is a must-see and do when you go there.  It stretches across the street in two sections, where it follows along a canal and it is here you will find 3 Locks Brewing.  We were there very early as my son was looking for anime merch, which the area is full of and even though I had searched ahead of time, I really didn't look where the brewery was exactly.  We kind of stumbled upon it a few minutes before they opened.  Their taproom over looks the canal and has outside seating along it.  It really is a great setting for a brewery.  As you can see, I took a terribly blurry picture, so no, you aren't drunk.  Are you?  

I recently visited the UK for vacation and took my opportunity to try many beers, among other things.  The last time I was there the UK was in a bit of a sea change in the pub business.  There were about 58,000 pubs in the UK in 2000.  That number has declined to around 47,000 now.  Big breweries had stepped in and bought a huge chunk of the pubs in order to control beer sales.  I've seen some different numbers, but the six biggest owned about 75% of all the pubs.  In fact, Fuller, a well known brewery, sold it's beer making operation to the Asahi Group in 2019 so it could focus on it's pub operations.  Fuller made one of the best known British beers, London Pride, that it had brewed in London since 1958.  Asahi is a Japanese beer company, which you can easily find here in the states and I drank a lot when I was in Japan a few years ago.  There were marketing agreements in place, as part of the deal, but it shows you how the pubs is where the money is.  For awhile, there were laws put in place to limit the number of pubs the big brewers could own, but that has since been repealed.  For me, the drawback is that you can only find a small selection of beers available at any pub and the food choices were the same at all of them I visited.  There are about 3,800 pubs in London and I was in only about 8, but they were either owned by Greene King or Fuller.  The beers were good, but the choices were nil.

As I left Milwaukee after going to a con with my son, I decided to hit a brew pub.  The one I chose was closed for rebranding upon reaching the property.  Google Maps, which I despise, lied to us again.  It mentioned nothing about being closed and said it was moderately busy.  First they track your every move, then openly lie to you.  I hate Google, but that is for another time.  I chose a different brewery not too far away and we were starving, so it had to have food.  When you get to the building Brewfinity is in, you ,might just think they are out of business too as it looked like a shutdown warehouse out front, but a sign directs you to the left, so I drove around the building and found the brewery.  It is tucked away, but was a nice little space for a tap room.  There were just five other people in there on a very hot Saturday, so we grabbed a spot near the front.  The bartender came right over and gave us some menus.  Since I hadn't been there before, he asked me what kind of beer I like and directed me to their flagship beer, the Sailor's Delight, which is an American Amber.  I probably would've chose this beer anyway, so it was a good call.  Biscuity and malty, just like I like it.  The beer was a nice amber color and was really good.  It finished well, not too hoppy, and smelled  just right.  American Ambers are unique in that they use American hops and derive their sweetness from the malts they use.  They are fermented in a cleaner way than their British cousins and are distinct by their balance.  I get the feeling that the hey day of IPA's is over and that vacuum will be filled by amber ales.  They are far more drinkable, yet may struggle to earn their keep as a summer beer.  Perhaps less refreshing to some drinkers as a number of IPA's can be, but I tend to think they appeal to a far broader audience of beer enthusiasts.  Every brewery makes one, they just don't experiment as deeply and wrongly, in my opinion, as they did with a rash of IPA's.  

It was a sweltering weekend in Minnesota and a stop at a local brewery was definitely in the offing.  I wanted something different so I chose Waldmann's Brewery.  It was a good choice.  Nestled in a neighborhood of houses off the main road, you'll literally stumble upon an old stone house.  It was in the fall of 1857, before Minnesota was even a state, and before the Civil War, when Waldmann's was established.  It is in the oldest surviving commercial building in St Paul to be exact, so the history here is remarkable.  To be fair, there was a long 154 year break between when Waldmann's saloon came alive again in 2017 as Waldmann's Brewery, but that doesn't matter.  

It only took me three trips here to write a blog about it.  I was always out with co-workers and forgot or just didn't have time to take a pic or two.  This time it was just me and a vendor, so I remembered and got the job done.  When in Sioux City, I've always stayed at the hotel right across the street, so going to Marto was just a no-brainer.

Being a fan of the old Hartford Whalers, I had always wanted to go to Hartford.  The fact that there was a brewery on the old Colt firearms complex in Hartford was a win for everyone.  I would've loved to tour the Colt facility during its hayday.  Samuel Colt was born in Hartford in 1814 and began making guns in 1836.  He founded Colt firearms in 1855.  As it is for gun-makers it was feast or famine.  During wartime, Colt did great, but suffered in the aftermath.  Known for innovation, Colt was the first manufacturer to offer interchangeable parts for its guns and used powerful steam engines in its plants before others were doing it.  He also was the first to build a tenement for his workers with housing, daycare, churches and food.  He established a ten hour work day with a required one hour lunch break. 

On Memorial Day weekend I took my annual trip with my brothers.  This time is was the East Coast.  We hit six states during this trip and one of the better experiences was at East Regiment Beer Company in Salem.   It is nestled in the middle of downtown and was a welcome site for my hungry stomach.  

Phallic symbols are funny, but then again, I'm a juvenile.  Naming your brewery Big Wood is probably an homage to the mighty schlong, but you could try to get away saying it is about lumberjacks or something, though no guy would believe you.  I think they did call it Big Wood because it was funny and it took big wood to launch a brewery and do it their way.  If you have a rager for craft beer and want to sell a lot of merch, it goes hand in hand.  When you call your first beer, Morning Wood Coffee Stout, there is no doubt it was the culmination of a wet dream for Big Wood.

In Canada, eh.  On a recent trip to Toronto I didn't have to search far to find a brewery to hit.  Elsinore had a commanding view of the city from its perch on a hill.  The brewery was first opened in 1983 and runs a taproom out of it's huge facility, oddly enough near an old Royal Canadian mental asylum.  Crazy, right?  The brewery stands as a monolith of older times when beer was king.  The factory was large with two smoke stacks that didn't appear to be running while we were there.  It's almost spooky now as it runs at a much lower capacity than it once did, according to the bartender, a nice older guy with a funny accent, wearing all black.  I bet the place has many secrets to tell.

I love it when a brewery has a lot of history to it's setting.  This isn't possible for many, but it really adds to the experience for me and is what I think of when I think about brew pubs.  St Paul Brewing has a home run in this regard.  Hamm's Brewing started in St Paul in 1865 by a German immigrant named, Theodore Hamm.  Hamm actually acquired the small brewery through holding the deed to a foreclosed loan from the prior owner, Andrew Keller.  Hamm's has a long tradition in Minnesota and I remember seeing Hamm's Beer commercials on tv as a kid.  An animated bear with the famous saying, "from the land of sky blue waters." were quite memorable for a kid.  At one point, Hamm's was the 5th largest brewery in the country, having expanded to San Francisco, Baltimore and Houston by the 1950's.  Shortly after their 100th anniversary, the brewery went through a series of purchases, in 1965 to Heublein, then in 1973 to a group of distributors, who sold to Olympia Brewing in 1975 and again to Pabst in 1983.   The brewery itself was traded to Stroh's at this time, who ran it until closing it in 1997, ending a 137 year run.  The brewery sat idle and was left to decay and vandalism.  A 2005 fire damaged some of the building, which was actually the original stables and carpentry shop.  In 2024 a new owner came in and reimagined the site for a new brewery, building a taproom and restaurant out of the keg room and using the stables and shop as an outdoor biergarten.  It is now the home of St Paul Brewing.  Be careful as you drive there as you might miss it, tucked back in the bowels of the old building site.  

As an advocate and lover of the craft beer scene, I have become alarmed at the sign of the times in the industry.  It has been known for some time that people, in general, are drinking less beer.  In fact, I just read something today that says even the younger generation of Germans have gone away from beer.  Scheisse!  That same trend is at work here in the US too.  My own son and his friends are proof of this trend.  Craft beer is about 13.3% of the beer market, which is a dent in the big boring brewers, but not enough apparently.  Production has been down and a decrease in the number of breweries has shaped the business for the past two years.  2024 saw a 4% decrease in beer volume and 2025 is on pace for a 5%+ decrease over 2024.  Last year 529 breweries went out of business and the numbers for this year might be sobering when it is all said and done.  I suppose that economics says this was inevitable.  The microbrew craze had been going strong for 40 years and downturns happen.  Perhaps, in some places, microbreweries were overdone, not sure on that, but it seems possible.  If you look at my outdated pictures above, these are from www.vinepair.com and show the huge growth in breweries from 250 in 1990 to 7,190 in 2016.  Today it has grown to 9,269, but declining daily.  Other economic factors have played a role too.

It was a beautiful weekend to head up to the North Shore of Minnesota and Wisconsin.  The leaves were at peak color and the weather was cool, but not cold.  I had a board meeting up that way and after the meeting, like I usually do, while everyone else headed to dinner, I hit a brewery.  I had spied Warrior Brewing on my phone while looking for a new place to try before the meeting and it was directly on the way to dinner.  

Camden Town was a bit of a surprise.  When you get off the underground and come to the surface, you may think Camden Town is run down and a b it sketchy.  In reality, it is an older part of town, but has a vibrant artistic side and is known for its street markets, music and shops.  The Camden Market is a cool area of small, mostly independent shops and eateries that is a must-see and do when you go there.  It stretches across the street in two sections, where it follows along a canal and it is here you will find 3 Locks Brewing.  We were there very early as my son was looking for anime merch, which the area is full of and even though I had searched ahead of time, I really didn't look where the brewery was exactly.  We kind of stumbled upon it a few minutes before they opened.  Their taproom over looks the canal and has outside seating along it.  It really is a great setting for a brewery.  As you can see, I took a terribly blurry picture, so no, you aren't drunk.  Are you?  

I recently visited the UK for vacation and took my opportunity to try many beers, among other things.  The last time I was there the UK was in a bit of a sea change in the pub business.  There were about 58,000 pubs in the UK in 2000.  That number has declined to around 47,000 now.  Big breweries had stepped in and bought a huge chunk of the pubs in order to control beer sales.  I've seen some different numbers, but the six biggest owned about 75% of all the pubs.  In fact, Fuller, a well known brewery, sold it's beer making operation to the Asahi Group in 2019 so it could focus on it's pub operations.  Fuller made one of the best known British beers, London Pride, that it had brewed in London since 1958.  Asahi is a Japanese beer company, which you can easily find here in the states and I drank a lot when I was in Japan a few years ago.  There were marketing agreements in place, as part of the deal, but it shows you how the pubs is where the money is.  For awhile, there were laws put in place to limit the number of pubs the big brewers could own, but that has since been repealed.  For me, the drawback is that you can only find a small selection of beers available at any pub and the food choices were the same at all of them I visited.  There are about 3,800 pubs in London and I was in only about 8, but they were either owned by Greene King or Fuller.  The beers were good, but the choices were nil.

As I left Milwaukee after going to a con with my son, I decided to hit a brew pub.  The one I chose was closed for rebranding upon reaching the property.  Google Maps, which I despise, lied to us again.  It mentioned nothing about being closed and said it was moderately busy.  First they track your every move, then openly lie to you.  I hate Google, but that is for another time.  I chose a different brewery not too far away and we were starving, so it had to have food.  When you get to the building Brewfinity is in, you ,might just think they are out of business too as it looked like a shutdown warehouse out front, but a sign directs you to the left, so I drove around the building and found the brewery.  It is tucked away, but was a nice little space for a tap room.  There were just five other people in there on a very hot Saturday, so we grabbed a spot near the front.  The bartender came right over and gave us some menus.  Since I hadn't been there before, he asked me what kind of beer I like and directed me to their flagship beer, the Sailor's Delight, which is an American Amber.  I probably would've chose this beer anyway, so it was a good call.  Biscuity and malty, just like I like it.  The beer was a nice amber color and was really good.  It finished well, not too hoppy, and smelled  just right.  American Ambers are unique in that they use American hops and derive their sweetness from the malts they use.  They are fermented in a cleaner way than their British cousins and are distinct by their balance.  I get the feeling that the hey day of IPA's is over and that vacuum will be filled by amber ales.  They are far more drinkable, yet may struggle to earn their keep as a summer beer.  Perhaps less refreshing to some drinkers as a number of IPA's can be, but I tend to think they appeal to a far broader audience of beer enthusiasts.  Every brewery makes one, they just don't experiment as deeply and wrongly, in my opinion, as they did with a rash of IPA's.  

It was a sweltering weekend in Minnesota and a stop at a local brewery was definitely in the offing.  I wanted something different so I chose Waldmann's Brewery.  It was a good choice.  Nestled in a neighborhood of houses off the main road, you'll literally stumble upon an old stone house.  It was in the fall of 1857, before Minnesota was even a state, and before the Civil War, when Waldmann's was established.  It is in the oldest surviving commercial building in St Paul to be exact, so the history here is remarkable.  To be fair, there was a long 154 year break between when Waldmann's saloon came alive again in 2017 as Waldmann's Brewery, but that doesn't matter.  

It only took me three trips here to write a blog about it.  I was always out with co-workers and forgot or just didn't have time to take a pic or two.  This time it was just me and a vendor, so I remembered and got the job done.  When in Sioux City, I've always stayed at the hotel right across the street, so going to Marto was just a no-brainer.

Being a fan of the old Hartford Whalers, I had always wanted to go to Hartford.  The fact that there was a brewery on the old Colt firearms complex in Hartford was a win for everyone.  I would've loved to tour the Colt facility during its hayday.  Samuel Colt was born in Hartford in 1814 and began making guns in 1836.  He founded Colt firearms in 1855.  As it is for gun-makers it was feast or famine.  During wartime, Colt did great, but suffered in the aftermath.  Known for innovation, Colt was the first manufacturer to offer interchangeable parts for its guns and used powerful steam engines in its plants before others were doing it.  He also was the first to build a tenement for his workers with housing, daycare, churches and food.  He established a ten hour work day with a required one hour lunch break. 

On Memorial Day weekend I took my annual trip with my brothers.  This time is was the East Coast.  We hit six states during this trip and one of the better experiences was at East Regiment Beer Company in Salem.   It is nestled in the middle of downtown and was a welcome site for my hungry stomach.  

Phallic symbols are funny, but then again, I'm a juvenile.  Naming your brewery Big Wood is probably an homage to the mighty schlong, but you could try to get away saying it is about lumberjacks or something, though no guy would believe you.  I think they did call it Big Wood because it was funny and it took big wood to launch a brewery and do it their way.  If you have a rager for craft beer and want to sell a lot of merch, it goes hand in hand.  When you call your first beer, Morning Wood Coffee Stout, there is no doubt it was the culmination of a wet dream for Big Wood.

In Canada, eh.  On a recent trip to Toronto I didn't have to search far to find a brewery to hit.  Elsinore had a commanding view of the city from its perch on a hill.  The brewery was first opened in 1983 and runs a taproom out of it's huge facility, oddly enough near an old Royal Canadian mental asylum.  Crazy, right?  The brewery stands as a monolith of older times when beer was king.  The factory was large with two smoke stacks that didn't appear to be running while we were there.  It's almost spooky now as it runs at a much lower capacity than it once did, according to the bartender, a nice older guy with a funny accent, wearing all black.  I bet the place has many secrets to tell.

I love it when a brewery has a lot of history to it's setting.  This isn't possible for many, but it really adds to the experience for me and is what I think of when I think about brew pubs.  St Paul Brewing has a home run in this regard.  Hamm's Brewing started in St Paul in 1865 by a German immigrant named, Theodore Hamm.  Hamm actually acquired the small brewery through holding the deed to a foreclosed loan from the prior owner, Andrew Keller.  Hamm's has a long tradition in Minnesota and I remember seeing Hamm's Beer commercials on tv as a kid.  An animated bear with the famous saying, "from the land of sky blue waters." were quite memorable for a kid.  At one point, Hamm's was the 5th largest brewery in the country, having expanded to San Francisco, Baltimore and Houston by the 1950's.  Shortly after their 100th anniversary, the brewery went through a series of purchases, in 1965 to Heublein, then in 1973 to a group of distributors, who sold to Olympia Brewing in 1975 and again to Pabst in 1983.   The brewery itself was traded to Stroh's at this time, who ran it until closing it in 1997, ending a 137 year run.  The brewery sat idle and was left to decay and vandalism.  A 2005 fire damaged some of the building, which was actually the original stables and carpentry shop.  In 2024 a new owner came in and reimagined the site for a new brewery, building a taproom and restaurant out of the keg room and using the stables and shop as an outdoor biergarten.  It is now the home of St Paul Brewing.  Be careful as you drive there as you might miss it, tucked back in the bowels of the old building site.  

As an advocate and lover of the craft beer scene, I have become alarmed at the sign of the times in the industry.  It has been known for some time that people, in general, are drinking less beer.  In fact, I just read something today that says even the younger generation of Germans have gone away from beer.  Scheisse!  That same trend is at work here in the US too.  My own son and his friends are proof of this trend.  Craft beer is about 13.3% of the beer market, which is a dent in the big boring brewers, but not enough apparently.  Production has been down and a decrease in the number of breweries has shaped the business for the past two years.  2024 saw a 4% decrease in beer volume and 2025 is on pace for a 5%+ decrease over 2024.  Last year 529 breweries went out of business and the numbers for this year might be sobering when it is all said and done.  I suppose that economics says this was inevitable.  The microbrew craze had been going strong for 40 years and downturns happen.  Perhaps, in some places, microbreweries were overdone, not sure on that, but it seems possible.  If you look at my outdated pictures above, these are from www.vinepair.com and show the huge growth in breweries from 250 in 1990 to 7,190 in 2016.  Today it has grown to 9,269, but declining daily.  Other economic factors have played a role too.

It was a beautiful weekend to head up to the North Shore of Minnesota and Wisconsin.  The leaves were at peak color and the weather was cool, but not cold.  I had a board meeting up that way and after the meeting, like I usually do, while everyone else headed to dinner, I hit a brewery.  I had spied Warrior Brewing on my phone while looking for a new place to try before the meeting and it was directly on the way to dinner.  

Camden Town was a bit of a surprise.  When you get off the underground and come to the surface, you may think Camden Town is run down and a b it sketchy.  In reality, it is an older part of town, but has a vibrant artistic side and is known for its street markets, music and shops.  The Camden Market is a cool area of small, mostly independent shops and eateries that is a must-see and do when you go there.  It stretches across the street in two sections, where it follows along a canal and it is here you will find 3 Locks Brewing.  We were there very early as my son was looking for anime merch, which the area is full of and even though I had searched ahead of time, I really didn't look where the brewery was exactly.  We kind of stumbled upon it a few minutes before they opened.  Their taproom over looks the canal and has outside seating along it.  It really is a great setting for a brewery.  As you can see, I took a terribly blurry picture, so no, you aren't drunk.  Are you?  

I recently visited the UK for vacation and took my opportunity to try many beers, among other things.  The last time I was there the UK was in a bit of a sea change in the pub business.  There were about 58,000 pubs in the UK in 2000.  That number has declined to around 47,000 now.  Big breweries had stepped in and bought a huge chunk of the pubs in order to control beer sales.  I've seen some different numbers, but the six biggest owned about 75% of all the pubs.  In fact, Fuller, a well known brewery, sold it's beer making operation to the Asahi Group in 2019 so it could focus on it's pub operations.  Fuller made one of the best known British beers, London Pride, that it had brewed in London since 1958.  Asahi is a Japanese beer company, which you can easily find here in the states and I drank a lot when I was in Japan a few years ago.  There were marketing agreements in place, as part of the deal, but it shows you how the pubs is where the money is.  For awhile, there were laws put in place to limit the number of pubs the big brewers could own, but that has since been repealed.  For me, the drawback is that you can only find a small selection of beers available at any pub and the food choices were the same at all of them I visited.  There are about 3,800 pubs in London and I was in only about 8, but they were either owned by Greene King or Fuller.  The beers were good, but the choices were nil.

As I left Milwaukee after going to a con with my son, I decided to hit a brew pub.  The one I chose was closed for rebranding upon reaching the property.  Google Maps, which I despise, lied to us again.  It mentioned nothing about being closed and said it was moderately busy.  First they track your every move, then openly lie to you.  I hate Google, but that is for another time.  I chose a different brewery not too far away and we were starving, so it had to have food.  When you get to the building Brewfinity is in, you ,might just think they are out of business too as it looked like a shutdown warehouse out front, but a sign directs you to the left, so I drove around the building and found the brewery.  It is tucked away, but was a nice little space for a tap room.  There were just five other people in there on a very hot Saturday, so we grabbed a spot near the front.  The bartender came right over and gave us some menus.  Since I hadn't been there before, he asked me what kind of beer I like and directed me to their flagship beer, the Sailor's Delight, which is an American Amber.  I probably would've chose this beer anyway, so it was a good call.  Biscuity and malty, just like I like it.  The beer was a nice amber color and was really good.  It finished well, not too hoppy, and smelled  just right.  American Ambers are unique in that they use American hops and derive their sweetness from the malts they use.  They are fermented in a cleaner way than their British cousins and are distinct by their balance.  I get the feeling that the hey day of IPA's is over and that vacuum will be filled by amber ales.  They are far more drinkable, yet may struggle to earn their keep as a summer beer.  Perhaps less refreshing to some drinkers as a number of IPA's can be, but I tend to think they appeal to a far broader audience of beer enthusiasts.  Every brewery makes one, they just don't experiment as deeply and wrongly, in my opinion, as they did with a rash of IPA's.  

It was a sweltering weekend in Minnesota and a stop at a local brewery was definitely in the offing.  I wanted something different so I chose Waldmann's Brewery.  It was a good choice.  Nestled in a neighborhood of houses off the main road, you'll literally stumble upon an old stone house.  It was in the fall of 1857, before Minnesota was even a state, and before the Civil War, when Waldmann's was established.  It is in the oldest surviving commercial building in St Paul to be exact, so the history here is remarkable.  To be fair, there was a long 154 year break between when Waldmann's saloon came alive again in 2017 as Waldmann's Brewery, but that doesn't matter.  

It only took me three trips here to write a blog about it.  I was always out with co-workers and forgot or just didn't have time to take a pic or two.  This time it was just me and a vendor, so I remembered and got the job done.  When in Sioux City, I've always stayed at the hotel right across the street, so going to Marto was just a no-brainer.

Being a fan of the old Hartford Whalers, I had always wanted to go to Hartford.  The fact that there was a brewery on the old Colt firearms complex in Hartford was a win for everyone.  I would've loved to tour the Colt facility during its hayday.  Samuel Colt was born in Hartford in 1814 and began making guns in 1836.  He founded Colt firearms in 1855.  As it is for gun-makers it was feast or famine.  During wartime, Colt did great, but suffered in the aftermath.  Known for innovation, Colt was the first manufacturer to offer interchangeable parts for its guns and used powerful steam engines in its plants before others were doing it.  He also was the first to build a tenement for his workers with housing, daycare, churches and food.  He established a ten hour work day with a required one hour lunch break. 

On Memorial Day weekend I took my annual trip with my brothers.  This time is was the East Coast.  We hit six states during this trip and one of the better experiences was at East Regiment Beer Company in Salem.   It is nestled in the middle of downtown and was a welcome site for my hungry stomach.  

Phallic symbols are funny, but then again, I'm a juvenile.  Naming your brewery Big Wood is probably an homage to the mighty schlong, but you could try to get away saying it is about lumberjacks or something, though no guy would believe you.  I think they did call it Big Wood because it was funny and it took big wood to launch a brewery and do it their way.  If you have a rager for craft beer and want to sell a lot of merch, it goes hand in hand.  When you call your first beer, Morning Wood Coffee Stout, there is no doubt it was the culmination of a wet dream for Big Wood.

In Canada, eh.  On a recent trip to Toronto I didn't have to search far to find a brewery to hit.  Elsinore had a commanding view of the city from its perch on a hill.  The brewery was first opened in 1983 and runs a taproom out of it's huge facility, oddly enough near an old Royal Canadian mental asylum.  Crazy, right?  The brewery stands as a monolith of older times when beer was king.  The factory was large with two smoke stacks that didn't appear to be running while we were there.  It's almost spooky now as it runs at a much lower capacity than it once did, according to the bartender, a nice older guy with a funny accent, wearing all black.  I bet the place has many secrets to tell.

I love it when a brewery has a lot of history to it's setting.  This isn't possible for many, but it really adds to the experience for me and is what I think of when I think about brew pubs.  St Paul Brewing has a home run in this regard.  Hamm's Brewing started in St Paul in 1865 by a German immigrant named, Theodore Hamm.  Hamm actually acquired the small brewery through holding the deed to a foreclosed loan from the prior owner, Andrew Keller.  Hamm's has a long tradition in Minnesota and I remember seeing Hamm's Beer commercials on tv as a kid.  An animated bear with the famous saying, "from the land of sky blue waters." were quite memorable for a kid.  At one point, Hamm's was the 5th largest brewery in the country, having expanded to San Francisco, Baltimore and Houston by the 1950's.  Shortly after their 100th anniversary, the brewery went through a series of purchases, in 1965 to Heublein, then in 1973 to a group of distributors, who sold to Olympia Brewing in 1975 and again to Pabst in 1983.   The brewery itself was traded to Stroh's at this time, who ran it until closing it in 1997, ending a 137 year run.  The brewery sat idle and was left to decay and vandalism.  A 2005 fire damaged some of the building, which was actually the original stables and carpentry shop.  In 2024 a new owner came in and reimagined the site for a new brewery, building a taproom and restaurant out of the keg room and using the stables and shop as an outdoor biergarten.  It is now the home of St Paul Brewing.  Be careful as you drive there as you might miss it, tucked back in the bowels of the old building site.  

As an advocate and lover of the craft beer scene, I have become alarmed at the sign of the times in the industry.  It has been known for some time that people, in general, are drinking less beer.  In fact, I just read something today that says even the younger generation of Germans have gone away from beer.  Scheisse!  That same trend is at work here in the US too.  My own son and his friends are proof of this trend.  Craft beer is about 13.3% of the beer market, which is a dent in the big boring brewers, but not enough apparently.  Production has been down and a decrease in the number of breweries has shaped the business for the past two years.  2024 saw a 4% decrease in beer volume and 2025 is on pace for a 5%+ decrease over 2024.  Last year 529 breweries went out of business and the numbers for this year might be sobering when it is all said and done.  I suppose that economics says this was inevitable.  The microbrew craze had been going strong for 40 years and downturns happen.  Perhaps, in some places, microbreweries were overdone, not sure on that, but it seems possible.  If you look at my outdated pictures above, these are from www.vinepair.com and show the huge growth in breweries from 250 in 1990 to 7,190 in 2016.  Today it has grown to 9,269, but declining daily.  Other economic factors have played a role too.

It was a beautiful weekend to head up to the North Shore of Minnesota and Wisconsin.  The leaves were at peak color and the weather was cool, but not cold.  I had a board meeting up that way and after the meeting, like I usually do, while everyone else headed to dinner, I hit a brewery.  I had spied Warrior Brewing on my phone while looking for a new place to try before the meeting and it was directly on the way to dinner.  

Camden Town was a bit of a surprise.  When you get off the underground and come to the surface, you may think Camden Town is run down and a b it sketchy.  In reality, it is an older part of town, but has a vibrant artistic side and is known for its street markets, music and shops.  The Camden Market is a cool area of small, mostly independent shops and eateries that is a must-see and do when you go there.  It stretches across the street in two sections, where it follows along a canal and it is here you will find 3 Locks Brewing.  We were there very early as my son was looking for anime merch, which the area is full of and even though I had searched ahead of time, I really didn't look where the brewery was exactly.  We kind of stumbled upon it a few minutes before they opened.  Their taproom over looks the canal and has outside seating along it.  It really is a great setting for a brewery.  As you can see, I took a terribly blurry picture, so no, you aren't drunk.  Are you?  

I recently visited the UK for vacation and took my opportunity to try many beers, among other things.  The last time I was there the UK was in a bit of a sea change in the pub business.  There were about 58,000 pubs in the UK in 2000.  That number has declined to around 47,000 now.  Big breweries had stepped in and bought a huge chunk of the pubs in order to control beer sales.  I've seen some different numbers, but the six biggest owned about 75% of all the pubs.  In fact, Fuller, a well known brewery, sold it's beer making operation to the Asahi Group in 2019 so it could focus on it's pub operations.  Fuller made one of the best known British beers, London Pride, that it had brewed in London since 1958.  Asahi is a Japanese beer company, which you can easily find here in the states and I drank a lot when I was in Japan a few years ago.  There were marketing agreements in place, as part of the deal, but it shows you how the pubs is where the money is.  For awhile, there were laws put in place to limit the number of pubs the big brewers could own, but that has since been repealed.  For me, the drawback is that you can only find a small selection of beers available at any pub and the food choices were the same at all of them I visited.  There are about 3,800 pubs in London and I was in only about 8, but they were either owned by Greene King or Fuller.  The beers were good, but the choices were nil.

As I left Milwaukee after going to a con with my son, I decided to hit a brew pub.  The one I chose was closed for rebranding upon reaching the property.  Google Maps, which I despise, lied to us again.  It mentioned nothing about being closed and said it was moderately busy.  First they track your every move, then openly lie to you.  I hate Google, but that is for another time.  I chose a different brewery not too far away and we were starving, so it had to have food.  When you get to the building Brewfinity is in, you ,might just think they are out of business too as it looked like a shutdown warehouse out front, but a sign directs you to the left, so I drove around the building and found the brewery.  It is tucked away, but was a nice little space for a tap room.  There were just five other people in there on a very hot Saturday, so we grabbed a spot near the front.  The bartender came right over and gave us some menus.  Since I hadn't been there before, he asked me what kind of beer I like and directed me to their flagship beer, the Sailor's Delight, which is an American Amber.  I probably would've chose this beer anyway, so it was a good call.  Biscuity and malty, just like I like it.  The beer was a nice amber color and was really good.  It finished well, not too hoppy, and smelled  just right.  American Ambers are unique in that they use American hops and derive their sweetness from the malts they use.  They are fermented in a cleaner way than their British cousins and are distinct by their balance.  I get the feeling that the hey day of IPA's is over and that vacuum will be filled by amber ales.  They are far more drinkable, yet may struggle to earn their keep as a summer beer.  Perhaps less refreshing to some drinkers as a number of IPA's can be, but I tend to think they appeal to a far broader audience of beer enthusiasts.  Every brewery makes one, they just don't experiment as deeply and wrongly, in my opinion, as they did with a rash of IPA's.  

It was a sweltering weekend in Minnesota and a stop at a local brewery was definitely in the offing.  I wanted something different so I chose Waldmann's Brewery.  It was a good choice.  Nestled in a neighborhood of houses off the main road, you'll literally stumble upon an old stone house.  It was in the fall of 1857, before Minnesota was even a state, and before the Civil War, when Waldmann's was established.  It is in the oldest surviving commercial building in St Paul to be exact, so the history here is remarkable.  To be fair, there was a long 154 year break between when Waldmann's saloon came alive again in 2017 as Waldmann's Brewery, but that doesn't matter.  

It only took me three trips here to write a blog about it.  I was always out with co-workers and forgot or just didn't have time to take a pic or two.  This time it was just me and a vendor, so I remembered and got the job done.  When in Sioux City, I've always stayed at the hotel right across the street, so going to Marto was just a no-brainer.

Being a fan of the old Hartford Whalers, I had always wanted to go to Hartford.  The fact that there was a brewery on the old Colt firearms complex in Hartford was a win for everyone.  I would've loved to tour the Colt facility during its hayday.  Samuel Colt was born in Hartford in 1814 and began making guns in 1836.  He founded Colt firearms in 1855.  As it is for gun-makers it was feast or famine.  During wartime, Colt did great, but suffered in the aftermath.  Known for innovation, Colt was the first manufacturer to offer interchangeable parts for its guns and used powerful steam engines in its plants before others were doing it.  He also was the first to build a tenement for his workers with housing, daycare, churches and food.  He established a ten hour work day with a required one hour lunch break. 

On Memorial Day weekend I took my annual trip with my brothers.  This time is was the East Coast.  We hit six states during this trip and one of the better experiences was at East Regiment Beer Company in Salem.   It is nestled in the middle of downtown and was a welcome site for my hungry stomach.  

Phallic symbols are funny, but then again, I'm a juvenile.  Naming your brewery Big Wood is probably an homage to the mighty schlong, but you could try to get away saying it is about lumberjacks or something, though no guy would believe you.  I think they did call it Big Wood because it was funny and it took big wood to launch a brewery and do it their way.  If you have a rager for craft beer and want to sell a lot of merch, it goes hand in hand.  When you call your first beer, Morning Wood Coffee Stout, there is no doubt it was the culmination of a wet dream for Big Wood.

In Canada, eh.  On a recent trip to Toronto I didn't have to search far to find a brewery to hit.  Elsinore had a commanding view of the city from its perch on a hill.  The brewery was first opened in 1983 and runs a taproom out of it's huge facility, oddly enough near an old Royal Canadian mental asylum.  Crazy, right?  The brewery stands as a monolith of older times when beer was king.  The factory was large with two smoke stacks that didn't appear to be running while we were there.  It's almost spooky now as it runs at a much lower capacity than it once did, according to the bartender, a nice older guy with a funny accent, wearing all black.  I bet the place has many secrets to tell.

I love it when a brewery has a lot of history to it's setting.  This isn't possible for many, but it really adds to the experience for me and is what I think of when I think about brew pubs.  St Paul Brewing has a home run in this regard.  Hamm's Brewing started in St Paul in 1865 by a German immigrant named, Theodore Hamm.  Hamm actually acquired the small brewery through holding the deed to a foreclosed loan from the prior owner, Andrew Keller.  Hamm's has a long tradition in Minnesota and I remember seeing Hamm's Beer commercials on tv as a kid.  An animated bear with the famous saying, "from the land of sky blue waters." were quite memorable for a kid.  At one point, Hamm's was the 5th largest brewery in the country, having expanded to San Francisco, Baltimore and Houston by the 1950's.  Shortly after their 100th anniversary, the brewery went through a series of purchases, in 1965 to Heublein, then in 1973 to a group of distributors, who sold to Olympia Brewing in 1975 and again to Pabst in 1983.   The brewery itself was traded to Stroh's at this time, who ran it until closing it in 1997, ending a 137 year run.  The brewery sat idle and was left to decay and vandalism.  A 2005 fire damaged some of the building, which was actually the original stables and carpentry shop.  In 2024 a new owner came in and reimagined the site for a new brewery, building a taproom and restaurant out of the keg room and using the stables and shop as an outdoor biergarten.  It is now the home of St Paul Brewing.  Be careful as you drive there as you might miss it, tucked back in the bowels of the old building site.  

As an advocate and lover of the craft beer scene, I have become alarmed at the sign of the times in the industry.  It has been known for some time that people, in general, are drinking less beer.  In fact, I just read something today that says even the younger generation of Germans have gone away from beer.  Scheisse!  That same trend is at work here in the US too.  My own son and his friends are proof of this trend.  Craft beer is about 13.3% of the beer market, which is a dent in the big boring brewers, but not enough apparently.  Production has been down and a decrease in the number of breweries has shaped the business for the past two years.  2024 saw a 4% decrease in beer volume and 2025 is on pace for a 5%+ decrease over 2024.  Last year 529 breweries went out of business and the numbers for this year might be sobering when it is all said and done.  I suppose that economics says this was inevitable.  The microbrew craze had been going strong for 40 years and downturns happen.  Perhaps, in some places, microbreweries were overdone, not sure on that, but it seems possible.  If you look at my outdated pictures above, these are from www.vinepair.com and show the huge growth in breweries from 250 in 1990 to 7,190 in 2016.  Today it has grown to 9,269, but declining daily.  Other economic factors have played a role too.

It was a beautiful weekend to head up to the North Shore of Minnesota and Wisconsin.  The leaves were at peak color and the weather was cool, but not cold.  I had a board meeting up that way and after the meeting, like I usually do, while everyone else headed to dinner, I hit a brewery.  I had spied Warrior Brewing on my phone while looking for a new place to try before the meeting and it was directly on the way to dinner.  

Camden Town was a bit of a surprise.  When you get off the underground and come to the surface, you may think Camden Town is run down and a b it sketchy.  In reality, it is an older part of town, but has a vibrant artistic side and is known for its street markets, music and shops.  The Camden Market is a cool area of small, mostly independent shops and eateries that is a must-see and do when you go there.  It stretches across the street in two sections, where it follows along a canal and it is here you will find 3 Locks Brewing.  We were there very early as my son was looking for anime merch, which the area is full of and even though I had searched ahead of time, I really didn't look where the brewery was exactly.  We kind of stumbled upon it a few minutes before they opened.  Their taproom over looks the canal and has outside seating along it.  It really is a great setting for a brewery.  As you can see, I took a terribly blurry picture, so no, you aren't drunk.  Are you?  

I recently visited the UK for vacation and took my opportunity to try many beers, among other things.  The last time I was there the UK was in a bit of a sea change in the pub business.  There were about 58,000 pubs in the UK in 2000.  That number has declined to around 47,000 now.  Big breweries had stepped in and bought a huge chunk of the pubs in order to control beer sales.  I've seen some different numbers, but the six biggest owned about 75% of all the pubs.  In fact, Fuller, a well known brewery, sold it's beer making operation to the Asahi Group in 2019 so it could focus on it's pub operations.  Fuller made one of the best known British beers, London Pride, that it had brewed in London since 1958.  Asahi is a Japanese beer company, which you can easily find here in the states and I drank a lot when I was in Japan a few years ago.  There were marketing agreements in place, as part of the deal, but it shows you how the pubs is where the money is.  For awhile, there were laws put in place to limit the number of pubs the big brewers could own, but that has since been repealed.  For me, the drawback is that you can only find a small selection of beers available at any pub and the food choices were the same at all of them I visited.  There are about 3,800 pubs in London and I was in only about 8, but they were either owned by Greene King or Fuller.  The beers were good, but the choices were nil.

As I left Milwaukee after going to a con with my son, I decided to hit a brew pub.  The one I chose was closed for rebranding upon reaching the property.  Google Maps, which I despise, lied to us again.  It mentioned nothing about being closed and said it was moderately busy.  First they track your every move, then openly lie to you.  I hate Google, but that is for another time.  I chose a different brewery not too far away and we were starving, so it had to have food.  When you get to the building Brewfinity is in, you ,might just think they are out of business too as it looked like a shutdown warehouse out front, but a sign directs you to the left, so I drove around the building and found the brewery.  It is tucked away, but was a nice little space for a tap room.  There were just five other people in there on a very hot Saturday, so we grabbed a spot near the front.  The bartender came right over and gave us some menus.  Since I hadn't been there before, he asked me what kind of beer I like and directed me to their flagship beer, the Sailor's Delight, which is an American Amber.  I probably would've chose this beer anyway, so it was a good call.  Biscuity and malty, just like I like it.  The beer was a nice amber color and was really good.  It finished well, not too hoppy, and smelled  just right.  American Ambers are unique in that they use American hops and derive their sweetness from the malts they use.  They are fermented in a cleaner way than their British cousins and are distinct by their balance.  I get the feeling that the hey day of IPA's is over and that vacuum will be filled by amber ales.  They are far more drinkable, yet may struggle to earn their keep as a summer beer.  Perhaps less refreshing to some drinkers as a number of IPA's can be, but I tend to think they appeal to a far broader audience of beer enthusiasts.  Every brewery makes one, they just don't experiment as deeply and wrongly, in my opinion, as they did with a rash of IPA's.  

It was a sweltering weekend in Minnesota and a stop at a local brewery was definitely in the offing.  I wanted something different so I chose Waldmann's Brewery.  It was a good choice.  Nestled in a neighborhood of houses off the main road, you'll literally stumble upon an old stone house.  It was in the fall of 1857, before Minnesota was even a state, and before the Civil War, when Waldmann's was established.  It is in the oldest surviving commercial building in St Paul to be exact, so the history here is remarkable.  To be fair, there was a long 154 year break between when Waldmann's saloon came alive again in 2017 as Waldmann's Brewery, but that doesn't matter.  

It only took me three trips here to write a blog about it.  I was always out with co-workers and forgot or just didn't have time to take a pic or two.  This time it was just me and a vendor, so I remembered and got the job done.  When in Sioux City, I've always stayed at the hotel right across the street, so going to Marto was just a no-brainer.

Being a fan of the old Hartford Whalers, I had always wanted to go to Hartford.  The fact that there was a brewery on the old Colt firearms complex in Hartford was a win for everyone.  I would've loved to tour the Colt facility during its hayday.  Samuel Colt was born in Hartford in 1814 and began making guns in 1836.  He founded Colt firearms in 1855.  As it is for gun-makers it was feast or famine.  During wartime, Colt did great, but suffered in the aftermath.  Known for innovation, Colt was the first manufacturer to offer interchangeable parts for its guns and used powerful steam engines in its plants before others were doing it.  He also was the first to build a tenement for his workers with housing, daycare, churches and food.  He established a ten hour work day with a required one hour lunch break. 

On Memorial Day weekend I took my annual trip with my brothers.  This time is was the East Coast.  We hit six states during this trip and one of the better experiences was at East Regiment Beer Company in Salem.   It is nestled in the middle of downtown and was a welcome site for my hungry stomach.  

Phallic symbols are funny, but then again, I'm a juvenile.  Naming your brewery Big Wood is probably an homage to the mighty schlong, but you could try to get away saying it is about lumberjacks or something, though no guy would believe you.  I think they did call it Big Wood because it was funny and it took big wood to launch a brewery and do it their way.  If you have a rager for craft beer and want to sell a lot of merch, it goes hand in hand.  When you call your first beer, Morning Wood Coffee Stout, there is no doubt it was the culmination of a wet dream for Big Wood.

In Canada, eh.  On a recent trip to Toronto I didn't have to search far to find a brewery to hit.  Elsinore had a commanding view of the city from its perch on a hill.  The brewery was first opened in 1983 and runs a taproom out of it's huge facility, oddly enough near an old Royal Canadian mental asylum.  Crazy, right?  The brewery stands as a monolith of older times when beer was king.  The factory was large with two smoke stacks that didn't appear to be running while we were there.  It's almost spooky now as it runs at a much lower capacity than it once did, according to the bartender, a nice older guy with a funny accent, wearing all black.  I bet the place has many secrets to tell.

I love it when a brewery has a lot of history to it's setting.  This isn't possible for many, but it really adds to the experience for me and is what I think of when I think about brew pubs.  St Paul Brewing has a home run in this regard.  Hamm's Brewing started in St Paul in 1865 by a German immigrant named, Theodore Hamm.  Hamm actually acquired the small brewery through holding the deed to a foreclosed loan from the prior owner, Andrew Keller.  Hamm's has a long tradition in Minnesota and I remember seeing Hamm's Beer commercials on tv as a kid.  An animated bear with the famous saying, "from the land of sky blue waters." were quite memorable for a kid.  At one point, Hamm's was the 5th largest brewery in the country, having expanded to San Francisco, Baltimore and Houston by the 1950's.  Shortly after their 100th anniversary, the brewery went through a series of purchases, in 1965 to Heublein, then in 1973 to a group of distributors, who sold to Olympia Brewing in 1975 and again to Pabst in 1983.   The brewery itself was traded to Stroh's at this time, who ran it until closing it in 1997, ending a 137 year run.  The brewery sat idle and was left to decay and vandalism.  A 2005 fire damaged some of the building, which was actually the original stables and carpentry shop.  In 2024 a new owner came in and reimagined the site for a new brewery, building a taproom and restaurant out of the keg room and using the stables and shop as an outdoor biergarten.  It is now the home of St Paul Brewing.  Be careful as you drive there as you might miss it, tucked back in the bowels of the old building site.  

As an advocate and lover of the craft beer scene, I have become alarmed at the sign of the times in the industry.  It has been known for some time that people, in general, are drinking less beer.  In fact, I just read something today that says even the younger generation of Germans have gone away from beer.  Scheisse!  That same trend is at work here in the US too.  My own son and his friends are proof of this trend.  Craft beer is about 13.3% of the beer market, which is a dent in the big boring brewers, but not enough apparently.  Production has been down and a decrease in the number of breweries has shaped the business for the past two years.  2024 saw a 4% decrease in beer volume and 2025 is on pace for a 5%+ decrease over 2024.  Last year 529 breweries went out of business and the numbers for this year might be sobering when it is all said and done.  I suppose that economics says this was inevitable.  The microbrew craze had been going strong for 40 years and downturns happen.  Perhaps, in some places, microbreweries were overdone, not sure on that, but it seems possible.  If you look at my outdated pictures above, these are from www.vinepair.com and show the huge growth in breweries from 250 in 1990 to 7,190 in 2016.  Today it has grown to 9,269, but declining daily.  Other economic factors have played a role too.

It was a beautiful weekend to head up to the North Shore of Minnesota and Wisconsin.  The leaves were at peak color and the weather was cool, but not cold.  I had a board meeting up that way and after the meeting, like I usually do, while everyone else headed to dinner, I hit a brewery.  I had spied Warrior Brewing on my phone while looking for a new place to try before the meeting and it was directly on the way to dinner.  

Camden Town was a bit of a surprise.  When you get off the underground and come to the surface, you may think Camden Town is run down and a b it sketchy.  In reality, it is an older part of town, but has a vibrant artistic side and is known for its street markets, music and shops.  The Camden Market is a cool area of small, mostly independent shops and eateries that is a must-see and do when you go there.  It stretches across the street in two sections, where it follows along a canal and it is here you will find 3 Locks Brewing.  We were there very early as my son was looking for anime merch, which the area is full of and even though I had searched ahead of time, I really didn't look where the brewery was exactly.  We kind of stumbled upon it a few minutes before they opened.  Their taproom over looks the canal and has outside seating along it.  It really is a great setting for a brewery.  As you can see, I took a terribly blurry picture, so no, you aren't drunk.  Are you?  

I recently visited the UK for vacation and took my opportunity to try many beers, among other things.  The last time I was there the UK was in a bit of a sea change in the pub business.  There were about 58,000 pubs in the UK in 2000.  That number has declined to around 47,000 now.  Big breweries had stepped in and bought a huge chunk of the pubs in order to control beer sales.  I've seen some different numbers, but the six biggest owned about 75% of all the pubs.  In fact, Fuller, a well known brewery, sold it's beer making operation to the Asahi Group in 2019 so it could focus on it's pub operations.  Fuller made one of the best known British beers, London Pride, that it had brewed in London since 1958.  Asahi is a Japanese beer company, which you can easily find here in the states and I drank a lot when I was in Japan a few years ago.  There were marketing agreements in place, as part of the deal, but it shows you how the pubs is where the money is.  For awhile, there were laws put in place to limit the number of pubs the big brewers could own, but that has since been repealed.  For me, the drawback is that you can only find a small selection of beers available at any pub and the food choices were the same at all of them I visited.  There are about 3,800 pubs in London and I was in only about 8, but they were either owned by Greene King or Fuller.  The beers were good, but the choices were nil.

As I left Milwaukee after going to a con with my son, I decided to hit a brew pub.  The one I chose was closed for rebranding upon reaching the property.  Google Maps, which I despise, lied to us again.  It mentioned nothing about being closed and said it was moderately busy.  First they track your every move, then openly lie to you.  I hate Google, but that is for another time.  I chose a different brewery not too far away and we were starving, so it had to have food.  When you get to the building Brewfinity is in, you ,might just think they are out of business too as it looked like a shutdown warehouse out front, but a sign directs you to the left, so I drove around the building and found the brewery.  It is tucked away, but was a nice little space for a tap room.  There were just five other people in there on a very hot Saturday, so we grabbed a spot near the front.  The bartender came right over and gave us some menus.  Since I hadn't been there before, he asked me what kind of beer I like and directed me to their flagship beer, the Sailor's Delight, which is an American Amber.  I probably would've chose this beer anyway, so it was a good call.  Biscuity and malty, just like I like it.  The beer was a nice amber color and was really good.  It finished well, not too hoppy, and smelled  just right.  American Ambers are unique in that they use American hops and derive their sweetness from the malts they use.  They are fermented in a cleaner way than their British cousins and are distinct by their balance.  I get the feeling that the hey day of IPA's is over and that vacuum will be filled by amber ales.  They are far more drinkable, yet may struggle to earn their keep as a summer beer.  Perhaps less refreshing to some drinkers as a number of IPA's can be, but I tend to think they appeal to a far broader audience of beer enthusiasts.  Every brewery makes one, they just don't experiment as deeply and wrongly, in my opinion, as they did with a rash of IPA's.  

It was a sweltering weekend in Minnesota and a stop at a local brewery was definitely in the offing.  I wanted something different so I chose Waldmann's Brewery.  It was a good choice.  Nestled in a neighborhood of houses off the main road, you'll literally stumble upon an old stone house.  It was in the fall of 1857, before Minnesota was even a state, and before the Civil War, when Waldmann's was established.  It is in the oldest surviving commercial building in St Paul to be exact, so the history here is remarkable.  To be fair, there was a long 154 year break between when Waldmann's saloon came alive again in 2017 as Waldmann's Brewery, but that doesn't matter.  

It only took me three trips here to write a blog about it.  I was always out with co-workers and forgot or just didn't have time to take a pic or two.  This time it was just me and a vendor, so I remembered and got the job done.  When in Sioux City, I've always stayed at the hotel right across the street, so going to Marto was just a no-brainer.

Being a fan of the old Hartford Whalers, I had always wanted to go to Hartford.  The fact that there was a brewery on the old Colt firearms complex in Hartford was a win for everyone.  I would've loved to tour the Colt facility during its hayday.  Samuel Colt was born in Hartford in 1814 and began making guns in 1836.  He founded Colt firearms in 1855.  As it is for gun-makers it was feast or famine.  During wartime, Colt did great, but suffered in the aftermath.  Known for innovation, Colt was the first manufacturer to offer interchangeable parts for its guns and used powerful steam engines in its plants before others were doing it.  He also was the first to build a tenement for his workers with housing, daycare, churches and food.  He established a ten hour work day with a required one hour lunch break. 

On Memorial Day weekend I took my annual trip with my brothers.  This time is was the East Coast.  We hit six states during this trip and one of the better experiences was at East Regiment Beer Company in Salem.   It is nestled in the middle of downtown and was a welcome site for my hungry stomach.  

Phallic symbols are funny, but then again, I'm a juvenile.  Naming your brewery Big Wood is probably an homage to the mighty schlong, but you could try to get away saying it is about lumberjacks or something, though no guy would believe you.  I think they did call it Big Wood because it was funny and it took big wood to launch a brewery and do it their way.  If you have a rager for craft beer and want to sell a lot of merch, it goes hand in hand.  When you call your first beer, Morning Wood Coffee Stout, there is no doubt it was the culmination of a wet dream for Big Wood.

In Canada, eh.  On a recent trip to Toronto I didn't have to search far to find a brewery to hit.  Elsinore had a commanding view of the city from its perch on a hill.  The brewery was first opened in 1983 and runs a taproom out of it's huge facility, oddly enough near an old Royal Canadian mental asylum.  Crazy, right?  The brewery stands as a monolith of older times when beer was king.  The factory was large with two smoke stacks that didn't appear to be running while we were there.  It's almost spooky now as it runs at a much lower capacity than it once did, according to the bartender, a nice older guy with a funny accent, wearing all black.  I bet the place has many secrets to tell.

I love it when a brewery has a lot of history to it's setting.  This isn't possible for many, but it really adds to the experience for me and is what I think of when I think about brew pubs.  St Paul Brewing has a home run in this regard.  Hamm's Brewing started in St Paul in 1865 by a German immigrant named, Theodore Hamm.  Hamm actually acquired the small brewery through holding the deed to a foreclosed loan from the prior owner, Andrew Keller.  Hamm's has a long tradition in Minnesota and I remember seeing Hamm's Beer commercials on tv as a kid.  An animated bear with the famous saying, "from the land of sky blue waters." were quite memorable for a kid.  At one point, Hamm's was the 5th largest brewery in the country, having expanded to San Francisco, Baltimore and Houston by the 1950's.  Shortly after their 100th anniversary, the brewery went through a series of purchases, in 1965 to Heublein, then in 1973 to a group of distributors, who sold to Olympia Brewing in 1975 and again to Pabst in 1983.   The brewery itself was traded to Stroh's at this time, who ran it until closing it in 1997, ending a 137 year run.  The brewery sat idle and was left to decay and vandalism.  A 2005 fire damaged some of the building, which was actually the original stables and carpentry shop.  In 2024 a new owner came in and reimagined the site for a new brewery, building a taproom and restaurant out of the keg room and using the stables and shop as an outdoor biergarten.  It is now the home of St Paul Brewing.  Be careful as you drive there as you might miss it, tucked back in the bowels of the old building site.  

As an advocate and lover of the craft beer scene, I have become alarmed at the sign of the times in the industry.  It has been known for some time that people, in general, are drinking less beer.  In fact, I just read something today that says even the younger generation of Germans have gone away from beer.  Scheisse!  That same trend is at work here in the US too.  My own son and his friends are proof of this trend.  Craft beer is about 13.3% of the beer market, which is a dent in the big boring brewers, but not enough apparently.  Production has been down and a decrease in the number of breweries has shaped the business for the past two years.  2024 saw a 4% decrease in beer volume and 2025 is on pace for a 5%+ decrease over 2024.  Last year 529 breweries went out of business and the numbers for this year might be sobering when it is all said and done.  I suppose that economics says this was inevitable.  The microbrew craze had been going strong for 40 years and downturns happen.  Perhaps, in some places, microbreweries were overdone, not sure on that, but it seems possible.  If you look at my outdated pictures above, these are from www.vinepair.com and show the huge growth in breweries from 250 in 1990 to 7,190 in 2016.  Today it has grown to 9,269, but declining daily.  Other economic factors have played a role too.

It was a beautiful weekend to head up to the North Shore of Minnesota and Wisconsin.  The leaves were at peak color and the weather was cool, but not cold.  I had a board meeting up that way and after the meeting, like I usually do, while everyone else headed to dinner, I hit a brewery.  I had spied Warrior Brewing on my phone while looking for a new place to try before the meeting and it was directly on the way to dinner.  

Camden Town was a bit of a surprise.  When you get off the underground and come to the surface, you may think Camden Town is run down and a b it sketchy.  In reality, it is an older part of town, but has a vibrant artistic side and is known for its street markets, music and shops.  The Camden Market is a cool area of small, mostly independent shops and eateries that is a must-see and do when you go there.  It stretches across the street in two sections, where it follows along a canal and it is here you will find 3 Locks Brewing.  We were there very early as my son was looking for anime merch, which the area is full of and even though I had searched ahead of time, I really didn't look where the brewery was exactly.  We kind of stumbled upon it a few minutes before they opened.  Their taproom over looks the canal and has outside seating along it.  It really is a great setting for a brewery.  As you can see, I took a terribly blurry picture, so no, you aren't drunk.  Are you?  

I recently visited the UK for vacation and took my opportunity to try many beers, among other things.  The last time I was there the UK was in a bit of a sea change in the pub business.  There were about 58,000 pubs in the UK in 2000.  That number has declined to around 47,000 now.  Big breweries had stepped in and bought a huge chunk of the pubs in order to control beer sales.  I've seen some different numbers, but the six biggest owned about 75% of all the pubs.  In fact, Fuller, a well known brewery, sold it's beer making operation to the Asahi Group in 2019 so it could focus on it's pub operations.  Fuller made one of the best known British beers, London Pride, that it had brewed in London since 1958.  Asahi is a Japanese beer company, which you can easily find here in the states and I drank a lot when I was in Japan a few years ago.  There were marketing agreements in place, as part of the deal, but it shows you how the pubs is where the money is.  For awhile, there were laws put in place to limit the number of pubs the big brewers could own, but that has since been repealed.  For me, the drawback is that you can only find a small selection of beers available at any pub and the food choices were the same at all of them I visited.  There are about 3,800 pubs in London and I was in only about 8, but they were either owned by Greene King or Fuller.  The beers were good, but the choices were nil.

As I left Milwaukee after going to a con with my son, I decided to hit a brew pub.  The one I chose was closed for rebranding upon reaching the property.  Google Maps, which I despise, lied to us again.  It mentioned nothing about being closed and said it was moderately busy.  First they track your every move, then openly lie to you.  I hate Google, but that is for another time.  I chose a different brewery not too far away and we were starving, so it had to have food.  When you get to the building Brewfinity is in, you ,might just think they are out of business too as it looked like a shutdown warehouse out front, but a sign directs you to the left, so I drove around the building and found the brewery.  It is tucked away, but was a nice little space for a tap room.  There were just five other people in there on a very hot Saturday, so we grabbed a spot near the front.  The bartender came right over and gave us some menus.  Since I hadn't been there before, he asked me what kind of beer I like and directed me to their flagship beer, the Sailor's Delight, which is an American Amber.  I probably would've chose this beer anyway, so it was a good call.  Biscuity and malty, just like I like it.  The beer was a nice amber color and was really good.  It finished well, not too hoppy, and smelled  just right.  American Ambers are unique in that they use American hops and derive their sweetness from the malts they use.  They are fermented in a cleaner way than their British cousins and are distinct by their balance.  I get the feeling that the hey day of IPA's is over and that vacuum will be filled by amber ales.  They are far more drinkable, yet may struggle to earn their keep as a summer beer.  Perhaps less refreshing to some drinkers as a number of IPA's can be, but I tend to think they appeal to a far broader audience of beer enthusiasts.  Every brewery makes one, they just don't experiment as deeply and wrongly, in my opinion, as they did with a rash of IPA's.  

It was a sweltering weekend in Minnesota and a stop at a local brewery was definitely in the offing.  I wanted something different so I chose Waldmann's Brewery.  It was a good choice.  Nestled in a neighborhood of houses off the main road, you'll literally stumble upon an old stone house.  It was in the fall of 1857, before Minnesota was even a state, and before the Civil War, when Waldmann's was established.  It is in the oldest surviving commercial building in St Paul to be exact, so the history here is remarkable.  To be fair, there was a long 154 year break between when Waldmann's saloon came alive again in 2017 as Waldmann's Brewery, but that doesn't matter.  

It only took me three trips here to write a blog about it.  I was always out with co-workers and forgot or just didn't have time to take a pic or two.  This time it was just me and a vendor, so I remembered and got the job done.  When in Sioux City, I've always stayed at the hotel right across the street, so going to Marto was just a no-brainer.

Being a fan of the old Hartford Whalers, I had always wanted to go to Hartford.  The fact that there was a brewery on the old Colt firearms complex in Hartford was a win for everyone.  I would've loved to tour the Colt facility during its hayday.  Samuel Colt was born in Hartford in 1814 and began making guns in 1836.  He founded Colt firearms in 1855.  As it is for gun-makers it was feast or famine.  During wartime, Colt did great, but suffered in the aftermath.  Known for innovation, Colt was the first manufacturer to offer interchangeable parts for its guns and used powerful steam engines in its plants before others were doing it.  He also was the first to build a tenement for his workers with housing, daycare, churches and food.  He established a ten hour work day with a required one hour lunch break. 

On Memorial Day weekend I took my annual trip with my brothers.  This time is was the East Coast.  We hit six states during this trip and one of the better experiences was at East Regiment Beer Company in Salem.   It is nestled in the middle of downtown and was a welcome site for my hungry stomach.  

Phallic symbols are funny, but then again, I'm a juvenile.  Naming your brewery Big Wood is probably an homage to the mighty schlong, but you could try to get away saying it is about lumberjacks or something, though no guy would believe you.  I think they did call it Big Wood because it was funny and it took big wood to launch a brewery and do it their way.  If you have a rager for craft beer and want to sell a lot of merch, it goes hand in hand.  When you call your first beer, Morning Wood Coffee Stout, there is no doubt it was the culmination of a wet dream for Big Wood.

In Canada, eh.  On a recent trip to Toronto I didn't have to search far to find a brewery to hit.  Elsinore had a commanding view of the city from its perch on a hill.  The brewery was first opened in 1983 and runs a taproom out of it's huge facility, oddly enough near an old Royal Canadian mental asylum.  Crazy, right?  The brewery stands as a monolith of older times when beer was king.  The factory was large with two smoke stacks that didn't appear to be running while we were there.  It's almost spooky now as it runs at a much lower capacity than it once did, according to the bartender, a nice older guy with a funny accent, wearing all black.  I bet the place has many secrets to tell.

I love it when a brewery has a lot of history to it's setting.  This isn't possible for many, but it really adds to the experience for me and is what I think of when I think about brew pubs.  St Paul Brewing has a home run in this regard.  Hamm's Brewing started in St Paul in 1865 by a German immigrant named, Theodore Hamm.  Hamm actually acquired the small brewery through holding the deed to a foreclosed loan from the prior owner, Andrew Keller.  Hamm's has a long tradition in Minnesota and I remember seeing Hamm's Beer commercials on tv as a kid.  An animated bear with the famous saying, "from the land of sky blue waters." were quite memorable for a kid.  At one point, Hamm's was the 5th largest brewery in the country, having expanded to San Francisco, Baltimore and Houston by the 1950's.  Shortly after their 100th anniversary, the brewery went through a series of purchases, in 1965 to Heublein, then in 1973 to a group of distributors, who sold to Olympia Brewing in 1975 and again to Pabst in 1983.   The brewery itself was traded to Stroh's at this time, who ran it until closing it in 1997, ending a 137 year run.  The brewery sat idle and was left to decay and vandalism.  A 2005 fire damaged some of the building, which was actually the original stables and carpentry shop.  In 2024 a new owner came in and reimagined the site for a new brewery, building a taproom and restaurant out of the keg room and using the stables and shop as an outdoor biergarten.  It is now the home of St Paul Brewing.  Be careful as you drive there as you might miss it, tucked back in the bowels of the old building site.  

As an advocate and lover of the craft beer scene, I have become alarmed at the sign of the times in the industry.  It has been known for some time that people, in general, are drinking less beer.  In fact, I just read something today that says even the younger generation of Germans have gone away from beer.  Scheisse!  That same trend is at work here in the US too.  My own son and his friends are proof of this trend.  Craft beer is about 13.3% of the beer market, which is a dent in the big boring brewers, but not enough apparently.  Production has been down and a decrease in the number of breweries has shaped the business for the past two years.  2024 saw a 4% decrease in beer volume and 2025 is on pace for a 5%+ decrease over 2024.  Last year 529 breweries went out of business and the numbers for this year might be sobering when it is all said and done.  I suppose that economics says this was inevitable.  The microbrew craze had been going strong for 40 years and downturns happen.  Perhaps, in some places, microbreweries were overdone, not sure on that, but it seems possible.  If you look at my outdated pictures above, these are from www.vinepair.com and show the huge growth in breweries from 250 in 1990 to 7,190 in 2016.  Today it has grown to 9,269, but declining daily.  Other economic factors have played a role too.

It was a beautiful weekend to head up to the North Shore of Minnesota and Wisconsin.  The leaves were at peak color and the weather was cool, but not cold.  I had a board meeting up that way and after the meeting, like I usually do, while everyone else headed to dinner, I hit a brewery.  I had spied Warrior Brewing on my phone while looking for a new place to try before the meeting and it was directly on the way to dinner.  

Camden Town was a bit of a surprise.  When you get off the underground and come to the surface, you may think Camden Town is run down and a b it sketchy.  In reality, it is an older part of town, but has a vibrant artistic side and is known for its street markets, music and shops.  The Camden Market is a cool area of small, mostly independent shops and eateries that is a must-see and do when you go there.  It stretches across the street in two sections, where it follows along a canal and it is here you will find 3 Locks Brewing.  We were there very early as my son was looking for anime merch, which the area is full of and even though I had searched ahead of time, I really didn't look where the brewery was exactly.  We kind of stumbled upon it a few minutes before they opened.  Their taproom over looks the canal and has outside seating along it.  It really is a great setting for a brewery.  As you can see, I took a terribly blurry picture, so no, you aren't drunk.  Are you?  

I recently visited the UK for vacation and took my opportunity to try many beers, among other things.  The last time I was there the UK was in a bit of a sea change in the pub business.  There were about 58,000 pubs in the UK in 2000.  That number has declined to around 47,000 now.  Big breweries had stepped in and bought a huge chunk of the pubs in order to control beer sales.  I've seen some different numbers, but the six biggest owned about 75% of all the pubs.  In fact, Fuller, a well known brewery, sold it's beer making operation to the Asahi Group in 2019 so it could focus on it's pub operations.  Fuller made one of the best known British beers, London Pride, that it had brewed in London since 1958.  Asahi is a Japanese beer company, which you can easily find here in the states and I drank a lot when I was in Japan a few years ago.  There were marketing agreements in place, as part of the deal, but it shows you how the pubs is where the money is.  For awhile, there were laws put in place to limit the number of pubs the big brewers could own, but that has since been repealed.  For me, the drawback is that you can only find a small selection of beers available at any pub and the food choices were the same at all of them I visited.  There are about 3,800 pubs in London and I was in only about 8, but they were either owned by Greene King or Fuller.  The beers were good, but the choices were nil.

As I left Milwaukee after going to a con with my son, I decided to hit a brew pub.  The one I chose was closed for rebranding upon reaching the property.  Google Maps, which I despise, lied to us again.  It mentioned nothing about being closed and said it was moderately busy.  First they track your every move, then openly lie to you.  I hate Google, but that is for another time.  I chose a different brewery not too far away and we were starving, so it had to have food.  When you get to the building Brewfinity is in, you ,might just think they are out of business too as it looked like a shutdown warehouse out front, but a sign directs you to the left, so I drove around the building and found the brewery.  It is tucked away, but was a nice little space for a tap room.  There were just five other people in there on a very hot Saturday, so we grabbed a spot near the front.  The bartender came right over and gave us some menus.  Since I hadn't been there before, he asked me what kind of beer I like and directed me to their flagship beer, the Sailor's Delight, which is an American Amber.  I probably would've chose this beer anyway, so it was a good call.  Biscuity and malty, just like I like it.  The beer was a nice amber color and was really good.  It finished well, not too hoppy, and smelled  just right.  American Ambers are unique in that they use American hops and derive their sweetness from the malts they use.  They are fermented in a cleaner way than their British cousins and are distinct by their balance.  I get the feeling that the hey day of IPA's is over and that vacuum will be filled by amber ales.  They are far more drinkable, yet may struggle to earn their keep as a summer beer.  Perhaps less refreshing to some drinkers as a number of IPA's can be, but I tend to think they appeal to a far broader audience of beer enthusiasts.  Every brewery makes one, they just don't experiment as deeply and wrongly, in my opinion, as they did with a rash of IPA's.  

It was a sweltering weekend in Minnesota and a stop at a local brewery was definitely in the offing.  I wanted something different so I chose Waldmann's Brewery.  It was a good choice.  Nestled in a neighborhood of houses off the main road, you'll literally stumble upon an old stone house.  It was in the fall of 1857, before Minnesota was even a state, and before the Civil War, when Waldmann's was established.  It is in the oldest surviving commercial building in St Paul to be exact, so the history here is remarkable.  To be fair, there was a long 154 year break between when Waldmann's saloon came alive again in 2017 as Waldmann's Brewery, but that doesn't matter.  

It only took me three trips here to write a blog about it.  I was always out with co-workers and forgot or just didn't have time to take a pic or two.  This time it was just me and a vendor, so I remembered and got the job done.  When in Sioux City, I've always stayed at the hotel right across the street, so going to Marto was just a no-brainer.

Being a fan of the old Hartford Whalers, I had always wanted to go to Hartford.  The fact that there was a brewery on the old Colt firearms complex in Hartford was a win for everyone.  I would've loved to tour the Colt facility during its hayday.  Samuel Colt was born in Hartford in 1814 and began making guns in 1836.  He founded Colt firearms in 1855.  As it is for gun-makers it was feast or famine.  During wartime, Colt did great, but suffered in the aftermath.  Known for innovation, Colt was the first manufacturer to offer interchangeable parts for its guns and used powerful steam engines in its plants before others were doing it.  He also was the first to build a tenement for his workers with housing, daycare, churches and food.  He established a ten hour work day with a required one hour lunch break. 

On Memorial Day weekend I took my annual trip with my brothers.  This time is was the East Coast.  We hit six states during this trip and one of the better experiences was at East Regiment Beer Company in Salem.   It is nestled in the middle of downtown and was a welcome site for my hungry stomach.  

Phallic symbols are funny, but then again, I'm a juvenile.  Naming your brewery Big Wood is probably an homage to the mighty schlong, but you could try to get away saying it is about lumberjacks or something, though no guy would believe you.  I think they did call it Big Wood because it was funny and it took big wood to launch a brewery and do it their way.  If you have a rager for craft beer and want to sell a lot of merch, it goes hand in hand.  When you call your first beer, Morning Wood Coffee Stout, there is no doubt it was the culmination of a wet dream for Big Wood.

In Canada, eh.  On a recent trip to Toronto I didn't have to search far to find a brewery to hit.  Elsinore had a commanding view of the city from its perch on a hill.  The brewery was first opened in 1983 and runs a taproom out of it's huge facility, oddly enough near an old Royal Canadian mental asylum.  Crazy, right?  The brewery stands as a monolith of older times when beer was king.  The factory was large with two smoke stacks that didn't appear to be running while we were there.  It's almost spooky now as it runs at a much lower capacity than it once did, according to the bartender, a nice older guy with a funny accent, wearing all black.  I bet the place has many secrets to tell.

I love it when a brewery has a lot of history to it's setting.  This isn't possible for many, but it really adds to the experience for me and is what I think of when I think about brew pubs.  St Paul Brewing has a home run in this regard.  Hamm's Brewing started in St Paul in 1865 by a German immigrant named, Theodore Hamm.  Hamm actually acquired the small brewery through holding the deed to a foreclosed loan from the prior owner, Andrew Keller.  Hamm's has a long tradition in Minnesota and I remember seeing Hamm's Beer commercials on tv as a kid.  An animated bear with the famous saying, "from the land of sky blue waters." were quite memorable for a kid.  At one point, Hamm's was the 5th largest brewery in the country, having expanded to San Francisco, Baltimore and Houston by the 1950's.  Shortly after their 100th anniversary, the brewery went through a series of purchases, in 1965 to Heublein, then in 1973 to a group of distributors, who sold to Olympia Brewing in 1975 and again to Pabst in 1983.   The brewery itself was traded to Stroh's at this time, who ran it until closing it in 1997, ending a 137 year run.  The brewery sat idle and was left to decay and vandalism.  A 2005 fire damaged some of the building, which was actually the original stables and carpentry shop.  In 2024 a new owner came in and reimagined the site for a new brewery, building a taproom and restaurant out of the keg room and using the stables and shop as an outdoor biergarten.  It is now the home of St Paul Brewing.  Be careful as you drive there as you might miss it, tucked back in the bowels of the old building site.  

As an advocate and lover of the craft beer scene, I have become alarmed at the sign of the times in the industry.  It has been known for some time that people, in general, are drinking less beer.  In fact, I just read something today that says even the younger generation of Germans have gone away from beer.  Scheisse!  That same trend is at work here in the US too.  My own son and his friends are proof of this trend.  Craft beer is about 13.3% of the beer market, which is a dent in the big boring brewers, but not enough apparently.  Production has been down and a decrease in the number of breweries has shaped the business for the past two years.  2024 saw a 4% decrease in beer volume and 2025 is on pace for a 5%+ decrease over 2024.  Last year 529 breweries went out of business and the numbers for this year might be sobering when it is all said and done.  I suppose that economics says this was inevitable.  The microbrew craze had been going strong for 40 years and downturns happen.  Perhaps, in some places, microbreweries were overdone, not sure on that, but it seems possible.  If you look at my outdated pictures above, these are from www.vinepair.com and show the huge growth in breweries from 250 in 1990 to 7,190 in 2016.  Today it has grown to 9,269, but declining daily.  Other economic factors have played a role too.

It was a beautiful weekend to head up to the North Shore of Minnesota and Wisconsin.  The leaves were at peak color and the weather was cool, but not cold.  I had a board meeting up that way and after the meeting, like I usually do, while everyone else headed to dinner, I hit a brewery.  I had spied Warrior Brewing on my phone while looking for a new place to try before the meeting and it was directly on the way to dinner.  

Camden Town was a bit of a surprise.  When you get off the underground and come to the surface, you may think Camden Town is run down and a b it sketchy.  In reality, it is an older part of town, but has a vibrant artistic side and is known for its street markets, music and shops.  The Camden Market is a cool area of small, mostly independent shops and eateries that is a must-see and do when you go there.  It stretches across the street in two sections, where it follows along a canal and it is here you will find 3 Locks Brewing.  We were there very early as my son was looking for anime merch, which the area is full of and even though I had searched ahead of time, I really didn't look where the brewery was exactly.  We kind of stumbled upon it a few minutes before they opened.  Their taproom over looks the canal and has outside seating along it.  It really is a great setting for a brewery.  As you can see, I took a terribly blurry picture, so no, you aren't drunk.  Are you?  

I recently visited the UK for vacation and took my opportunity to try many beers, among other things.  The last time I was there the UK was in a bit of a sea change in the pub business.  There were about 58,000 pubs in the UK in 2000.  That number has declined to around 47,000 now.  Big breweries had stepped in and bought a huge chunk of the pubs in order to control beer sales.  I've seen some different numbers, but the six biggest owned about 75% of all the pubs.  In fact, Fuller, a well known brewery, sold it's beer making operation to the Asahi Group in 2019 so it could focus on it's pub operations.  Fuller made one of the best known British beers, London Pride, that it had brewed in London since 1958.  Asahi is a Japanese beer company, which you can easily find here in the states and I drank a lot when I was in Japan a few years ago.  There were marketing agreements in place, as part of the deal, but it shows you how the pubs is where the money is.  For awhile, there were laws put in place to limit the number of pubs the big brewers could own, but that has since been repealed.  For me, the drawback is that you can only find a small selection of beers available at any pub and the food choices were the same at all of them I visited.  There are about 3,800 pubs in London and I was in only about 8, but they were either owned by Greene King or Fuller.  The beers were good, but the choices were nil.

As I left Milwaukee after going to a con with my son, I decided to hit a brew pub.  The one I chose was closed for rebranding upon reaching the property.  Google Maps, which I despise, lied to us again.  It mentioned nothing about being closed and said it was moderately busy.  First they track your every move, then openly lie to you.  I hate Google, but that is for another time.  I chose a different brewery not too far away and we were starving, so it had to have food.  When you get to the building Brewfinity is in, you ,might just think they are out of business too as it looked like a shutdown warehouse out front, but a sign directs you to the left, so I drove around the building and found the brewery.  It is tucked away, but was a nice little space for a tap room.  There were just five other people in there on a very hot Saturday, so we grabbed a spot near the front.  The bartender came right over and gave us some menus.  Since I hadn't been there before, he asked me what kind of beer I like and directed me to their flagship beer, the Sailor's Delight, which is an American Amber.  I probably would've chose this beer anyway, so it was a good call.  Biscuity and malty, just like I like it.  The beer was a nice amber color and was really good.  It finished well, not too hoppy, and smelled  just right.  American Ambers are unique in that they use American hops and derive their sweetness from the malts they use.  They are fermented in a cleaner way than their British cousins and are distinct by their balance.  I get the feeling that the hey day of IPA's is over and that vacuum will be filled by amber ales.  They are far more drinkable, yet may struggle to earn their keep as a summer beer.  Perhaps less refreshing to some drinkers as a number of IPA's can be, but I tend to think they appeal to a far broader audience of beer enthusiasts.  Every brewery makes one, they just don't experiment as deeply and wrongly, in my opinion, as they did with a rash of IPA's.  

It was a sweltering weekend in Minnesota and a stop at a local brewery was definitely in the offing.  I wanted something different so I chose Waldmann's Brewery.  It was a good choice.  Nestled in a neighborhood of houses off the main road, you'll literally stumble upon an old stone house.  It was in the fall of 1857, before Minnesota was even a state, and before the Civil War, when Waldmann's was established.  It is in the oldest surviving commercial building in St Paul to be exact, so the history here is remarkable.  To be fair, there was a long 154 year break between when Waldmann's saloon came alive again in 2017 as Waldmann's Brewery, but that doesn't matter.  

It only took me three trips here to write a blog about it.  I was always out with co-workers and forgot or just didn't have time to take a pic or two.  This time it was just me and a vendor, so I remembered and got the job done.  When in Sioux City, I've always stayed at the hotel right across the street, so going to Marto was just a no-brainer.

Being a fan of the old Hartford Whalers, I had always wanted to go to Hartford.  The fact that there was a brewery on the old Colt firearms complex in Hartford was a win for everyone.  I would've loved to tour the Colt facility during its hayday.  Samuel Colt was born in Hartford in 1814 and began making guns in 1836.  He founded Colt firearms in 1855.  As it is for gun-makers it was feast or famine.  During wartime, Colt did great, but suffered in the aftermath.  Known for innovation, Colt was the first manufacturer to offer interchangeable parts for its guns and used powerful steam engines in its plants before others were doing it.  He also was the first to build a tenement for his workers with housing, daycare, churches and food.  He established a ten hour work day with a required one hour lunch break. 

On Memorial Day weekend I took my annual trip with my brothers.  This time is was the East Coast.  We hit six states during this trip and one of the better experiences was at East Regiment Beer Company in Salem.   It is nestled in the middle of downtown and was a welcome site for my hungry stomach.  

Phallic symbols are funny, but then again, I'm a juvenile.  Naming your brewery Big Wood is probably an homage to the mighty schlong, but you could try to get away saying it is about lumberjacks or something, though no guy would believe you.  I think they did call it Big Wood because it was funny and it took big wood to launch a brewery and do it their way.  If you have a rager for craft beer and want to sell a lot of merch, it goes hand in hand.  When you call your first beer, Morning Wood Coffee Stout, there is no doubt it was the culmination of a wet dream for Big Wood.

In Canada, eh.  On a recent trip to Toronto I didn't have to search far to find a brewery to hit.  Elsinore had a commanding view of the city from its perch on a hill.  The brewery was first opened in 1983 and runs a taproom out of it's huge facility, oddly enough near an old Royal Canadian mental asylum.  Crazy, right?  The brewery stands as a monolith of older times when beer was king.  The factory was large with two smoke stacks that didn't appear to be running while we were there.  It's almost spooky now as it runs at a much lower capacity than it once did, according to the bartender, a nice older guy with a funny accent, wearing all black.  I bet the place has many secrets to tell.

I love it when a brewery has a lot of history to it's setting.  This isn't possible for many, but it really adds to the experience for me and is what I think of when I think about brew pubs.  St Paul Brewing has a home run in this regard.  Hamm's Brewing started in St Paul in 1865 by a German immigrant named, Theodore Hamm.  Hamm actually acquired the small brewery through holding the deed to a foreclosed loan from the prior owner, Andrew Keller.  Hamm's has a long tradition in Minnesota and I remember seeing Hamm's Beer commercials on tv as a kid.  An animated bear with the famous saying, "from the land of sky blue waters." were quite memorable for a kid.  At one point, Hamm's was the 5th largest brewery in the country, having expanded to San Francisco, Baltimore and Houston by the 1950's.  Shortly after their 100th anniversary, the brewery went through a series of purchases, in 1965 to Heublein, then in 1973 to a group of distributors, who sold to Olympia Brewing in 1975 and again to Pabst in 1983.   The brewery itself was traded to Stroh's at this time, who ran it until closing it in 1997, ending a 137 year run.  The brewery sat idle and was left to decay and vandalism.  A 2005 fire damaged some of the building, which was actually the original stables and carpentry shop.  In 2024 a new owner came in and reimagined the site for a new brewery, building a taproom and restaurant out of the keg room and using the stables and shop as an outdoor biergarten.  It is now the home of St Paul Brewing.  Be careful as you drive there as you might miss it, tucked back in the bowels of the old building site.  

As an advocate and lover of the craft beer scene, I have become alarmed at the sign of the times in the industry.  It has been known for some time that people, in general, are drinking less beer.  In fact, I just read something today that says even the younger generation of Germans have gone away from beer.  Scheisse!  That same trend is at work here in the US too.  My own son and his friends are proof of this trend.  Craft beer is about 13.3% of the beer market, which is a dent in the big boring brewers, but not enough apparently.  Production has been down and a decrease in the number of breweries has shaped the business for the past two years.  2024 saw a 4% decrease in beer volume and 2025 is on pace for a 5%+ decrease over 2024.  Last year 529 breweries went out of business and the numbers for this year might be sobering when it is all said and done.  I suppose that economics says this was inevitable.  The microbrew craze had been going strong for 40 years and downturns happen.  Perhaps, in some places, microbreweries were overdone, not sure on that, but it seems possible.  If you look at my outdated pictures above, these are from www.vinepair.com and show the huge growth in breweries from 250 in 1990 to 7,190 in 2016.  Today it has grown to 9,269, but declining daily.  Other economic factors have played a role too.

It was a beautiful weekend to head up to the North Shore of Minnesota and Wisconsin.  The leaves were at peak color and the weather was cool, but not cold.  I had a board meeting up that way and after the meeting, like I usually do, while everyone else headed to dinner, I hit a brewery.  I had spied Warrior Brewing on my phone while looking for a new place to try before the meeting and it was directly on the way to dinner.  

Camden Town was a bit of a surprise.  When you get off the underground and come to the surface, you may think Camden Town is run down and a b it sketchy.  In reality, it is an older part of town, but has a vibrant artistic side and is known for its street markets, music and shops.  The Camden Market is a cool area of small, mostly independent shops and eateries that is a must-see and do when you go there.  It stretches across the street in two sections, where it follows along a canal and it is here you will find 3 Locks Brewing.  We were there very early as my son was looking for anime merch, which the area is full of and even though I had searched ahead of time, I really didn't look where the brewery was exactly.  We kind of stumbled upon it a few minutes before they opened.  Their taproom over looks the canal and has outside seating along it.  It really is a great setting for a brewery.  As you can see, I took a terribly blurry picture, so no, you aren't drunk.  Are you?  

I recently visited the UK for vacation and took my opportunity to try many beers, among other things.  The last time I was there the UK was in a bit of a sea change in the pub business.  There were about 58,000 pubs in the UK in 2000.  That number has declined to around 47,000 now.  Big breweries had stepped in and bought a huge chunk of the pubs in order to control beer sales.  I've seen some different numbers, but the six biggest owned about 75% of all the pubs.  In fact, Fuller, a well known brewery, sold it's beer making operation to the Asahi Group in 2019 so it could focus on it's pub operations.  Fuller made one of the best known British beers, London Pride, that it had brewed in London since 1958.  Asahi is a Japanese beer company, which you can easily find here in the states and I drank a lot when I was in Japan a few years ago.  There were marketing agreements in place, as part of the deal, but it shows you how the pubs is where the money is.  For awhile, there were laws put in place to limit the number of pubs the big brewers could own, but that has since been repealed.  For me, the drawback is that you can only find a small selection of beers available at any pub and the food choices were the same at all of them I visited.  There are about 3,800 pubs in London and I was in only about 8, but they were either owned by Greene King or Fuller.  The beers were good, but the choices were nil.

As I left Milwaukee after going to a con with my son, I decided to hit a brew pub.  The one I chose was closed for rebranding upon reaching the property.  Google Maps, which I despise, lied to us again.  It mentioned nothing about being closed and said it was moderately busy.  First they track your every move, then openly lie to you.  I hate Google, but that is for another time.  I chose a different brewery not too far away and we were starving, so it had to have food.  When you get to the building Brewfinity is in, you ,might just think they are out of business too as it looked like a shutdown warehouse out front, but a sign directs you to the left, so I drove around the building and found the brewery.  It is tucked away, but was a nice little space for a tap room.  There were just five other people in there on a very hot Saturday, so we grabbed a spot near the front.  The bartender came right over and gave us some menus.  Since I hadn't been there before, he asked me what kind of beer I like and directed me to their flagship beer, the Sailor's Delight, which is an American Amber.  I probably would've chose this beer anyway, so it was a good call.  Biscuity and malty, just like I like it.  The beer was a nice amber color and was really good.  It finished well, not too hoppy, and smelled  just right.  American Ambers are unique in that they use American hops and derive their sweetness from the malts they use.  They are fermented in a cleaner way than their British cousins and are distinct by their balance.  I get the feeling that the hey day of IPA's is over and that vacuum will be filled by amber ales.  They are far more drinkable, yet may struggle to earn their keep as a summer beer.  Perhaps less refreshing to some drinkers as a number of IPA's can be, but I tend to think they appeal to a far broader audience of beer enthusiasts.  Every brewery makes one, they just don't experiment as deeply and wrongly, in my opinion, as they did with a rash of IPA's.  

It was a sweltering weekend in Minnesota and a stop at a local brewery was definitely in the offing.  I wanted something different so I chose Waldmann's Brewery.  It was a good choice.  Nestled in a neighborhood of houses off the main road, you'll literally stumble upon an old stone house.  It was in the fall of 1857, before Minnesota was even a state, and before the Civil War, when Waldmann's was established.  It is in the oldest surviving commercial building in St Paul to be exact, so the history here is remarkable.  To be fair, there was a long 154 year break between when Waldmann's saloon came alive again in 2017 as Waldmann's Brewery, but that doesn't matter.  

It only took me three trips here to write a blog about it.  I was always out with co-workers and forgot or just didn't have time to take a pic or two.  This time it was just me and a vendor, so I remembered and got the job done.  When in Sioux City, I've always stayed at the hotel right across the street, so going to Marto was just a no-brainer.

Being a fan of the old Hartford Whalers, I had always wanted to go to Hartford.  The fact that there was a brewery on the old Colt firearms complex in Hartford was a win for everyone.  I would've loved to tour the Colt facility during its hayday.  Samuel Colt was born in Hartford in 1814 and began making guns in 1836.  He founded Colt firearms in 1855.  As it is for gun-makers it was feast or famine.  During wartime, Colt did great, but suffered in the aftermath.  Known for innovation, Colt was the first manufacturer to offer interchangeable parts for its guns and used powerful steam engines in its plants before others were doing it.  He also was the first to build a tenement for his workers with housing, daycare, churches and food.  He established a ten hour work day with a required one hour lunch break. 

On Memorial Day weekend I took my annual trip with my brothers.  This time is was the East Coast.  We hit six states during this trip and one of the better experiences was at East Regiment Beer Company in Salem.   It is nestled in the middle of downtown and was a welcome site for my hungry stomach.  

Phallic symbols are funny, but then again, I'm a juvenile.  Naming your brewery Big Wood is probably an homage to the mighty schlong, but you could try to get away saying it is about lumberjacks or something, though no guy would believe you.  I think they did call it Big Wood because it was funny and it took big wood to launch a brewery and do it their way.  If you have a rager for craft beer and want to sell a lot of merch, it goes hand in hand.  When you call your first beer, Morning Wood Coffee Stout, there is no doubt it was the culmination of a wet dream for Big Wood.

In Canada, eh.  On a recent trip to Toronto I didn't have to search far to find a brewery to hit.  Elsinore had a commanding view of the city from its perch on a hill.  The brewery was first opened in 1983 and runs a taproom out of it's huge facility, oddly enough near an old Royal Canadian mental asylum.  Crazy, right?  The brewery stands as a monolith of older times when beer was king.  The factory was large with two smoke stacks that didn't appear to be running while we were there.  It's almost spooky now as it runs at a much lower capacity than it once did, according to the bartender, a nice older guy with a funny accent, wearing all black.  I bet the place has many secrets to tell.

I love it when a brewery has a lot of history to it's setting.  This isn't possible for many, but it really adds to the experience for me and is what I think of when I think about brew pubs.  St Paul Brewing has a home run in this regard.  Hamm's Brewing started in St Paul in 1865 by a German immigrant named, Theodore Hamm.  Hamm actually acquired the small brewery through holding the deed to a foreclosed loan from the prior owner, Andrew Keller.  Hamm's has a long tradition in Minnesota and I remember seeing Hamm's Beer commercials on tv as a kid.  An animated bear with the famous saying, "from the land of sky blue waters." were quite memorable for a kid.  At one point, Hamm's was the 5th largest brewery in the country, having expanded to San Francisco, Baltimore and Houston by the 1950's.  Shortly after their 100th anniversary, the brewery went through a series of purchases, in 1965 to Heublein, then in 1973 to a group of distributors, who sold to Olympia Brewing in 1975 and again to Pabst in 1983.   The brewery itself was traded to Stroh's at this time, who ran it until closing it in 1997, ending a 137 year run.  The brewery sat idle and was left to decay and vandalism.  A 2005 fire damaged some of the building, which was actually the original stables and carpentry shop.  In 2024 a new owner came in and reimagined the site for a new brewery, building a taproom and restaurant out of the keg room and using the stables and shop as an outdoor biergarten.  It is now the home of St Paul Brewing.  Be careful as you drive there as you might miss it, tucked back in the bowels of the old building site.  

As an advocate and lover of the craft beer scene, I have become alarmed at the sign of the times in the industry.  It has been known for some time that people, in general, are drinking less beer.  In fact, I just read something today that says even the younger generation of Germans have gone away from beer.  Scheisse!  That same trend is at work here in the US too.  My own son and his friends are proof of this trend.  Craft beer is about 13.3% of the beer market, which is a dent in the big boring brewers, but not enough apparently.  Production has been down and a decrease in the number of breweries has shaped the business for the past two years.  2024 saw a 4% decrease in beer volume and 2025 is on pace for a 5%+ decrease over 2024.  Last year 529 breweries went out of business and the numbers for this year might be sobering when it is all said and done.  I suppose that economics says this was inevitable.  The microbrew craze had been going strong for 40 years and downturns happen.  Perhaps, in some places, microbreweries were overdone, not sure on that, but it seems possible.  If you look at my outdated pictures above, these are from www.vinepair.com and show the huge growth in breweries from 250 in 1990 to 7,190 in 2016.  Today it has grown to 9,269, but declining daily.  Other economic factors have played a role too.

It was a beautiful weekend to head up to the North Shore of Minnesota and Wisconsin.  The leaves were at peak color and the weather was cool, but not cold.  I had a board meeting up that way and after the meeting, like I usually do, while everyone else headed to dinner, I hit a brewery.  I had spied Warrior Brewing on my phone while looking for a new place to try before the meeting and it was directly on the way to dinner.  

Camden Town was a bit of a surprise.  When you get off the underground and come to the surface, you may think Camden Town is run down and a b it sketchy.  In reality, it is an older part of town, but has a vibrant artistic side and is known for its street markets, music and shops.  The Camden Market is a cool area of small, mostly independent shops and eateries that is a must-see and do when you go there.  It stretches across the street in two sections, where it follows along a canal and it is here you will find 3 Locks Brewing.  We were there very early as my son was looking for anime merch, which the area is full of and even though I had searched ahead of time, I really didn't look where the brewery was exactly.  We kind of stumbled upon it a few minutes before they opened.  Their taproom over looks the canal and has outside seating along it.  It really is a great setting for a brewery.  As you can see, I took a terribly blurry picture, so no, you aren't drunk.  Are you?  

I recently visited the UK for vacation and took my opportunity to try many beers, among other things.  The last time I was there the UK was in a bit of a sea change in the pub business.  There were about 58,000 pubs in the UK in 2000.  That number has declined to around 47,000 now.  Big breweries had stepped in and bought a huge chunk of the pubs in order to control beer sales.  I've seen some different numbers, but the six biggest owned about 75% of all the pubs.  In fact, Fuller, a well known brewery, sold it's beer making operation to the Asahi Group in 2019 so it could focus on it's pub operations.  Fuller made one of the best known British beers, London Pride, that it had brewed in London since 1958.  Asahi is a Japanese beer company, which you can easily find here in the states and I drank a lot when I was in Japan a few years ago.  There were marketing agreements in place, as part of the deal, but it shows you how the pubs is where the money is.  For awhile, there were laws put in place to limit the number of pubs the big brewers could own, but that has since been repealed.  For me, the drawback is that you can only find a small selection of beers available at any pub and the food choices were the same at all of them I visited.  There are about 3,800 pubs in London and I was in only about 8, but they were either owned by Greene King or Fuller.  The beers were good, but the choices were nil.

As I left Milwaukee after going to a con with my son, I decided to hit a brew pub.  The one I chose was closed for rebranding upon reaching the property.  Google Maps, which I despise, lied to us again.  It mentioned nothing about being closed and said it was moderately busy.  First they track your every move, then openly lie to you.  I hate Google, but that is for another time.  I chose a different brewery not too far away and we were starving, so it had to have food.  When you get to the building Brewfinity is in, you ,might just think they are out of business too as it looked like a shutdown warehouse out front, but a sign directs you to the left, so I drove around the building and found the brewery.  It is tucked away, but was a nice little space for a tap room.  There were just five other people in there on a very hot Saturday, so we grabbed a spot near the front.  The bartender came right over and gave us some menus.  Since I hadn't been there before, he asked me what kind of beer I like and directed me to their flagship beer, the Sailor's Delight, which is an American Amber.  I probably would've chose this beer anyway, so it was a good call.  Biscuity and malty, just like I like it.  The beer was a nice amber color and was really good.  It finished well, not too hoppy, and smelled  just right.  American Ambers are unique in that they use American hops and derive their sweetness from the malts they use.  They are fermented in a cleaner way than their British cousins and are distinct by their balance.  I get the feeling that the hey day of IPA's is over and that vacuum will be filled by amber ales.  They are far more drinkable, yet may struggle to earn their keep as a summer beer.  Perhaps less refreshing to some drinkers as a number of IPA's can be, but I tend to think they appeal to a far broader audience of beer enthusiasts.  Every brewery makes one, they just don't experiment as deeply and wrongly, in my opinion, as they did with a rash of IPA's.  

It was a sweltering weekend in Minnesota and a stop at a local brewery was definitely in the offing.  I wanted something different so I chose Waldmann's Brewery.  It was a good choice.  Nestled in a neighborhood of houses off the main road, you'll literally stumble upon an old stone house.  It was in the fall of 1857, before Minnesota was even a state, and before the Civil War, when Waldmann's was established.  It is in the oldest surviving commercial building in St Paul to be exact, so the history here is remarkable.  To be fair, there was a long 154 year break between when Waldmann's saloon came alive again in 2017 as Waldmann's Brewery, but that doesn't matter.  

It only took me three trips here to write a blog about it.  I was always out with co-workers and forgot or just didn't have time to take a pic or two.  This time it was just me and a vendor, so I remembered and got the job done.  When in Sioux City, I've always stayed at the hotel right across the street, so going to Marto was just a no-brainer.

Being a fan of the old Hartford Whalers, I had always wanted to go to Hartford.  The fact that there was a brewery on the old Colt firearms complex in Hartford was a win for everyone.  I would've loved to tour the Colt facility during its hayday.  Samuel Colt was born in Hartford in 1814 and began making guns in 1836.  He founded Colt firearms in 1855.  As it is for gun-makers it was feast or famine.  During wartime, Colt did great, but suffered in the aftermath.  Known for innovation, Colt was the first manufacturer to offer interchangeable parts for its guns and used powerful steam engines in its plants before others were doing it.  He also was the first to build a tenement for his workers with housing, daycare, churches and food.  He established a ten hour work day with a required one hour lunch break. 

On Memorial Day weekend I took my annual trip with my brothers.  This time is was the East Coast.  We hit six states during this trip and one of the better experiences was at East Regiment Beer Company in Salem.   It is nestled in the middle of downtown and was a welcome site for my hungry stomach.  

Phallic symbols are funny, but then again, I'm a juvenile.  Naming your brewery Big Wood is probably an homage to the mighty schlong, but you could try to get away saying it is about lumberjacks or something, though no guy would believe you.  I think they did call it Big Wood because it was funny and it took big wood to launch a brewery and do it their way.  If you have a rager for craft beer and want to sell a lot of merch, it goes hand in hand.  When you call your first beer, Morning Wood Coffee Stout, there is no doubt it was the culmination of a wet dream for Big Wood.

In Canada, eh.  On a recent trip to Toronto I didn't have to search far to find a brewery to hit.  Elsinore had a commanding view of the city from its perch on a hill.  The brewery was first opened in 1983 and runs a taproom out of it's huge facility, oddly enough near an old Royal Canadian mental asylum.  Crazy, right?  The brewery stands as a monolith of older times when beer was king.  The factory was large with two smoke stacks that didn't appear to be running while we were there.  It's almost spooky now as it runs at a much lower capacity than it once did, according to the bartender, a nice older guy with a funny accent, wearing all black.  I bet the place has many secrets to tell.

I love it when a brewery has a lot of history to it's setting.  This isn't possible for many, but it really adds to the experience for me and is what I think of when I think about brew pubs.  St Paul Brewing has a home run in this regard.  Hamm's Brewing started in St Paul in 1865 by a German immigrant named, Theodore Hamm.  Hamm actually acquired the small brewery through holding the deed to a foreclosed loan from the prior owner, Andrew Keller.  Hamm's has a long tradition in Minnesota and I remember seeing Hamm's Beer commercials on tv as a kid.  An animated bear with the famous saying, "from the land of sky blue waters." were quite memorable for a kid.  At one point, Hamm's was the 5th largest brewery in the country, having expanded to San Francisco, Baltimore and Houston by the 1950's.  Shortly after their 100th anniversary, the brewery went through a series of purchases, in 1965 to Heublein, then in 1973 to a group of distributors, who sold to Olympia Brewing in 1975 and again to Pabst in 1983.   The brewery itself was traded to Stroh's at this time, who ran it until closing it in 1997, ending a 137 year run.  The brewery sat idle and was left to decay and vandalism.  A 2005 fire damaged some of the building, which was actually the original stables and carpentry shop.  In 2024 a new owner came in and reimagined the site for a new brewery, building a taproom and restaurant out of the keg room and using the stables and shop as an outdoor biergarten.  It is now the home of St Paul Brewing.  Be careful as you drive there as you might miss it, tucked back in the bowels of the old building site.  

As an advocate and lover of the craft beer scene, I have become alarmed at the sign of the times in the industry.  It has been known for some time that people, in general, are drinking less beer.  In fact, I just read something today that says even the younger generation of Germans have gone away from beer.  Scheisse!  That same trend is at work here in the US too.  My own son and his friends are proof of this trend.  Craft beer is about 13.3% of the beer market, which is a dent in the big boring brewers, but not enough apparently.  Production has been down and a decrease in the number of breweries has shaped the business for the past two years.  2024 saw a 4% decrease in beer volume and 2025 is on pace for a 5%+ decrease over 2024.  Last year 529 breweries went out of business and the numbers for this year might be sobering when it is all said and done.  I suppose that economics says this was inevitable.  The microbrew craze had been going strong for 40 years and downturns happen.  Perhaps, in some places, microbreweries were overdone, not sure on that, but it seems possible.  If you look at my outdated pictures above, these are from www.vinepair.com and show the huge growth in breweries from 250 in 1990 to 7,190 in 2016.  Today it has grown to 9,269, but declining daily.  Other economic factors have played a role too.

It was a beautiful weekend to head up to the North Shore of Minnesota and Wisconsin.  The leaves were at peak color and the weather was cool, but not cold.  I had a board meeting up that way and after the meeting, like I usually do, while everyone else headed to dinner, I hit a brewery.  I had spied Warrior Brewing on my phone while looking for a new place to try before the meeting and it was directly on the way to dinner.  

Camden Town was a bit of a surprise.  When you get off the underground and come to the surface, you may think Camden Town is run down and a b it sketchy.  In reality, it is an older part of town, but has a vibrant artistic side and is known for its street markets, music and shops.  The Camden Market is a cool area of small, mostly independent shops and eateries that is a must-see and do when you go there.  It stretches across the street in two sections, where it follows along a canal and it is here you will find 3 Locks Brewing.  We were there very early as my son was looking for anime merch, which the area is full of and even though I had searched ahead of time, I really didn't look where the brewery was exactly.  We kind of stumbled upon it a few minutes before they opened.  Their taproom over looks the canal and has outside seating along it.  It really is a great setting for a brewery.  As you can see, I took a terribly blurry picture, so no, you aren't drunk.  Are you?  

I recently visited the UK for vacation and took my opportunity to try many beers, among other things.  The last time I was there the UK was in a bit of a sea change in the pub business.  There were about 58,000 pubs in the UK in 2000.  That number has declined to around 47,000 now.  Big breweries had stepped in and bought a huge chunk of the pubs in order to control beer sales.  I've seen some different numbers, but the six biggest owned about 75% of all the pubs.  In fact, Fuller, a well known brewery, sold it's beer making operation to the Asahi Group in 2019 so it could focus on it's pub operations.  Fuller made one of the best known British beers, London Pride, that it had brewed in London since 1958.  Asahi is a Japanese beer company, which you can easily find here in the states and I drank a lot when I was in Japan a few years ago.  There were marketing agreements in place, as part of the deal, but it shows you how the pubs is where the money is.  For awhile, there were laws put in place to limit the number of pubs the big brewers could own, but that has since been repealed.  For me, the drawback is that you can only find a small selection of beers available at any pub and the food choices were the same at all of them I visited.  There are about 3,800 pubs in London and I was in only about 8, but they were either owned by Greene King or Fuller.  The beers were good, but the choices were nil.

As I left Milwaukee after going to a con with my son, I decided to hit a brew pub.  The one I chose was closed for rebranding upon reaching the property.  Google Maps, which I despise, lied to us again.  It mentioned nothing about being closed and said it was moderately busy.  First they track your every move, then openly lie to you.  I hate Google, but that is for another time.  I chose a different brewery not too far away and we were starving, so it had to have food.  When you get to the building Brewfinity is in, you ,might just think they are out of business too as it looked like a shutdown warehouse out front, but a sign directs you to the left, so I drove around the building and found the brewery.  It is tucked away, but was a nice little space for a tap room.  There were just five other people in there on a very hot Saturday, so we grabbed a spot near the front.  The bartender came right over and gave us some menus.  Since I hadn't been there before, he asked me what kind of beer I like and directed me to their flagship beer, the Sailor's Delight, which is an American Amber.  I probably would've chose this beer anyway, so it was a good call.  Biscuity and malty, just like I like it.  The beer was a nice amber color and was really good.  It finished well, not too hoppy, and smelled  just right.  American Ambers are unique in that they use American hops and derive their sweetness from the malts they use.  They are fermented in a cleaner way than their British cousins and are distinct by their balance.  I get the feeling that the hey day of IPA's is over and that vacuum will be filled by amber ales.  They are far more drinkable, yet may struggle to earn their keep as a summer beer.  Perhaps less refreshing to some drinkers as a number of IPA's can be, but I tend to think they appeal to a far broader audience of beer enthusiasts.  Every brewery makes one, they just don't experiment as deeply and wrongly, in my opinion, as they did with a rash of IPA's.  

It was a sweltering weekend in Minnesota and a stop at a local brewery was definitely in the offing.  I wanted something different so I chose Waldmann's Brewery.  It was a good choice.  Nestled in a neighborhood of houses off the main road, you'll literally stumble upon an old stone house.  It was in the fall of 1857, before Minnesota was even a state, and before the Civil War, when Waldmann's was established.  It is in the oldest surviving commercial building in St Paul to be exact, so the history here is remarkable.  To be fair, there was a long 154 year break between when Waldmann's saloon came alive again in 2017 as Waldmann's Brewery, but that doesn't matter.  

It only took me three trips here to write a blog about it.  I was always out with co-workers and forgot or just didn't have time to take a pic or two.  This time it was just me and a vendor, so I remembered and got the job done.  When in Sioux City, I've always stayed at the hotel right across the street, so going to Marto was just a no-brainer.

Being a fan of the old Hartford Whalers, I had always wanted to go to Hartford.  The fact that there was a brewery on the old Colt firearms complex in Hartford was a win for everyone.  I would've loved to tour the Colt facility during its hayday.  Samuel Colt was born in Hartford in 1814 and began making guns in 1836.  He founded Colt firearms in 1855.  As it is for gun-makers it was feast or famine.  During wartime, Colt did great, but suffered in the aftermath.  Known for innovation, Colt was the first manufacturer to offer interchangeable parts for its guns and used powerful steam engines in its plants before others were doing it.  He also was the first to build a tenement for his workers with housing, daycare, churches and food.  He established a ten hour work day with a required one hour lunch break. 

On Memorial Day weekend I took my annual trip with my brothers.  This time is was the East Coast.  We hit six states during this trip and one of the better experiences was at East Regiment Beer Company in Salem.   It is nestled in the middle of downtown and was a welcome site for my hungry stomach.  

Phallic symbols are funny, but then again, I'm a juvenile.  Naming your brewery Big Wood is probably an homage to the mighty schlong, but you could try to get away saying it is about lumberjacks or something, though no guy would believe you.  I think they did call it Big Wood because it was funny and it took big wood to launch a brewery and do it their way.  If you have a rager for craft beer and want to sell a lot of merch, it goes hand in hand.  When you call your first beer, Morning Wood Coffee Stout, there is no doubt it was the culmination of a wet dream for Big Wood.

In Canada, eh.  On a recent trip to Toronto I didn't have to search far to find a brewery to hit.  Elsinore had a commanding view of the city from its perch on a hill.  The brewery was first opened in 1983 and runs a taproom out of it's huge facility, oddly enough near an old Royal Canadian mental asylum.  Crazy, right?  The brewery stands as a monolith of older times when beer was king.  The factory was large with two smoke stacks that didn't appear to be running while we were there.  It's almost spooky now as it runs at a much lower capacity than it once did, according to the bartender, a nice older guy with a funny accent, wearing all black.  I bet the place has many secrets to tell.

I love it when a brewery has a lot of history to it's setting.  This isn't possible for many, but it really adds to the experience for me and is what I think of when I think about brew pubs.  St Paul Brewing has a home run in this regard.  Hamm's Brewing started in St Paul in 1865 by a German immigrant named, Theodore Hamm.  Hamm actually acquired the small brewery through holding the deed to a foreclosed loan from the prior owner, Andrew Keller.  Hamm's has a long tradition in Minnesota and I remember seeing Hamm's Beer commercials on tv as a kid.  An animated bear with the famous saying, "from the land of sky blue waters." were quite memorable for a kid.  At one point, Hamm's was the 5th largest brewery in the country, having expanded to San Francisco, Baltimore and Houston by the 1950's.  Shortly after their 100th anniversary, the brewery went through a series of purchases, in 1965 to Heublein, then in 1973 to a group of distributors, who sold to Olympia Brewing in 1975 and again to Pabst in 1983.   The brewery itself was traded to Stroh's at this time, who ran it until closing it in 1997, ending a 137 year run.  The brewery sat idle and was left to decay and vandalism.  A 2005 fire damaged some of the building, which was actually the original stables and carpentry shop.  In 2024 a new owner came in and reimagined the site for a new brewery, building a taproom and restaurant out of the keg room and using the stables and shop as an outdoor biergarten.  It is now the home of St Paul Brewing.  Be careful as you drive there as you might miss it, tucked back in the bowels of the old building site.  

As an advocate and lover of the craft beer scene, I have become alarmed at the sign of the times in the industry.  It has been known for some time that people, in general, are drinking less beer.  In fact, I just read something today that says even the younger generation of Germans have gone away from beer.  Scheisse!  That same trend is at work here in the US too.  My own son and his friends are proof of this trend.  Craft beer is about 13.3% of the beer market, which is a dent in the big boring brewers, but not enough apparently.  Production has been down and a decrease in the number of breweries has shaped the business for the past two years.  2024 saw a 4% decrease in beer volume and 2025 is on pace for a 5%+ decrease over 2024.  Last year 529 breweries went out of business and the numbers for this year might be sobering when it is all said and done.  I suppose that economics says this was inevitable.  The microbrew craze had been going strong for 40 years and downturns happen.  Perhaps, in some places, microbreweries were overdone, not sure on that, but it seems possible.  If you look at my outdated pictures above, these are from www.vinepair.com and show the huge growth in breweries from 250 in 1990 to 7,190 in 2016.  Today it has grown to 9,269, but declining daily.  Other economic factors have played a role too.

It was a beautiful weekend to head up to the North Shore of Minnesota and Wisconsin.  The leaves were at peak color and the weather was cool, but not cold.  I had a board meeting up that way and after the meeting, like I usually do, while everyone else headed to dinner, I hit a brewery.  I had spied Warrior Brewing on my phone while looking for a new place to try before the meeting and it was directly on the way to dinner.  

Camden Town was a bit of a surprise.  When you get off the underground and come to the surface, you may think Camden Town is run down and a b it sketchy.  In reality, it is an older part of town, but has a vibrant artistic side and is known for its street markets, music and shops.  The Camden Market is a cool area of small, mostly independent shops and eateries that is a must-see and do when you go there.  It stretches across the street in two sections, where it follows along a canal and it is here you will find 3 Locks Brewing.  We were there very early as my son was looking for anime merch, which the area is full of and even though I had searched ahead of time, I really didn't look where the brewery was exactly.  We kind of stumbled upon it a few minutes before they opened.  Their taproom over looks the canal and has outside seating along it.  It really is a great setting for a brewery.  As you can see, I took a terribly blurry picture, so no, you aren't drunk.  Are you?  

I recently visited the UK for vacation and took my opportunity to try many beers, among other things.  The last time I was there the UK was in a bit of a sea change in the pub business.  There were about 58,000 pubs in the UK in 2000.  That number has declined to around 47,000 now.  Big breweries had stepped in and bought a huge chunk of the pubs in order to control beer sales.  I've seen some different numbers, but the six biggest owned about 75% of all the pubs.  In fact, Fuller, a well known brewery, sold it's beer making operation to the Asahi Group in 2019 so it could focus on it's pub operations.  Fuller made one of the best known British beers, London Pride, that it had brewed in London since 1958.  Asahi is a Japanese beer company, which you can easily find here in the states and I drank a lot when I was in Japan a few years ago.  There were marketing agreements in place, as part of the deal, but it shows you how the pubs is where the money is.  For awhile, there were laws put in place to limit the number of pubs the big brewers could own, but that has since been repealed.  For me, the drawback is that you can only find a small selection of beers available at any pub and the food choices were the same at all of them I visited.  There are about 3,800 pubs in London and I was in only about 8, but they were either owned by Greene King or Fuller.  The beers were good, but the choices were nil.

As I left Milwaukee after going to a con with my son, I decided to hit a brew pub.  The one I chose was closed for rebranding upon reaching the property.  Google Maps, which I despise, lied to us again.  It mentioned nothing about being closed and said it was moderately busy.  First they track your every move, then openly lie to you.  I hate Google, but that is for another time.  I chose a different brewery not too far away and we were starving, so it had to have food.  When you get to the building Brewfinity is in, you ,might just think they are out of business too as it looked like a shutdown warehouse out front, but a sign directs you to the left, so I drove around the building and found the brewery.  It is tucked away, but was a nice little space for a tap room.  There were just five other people in there on a very hot Saturday, so we grabbed a spot near the front.  The bartender came right over and gave us some menus.  Since I hadn't been there before, he asked me what kind of beer I like and directed me to their flagship beer, the Sailor's Delight, which is an American Amber.  I probably would've chose this beer anyway, so it was a good call.  Biscuity and malty, just like I like it.  The beer was a nice amber color and was really good.  It finished well, not too hoppy, and smelled  just right.  American Ambers are unique in that they use American hops and derive their sweetness from the malts they use.  They are fermented in a cleaner way than their British cousins and are distinct by their balance.  I get the feeling that the hey day of IPA's is over and that vacuum will be filled by amber ales.  They are far more drinkable, yet may struggle to earn their keep as a summer beer.  Perhaps less refreshing to some drinkers as a number of IPA's can be, but I tend to think they appeal to a far broader audience of beer enthusiasts.  Every brewery makes one, they just don't experiment as deeply and wrongly, in my opinion, as they did with a rash of IPA's.  

It was a sweltering weekend in Minnesota and a stop at a local brewery was definitely in the offing.  I wanted something different so I chose Waldmann's Brewery.  It was a good choice.  Nestled in a neighborhood of houses off the main road, you'll literally stumble upon an old stone house.  It was in the fall of 1857, before Minnesota was even a state, and before the Civil War, when Waldmann's was established.  It is in the oldest surviving commercial building in St Paul to be exact, so the history here is remarkable.  To be fair, there was a long 154 year break between when Waldmann's saloon came alive again in 2017 as Waldmann's Brewery, but that doesn't matter.  

It only took me three trips here to write a blog about it.  I was always out with co-workers and forgot or just didn't have time to take a pic or two.  This time it was just me and a vendor, so I remembered and got the job done.  When in Sioux City, I've always stayed at the hotel right across the street, so going to Marto was just a no-brainer.

Being a fan of the old Hartford Whalers, I had always wanted to go to Hartford.  The fact that there was a brewery on the old Colt firearms complex in Hartford was a win for everyone.  I would've loved to tour the Colt facility during its hayday.  Samuel Colt was born in Hartford in 1814 and began making guns in 1836.  He founded Colt firearms in 1855.  As it is for gun-makers it was feast or famine.  During wartime, Colt did great, but suffered in the aftermath.  Known for innovation, Colt was the first manufacturer to offer interchangeable parts for its guns and used powerful steam engines in its plants before others were doing it.  He also was the first to build a tenement for his workers with housing, daycare, churches and food.  He established a ten hour work day with a required one hour lunch break. 

On Memorial Day weekend I took my annual trip with my brothers.  This time is was the East Coast.  We hit six states during this trip and one of the better experiences was at East Regiment Beer Company in Salem.   It is nestled in the middle of downtown and was a welcome site for my hungry stomach.  

Phallic symbols are funny, but then again, I'm a juvenile.  Naming your brewery Big Wood is probably an homage to the mighty schlong, but you could try to get away saying it is about lumberjacks or something, though no guy would believe you.  I think they did call it Big Wood because it was funny and it took big wood to launch a brewery and do it their way.  If you have a rager for craft beer and want to sell a lot of merch, it goes hand in hand.  When you call your first beer, Morning Wood Coffee Stout, there is no doubt it was the culmination of a wet dream for Big Wood.

In Canada, eh.  On a recent trip to Toronto I didn't have to search far to find a brewery to hit.  Elsinore had a commanding view of the city from its perch on a hill.  The brewery was first opened in 1983 and runs a taproom out of it's huge facility, oddly enough near an old Royal Canadian mental asylum.  Crazy, right?  The brewery stands as a monolith of older times when beer was king.  The factory was large with two smoke stacks that didn't appear to be running while we were there.  It's almost spooky now as it runs at a much lower capacity than it once did, according to the bartender, a nice older guy with a funny accent, wearing all black.  I bet the place has many secrets to tell.

I love it when a brewery has a lot of history to it's setting.  This isn't possible for many, but it really adds to the experience for me and is what I think of when I think about brew pubs.  St Paul Brewing has a home run in this regard.  Hamm's Brewing started in St Paul in 1865 by a German immigrant named, Theodore Hamm.  Hamm actually acquired the small brewery through holding the deed to a foreclosed loan from the prior owner, Andrew Keller.  Hamm's has a long tradition in Minnesota and I remember seeing Hamm's Beer commercials on tv as a kid.  An animated bear with the famous saying, "from the land of sky blue waters." were quite memorable for a kid.  At one point, Hamm's was the 5th largest brewery in the country, having expanded to San Francisco, Baltimore and Houston by the 1950's.  Shortly after their 100th anniversary, the brewery went through a series of purchases, in 1965 to Heublein, then in 1973 to a group of distributors, who sold to Olympia Brewing in 1975 and again to Pabst in 1983.   The brewery itself was traded to Stroh's at this time, who ran it until closing it in 1997, ending a 137 year run.  The brewery sat idle and was left to decay and vandalism.  A 2005 fire damaged some of the building, which was actually the original stables and carpentry shop.  In 2024 a new owner came in and reimagined the site for a new brewery, building a taproom and restaurant out of the keg room and using the stables and shop as an outdoor biergarten.  It is now the home of St Paul Brewing.  Be careful as you drive there as you might miss it, tucked back in the bowels of the old building site.  

As an advocate and lover of the craft beer scene, I have become alarmed at the sign of the times in the industry.  It has been known for some time that people, in general, are drinking less beer.  In fact, I just read something today that says even the younger generation of Germans have gone away from beer.  Scheisse!  That same trend is at work here in the US too.  My own son and his friends are proof of this trend.  Craft beer is about 13.3% of the beer market, which is a dent in the big boring brewers, but not enough apparently.  Production has been down and a decrease in the number of breweries has shaped the business for the past two years.  2024 saw a 4% decrease in beer volume and 2025 is on pace for a 5%+ decrease over 2024.  Last year 529 breweries went out of business and the numbers for this year might be sobering when it is all said and done.  I suppose that economics says this was inevitable.  The microbrew craze had been going strong for 40 years and downturns happen.  Perhaps, in some places, microbreweries were overdone, not sure on that, but it seems possible.  If you look at my outdated pictures above, these are from www.vinepair.com and show the huge growth in breweries from 250 in 1990 to 7,190 in 2016.  Today it has grown to 9,269, but declining daily.  Other economic factors have played a role too.

It was a beautiful weekend to head up to the North Shore of Minnesota and Wisconsin.  The leaves were at peak color and the weather was cool, but not cold.  I had a board meeting up that way and after the meeting, like I usually do, while everyone else headed to dinner, I hit a brewery.  I had spied Warrior Brewing on my phone while looking for a new place to try before the meeting and it was directly on the way to dinner.  

Camden Town was a bit of a surprise.  When you get off the underground and come to the surface, you may think Camden Town is run down and a b it sketchy.  In reality, it is an older part of town, but has a vibrant artistic side and is known for its street markets, music and shops.  The Camden Market is a cool area of small, mostly independent shops and eateries that is a must-see and do when you go there.  It stretches across the street in two sections, where it follows along a canal and it is here you will find 3 Locks Brewing.  We were there very early as my son was looking for anime merch, which the area is full of and even though I had searched ahead of time, I really didn't look where the brewery was exactly.  We kind of stumbled upon it a few minutes before they opened.  Their taproom over looks the canal and has outside seating along it.  It really is a great setting for a brewery.  As you can see, I took a terribly blurry picture, so no, you aren't drunk.  Are you?  

I recently visited the UK for vacation and took my opportunity to try many beers, among other things.  The last time I was there the UK was in a bit of a sea change in the pub business.  There were about 58,000 pubs in the UK in 2000.  That number has declined to around 47,000 now.  Big breweries had stepped in and bought a huge chunk of the pubs in order to control beer sales.  I've seen some different numbers, but the six biggest owned about 75% of all the pubs.  In fact, Fuller, a well known brewery, sold it's beer making operation to the Asahi Group in 2019 so it could focus on it's pub operations.  Fuller made one of the best known British beers, London Pride, that it had brewed in London since 1958.  Asahi is a Japanese beer company, which you can easily find here in the states and I drank a lot when I was in Japan a few years ago.  There were marketing agreements in place, as part of the deal, but it shows you how the pubs is where the money is.  For awhile, there were laws put in place to limit the number of pubs the big brewers could own, but that has since been repealed.  For me, the drawback is that you can only find a small selection of beers available at any pub and the food choices were the same at all of them I visited.  There are about 3,800 pubs in London and I was in only about 8, but they were either owned by Greene King or Fuller.  The beers were good, but the choices were nil.

As I left Milwaukee after going to a con with my son, I decided to hit a brew pub.  The one I chose was closed for rebranding upon reaching the property.  Google Maps, which I despise, lied to us again.  It mentioned nothing about being closed and said it was moderately busy.  First they track your every move, then openly lie to you.  I hate Google, but that is for another time.  I chose a different brewery not too far away and we were starving, so it had to have food.  When you get to the building Brewfinity is in, you ,might just think they are out of business too as it looked like a shutdown warehouse out front, but a sign directs you to the left, so I drove around the building and found the brewery.  It is tucked away, but was a nice little space for a tap room.  There were just five other people in there on a very hot Saturday, so we grabbed a spot near the front.  The bartender came right over and gave us some menus.  Since I hadn't been there before, he asked me what kind of beer I like and directed me to their flagship beer, the Sailor's Delight, which is an American Amber.  I probably would've chose this beer anyway, so it was a good call.  Biscuity and malty, just like I like it.  The beer was a nice amber color and was really good.  It finished well, not too hoppy, and smelled  just right.  American Ambers are unique in that they use American hops and derive their sweetness from the malts they use.  They are fermented in a cleaner way than their British cousins and are distinct by their balance.  I get the feeling that the hey day of IPA's is over and that vacuum will be filled by amber ales.  They are far more drinkable, yet may struggle to earn their keep as a summer beer.  Perhaps less refreshing to some drinkers as a number of IPA's can be, but I tend to think they appeal to a far broader audience of beer enthusiasts.  Every brewery makes one, they just don't experiment as deeply and wrongly, in my opinion, as they did with a rash of IPA's.  

It was a sweltering weekend in Minnesota and a stop at a local brewery was definitely in the offing.  I wanted something different so I chose Waldmann's Brewery.  It was a good choice.  Nestled in a neighborhood of houses off the main road, you'll literally stumble upon an old stone house.  It was in the fall of 1857, before Minnesota was even a state, and before the Civil War, when Waldmann's was established.  It is in the oldest surviving commercial building in St Paul to be exact, so the history here is remarkable.  To be fair, there was a long 154 year break between when Waldmann's saloon came alive again in 2017 as Waldmann's Brewery, but that doesn't matter.  

It only took me three trips here to write a blog about it.  I was always out with co-workers and forgot or just didn't have time to take a pic or two.  This time it was just me and a vendor, so I remembered and got the job done.  When in Sioux City, I've always stayed at the hotel right across the street, so going to Marto was just a no-brainer.

Being a fan of the old Hartford Whalers, I had always wanted to go to Hartford.  The fact that there was a brewery on the old Colt firearms complex in Hartford was a win for everyone.  I would've loved to tour the Colt facility during its hayday.  Samuel Colt was born in Hartford in 1814 and began making guns in 1836.  He founded Colt firearms in 1855.  As it is for gun-makers it was feast or famine.  During wartime, Colt did great, but suffered in the aftermath.  Known for innovation, Colt was the first manufacturer to offer interchangeable parts for its guns and used powerful steam engines in its plants before others were doing it.  He also was the first to build a tenement for his workers with housing, daycare, churches and food.  He established a ten hour work day with a required one hour lunch break. 

On Memorial Day weekend I took my annual trip with my brothers.  This time is was the East Coast.  We hit six states during this trip and one of the better experiences was at East Regiment Beer Company in Salem.   It is nestled in the middle of downtown and was a welcome site for my hungry stomach.  

Phallic symbols are funny, but then again, I'm a juvenile.  Naming your brewery Big Wood is probably an homage to the mighty schlong, but you could try to get away saying it is about lumberjacks or something, though no guy would believe you.  I think they did call it Big Wood because it was funny and it took big wood to launch a brewery and do it their way.  If you have a rager for craft beer and want to sell a lot of merch, it goes hand in hand.  When you call your first beer, Morning Wood Coffee Stout, there is no doubt it was the culmination of a wet dream for Big Wood.

In Canada, eh.  On a recent trip to Toronto I didn't have to search far to find a brewery to hit.  Elsinore had a commanding view of the city from its perch on a hill.  The brewery was first opened in 1983 and runs a taproom out of it's huge facility, oddly enough near an old Royal Canadian mental asylum.  Crazy, right?  The brewery stands as a monolith of older times when beer was king.  The factory was large with two smoke stacks that didn't appear to be running while we were there.  It's almost spooky now as it runs at a much lower capacity than it once did, according to the bartender, a nice older guy with a funny accent, wearing all black.  I bet the place has many secrets to tell.

I love it when a brewery has a lot of history to it's setting.  This isn't possible for many, but it really adds to the experience for me and is what I think of when I think about brew pubs.  St Paul Brewing has a home run in this regard.  Hamm's Brewing started in St Paul in 1865 by a German immigrant named, Theodore Hamm.  Hamm actually acquired the small brewery through holding the deed to a foreclosed loan from the prior owner, Andrew Keller.  Hamm's has a long tradition in Minnesota and I remember seeing Hamm's Beer commercials on tv as a kid.  An animated bear with the famous saying, "from the land of sky blue waters." were quite memorable for a kid.  At one point, Hamm's was the 5th largest brewery in the country, having expanded to San Francisco, Baltimore and Houston by the 1950's.  Shortly after their 100th anniversary, the brewery went through a series of purchases, in 1965 to Heublein, then in 1973 to a group of distributors, who sold to Olympia Brewing in 1975 and again to Pabst in 1983.   The brewery itself was traded to Stroh's at this time, who ran it until closing it in 1997, ending a 137 year run.  The brewery sat idle and was left to decay and vandalism.  A 2005 fire damaged some of the building, which was actually the original stables and carpentry shop.  In 2024 a new owner came in and reimagined the site for a new brewery, building a taproom and restaurant out of the keg room and using the stables and shop as an outdoor biergarten.  It is now the home of St Paul Brewing.  Be careful as you drive there as you might miss it, tucked back in the bowels of the old building site.  

As an advocate and lover of the craft beer scene, I have become alarmed at the sign of the times in the industry.  It has been known for some time that people, in general, are drinking less beer.  In fact, I just read something today that says even the younger generation of Germans have gone away from beer.  Scheisse!  That same trend is at work here in the US too.  My own son and his friends are proof of this trend.  Craft beer is about 13.3% of the beer market, which is a dent in the big boring brewers, but not enough apparently.  Production has been down and a decrease in the number of breweries has shaped the business for the past two years.  2024 saw a 4% decrease in beer volume and 2025 is on pace for a 5%+ decrease over 2024.  Last year 529 breweries went out of business and the numbers for this year might be sobering when it is all said and done.  I suppose that economics says this was inevitable.  The microbrew craze had been going strong for 40 years and downturns happen.  Perhaps, in some places, microbreweries were overdone, not sure on that, but it seems possible.  If you look at my outdated pictures above, these are from www.vinepair.com and show the huge growth in breweries from 250 in 1990 to 7,190 in 2016.  Today it has grown to 9,269, but declining daily.  Other economic factors have played a role too.

It was a beautiful weekend to head up to the North Shore of Minnesota and Wisconsin.  The leaves were at peak color and the weather was cool, but not cold.  I had a board meeting up that way and after the meeting, like I usually do, while everyone else headed to dinner, I hit a brewery.  I had spied Warrior Brewing on my phone while looking for a new place to try before the meeting and it was directly on the way to dinner.  

Camden Town was a bit of a surprise.  When you get off the underground and come to the surface, you may think Camden Town is run down and a b it sketchy.  In reality, it is an older part of town, but has a vibrant artistic side and is known for its street markets, music and shops.  The Camden Market is a cool area of small, mostly independent shops and eateries that is a must-see and do when you go there.  It stretches across the street in two sections, where it follows along a canal and it is here you will find 3 Locks Brewing.  We were there very early as my son was looking for anime merch, which the area is full of and even though I had searched ahead of time, I really didn't look where the brewery was exactly.  We kind of stumbled upon it a few minutes before they opened.  Their taproom over looks the canal and has outside seating along it.  It really is a great setting for a brewery.  As you can see, I took a terribly blurry picture, so no, you aren't drunk.  Are you?  

I recently visited the UK for vacation and took my opportunity to try many beers, among other things.  The last time I was there the UK was in a bit of a sea change in the pub business.  There were about 58,000 pubs in the UK in 2000.  That number has declined to around 47,000 now.  Big breweries had stepped in and bought a huge chunk of the pubs in order to control beer sales.  I've seen some different numbers, but the six biggest owned about 75% of all the pubs.  In fact, Fuller, a well known brewery, sold it's beer making operation to the Asahi Group in 2019 so it could focus on it's pub operations.  Fuller made one of the best known British beers, London Pride, that it had brewed in London since 1958.  Asahi is a Japanese beer company, which you can easily find here in the states and I drank a lot when I was in Japan a few years ago.  There were marketing agreements in place, as part of the deal, but it shows you how the pubs is where the money is.  For awhile, there were laws put in place to limit the number of pubs the big brewers could own, but that has since been repealed.  For me, the drawback is that you can only find a small selection of beers available at any pub and the food choices were the same at all of them I visited.  There are about 3,800 pubs in London and I was in only about 8, but they were either owned by Greene King or Fuller.  The beers were good, but the choices were nil.

As I left Milwaukee after going to a con with my son, I decided to hit a brew pub.  The one I chose was closed for rebranding upon reaching the property.  Google Maps, which I despise, lied to us again.  It mentioned nothing about being closed and said it was moderately busy.  First they track your every move, then openly lie to you.  I hate Google, but that is for another time.  I chose a different brewery not too far away and we were starving, so it had to have food.  When you get to the building Brewfinity is in, you ,might just think they are out of business too as it looked like a shutdown warehouse out front, but a sign directs you to the left, so I drove around the building and found the brewery.  It is tucked away, but was a nice little space for a tap room.  There were just five other people in there on a very hot Saturday, so we grabbed a spot near the front.  The bartender came right over and gave us some menus.  Since I hadn't been there before, he asked me what kind of beer I like and directed me to their flagship beer, the Sailor's Delight, which is an American Amber.  I probably would've chose this beer anyway, so it was a good call.  Biscuity and malty, just like I like it.  The beer was a nice amber color and was really good.  It finished well, not too hoppy, and smelled  just right.  American Ambers are unique in that they use American hops and derive their sweetness from the malts they use.  They are fermented in a cleaner way than their British cousins and are distinct by their balance.  I get the feeling that the hey day of IPA's is over and that vacuum will be filled by amber ales.  They are far more drinkable, yet may struggle to earn their keep as a summer beer.  Perhaps less refreshing to some drinkers as a number of IPA's can be, but I tend to think they appeal to a far broader audience of beer enthusiasts.  Every brewery makes one, they just don't experiment as deeply and wrongly, in my opinion, as they did with a rash of IPA's.  

It was a sweltering weekend in Minnesota and a stop at a local brewery was definitely in the offing.  I wanted something different so I chose Waldmann's Brewery.  It was a good choice.  Nestled in a neighborhood of houses off the main road, you'll literally stumble upon an old stone house.  It was in the fall of 1857, before Minnesota was even a state, and before the Civil War, when Waldmann's was established.  It is in the oldest surviving commercial building in St Paul to be exact, so the history here is remarkable.  To be fair, there was a long 154 year break between when Waldmann's saloon came alive again in 2017 as Waldmann's Brewery, but that doesn't matter.  

It only took me three trips here to write a blog about it.  I was always out with co-workers and forgot or just didn't have time to take a pic or two.  This time it was just me and a vendor, so I remembered and got the job done.  When in Sioux City, I've always stayed at the hotel right across the street, so going to Marto was just a no-brainer.

Being a fan of the old Hartford Whalers, I had always wanted to go to Hartford.  The fact that there was a brewery on the old Colt firearms complex in Hartford was a win for everyone.  I would've loved to tour the Colt facility during its hayday.  Samuel Colt was born in Hartford in 1814 and began making guns in 1836.  He founded Colt firearms in 1855.  As it is for gun-makers it was feast or famine.  During wartime, Colt did great, but suffered in the aftermath.  Known for innovation, Colt was the first manufacturer to offer interchangeable parts for its guns and used powerful steam engines in its plants before others were doing it.  He also was the first to build a tenement for his workers with housing, daycare, churches and food.  He established a ten hour work day with a required one hour lunch break. 

On Memorial Day weekend I took my annual trip with my brothers.  This time is was the East Coast.  We hit six states during this trip and one of the better experiences was at East Regiment Beer Company in Salem.   It is nestled in the middle of downtown and was a welcome site for my hungry stomach.  

Phallic symbols are funny, but then again, I'm a juvenile.  Naming your brewery Big Wood is probably an homage to the mighty schlong, but you could try to get away saying it is about lumberjacks or something, though no guy would believe you.  I think they did call it Big Wood because it was funny and it took big wood to launch a brewery and do it their way.  If you have a rager for craft beer and want to sell a lot of merch, it goes hand in hand.  When you call your first beer, Morning Wood Coffee Stout, there is no doubt it was the culmination of a wet dream for Big Wood.

In Canada, eh.  On a recent trip to Toronto I didn't have to search far to find a brewery to hit.  Elsinore had a commanding view of the city from its perch on a hill.  The brewery was first opened in 1983 and runs a taproom out of it's huge facility, oddly enough near an old Royal Canadian mental asylum.  Crazy, right?  The brewery stands as a monolith of older times when beer was king.  The factory was large with two smoke stacks that didn't appear to be running while we were there.  It's almost spooky now as it runs at a much lower capacity than it once did, according to the bartender, a nice older guy with a funny accent, wearing all black.  I bet the place has many secrets to tell.

I love it when a brewery has a lot of history to it's setting.  This isn't possible for many, but it really adds to the experience for me and is what I think of when I think about brew pubs.  St Paul Brewing has a home run in this regard.  Hamm's Brewing started in St Paul in 1865 by a German immigrant named, Theodore Hamm.  Hamm actually acquired the small brewery through holding the deed to a foreclosed loan from the prior owner, Andrew Keller.  Hamm's has a long tradition in Minnesota and I remember seeing Hamm's Beer commercials on tv as a kid.  An animated bear with the famous saying, "from the land of sky blue waters." were quite memorable for a kid.  At one point, Hamm's was the 5th largest brewery in the country, having expanded to San Francisco, Baltimore and Houston by the 1950's.  Shortly after their 100th anniversary, the brewery went through a series of purchases, in 1965 to Heublein, then in 1973 to a group of distributors, who sold to Olympia Brewing in 1975 and again to Pabst in 1983.   The brewery itself was traded to Stroh's at this time, who ran it until closing it in 1997, ending a 137 year run.  The brewery sat idle and was left to decay and vandalism.  A 2005 fire damaged some of the building, which was actually the original stables and carpentry shop.  In 2024 a new owner came in and reimagined the site for a new brewery, building a taproom and restaurant out of the keg room and using the stables and shop as an outdoor biergarten.  It is now the home of St Paul Brewing.  Be careful as you drive there as you might miss it, tucked back in the bowels of the old building site.  

As an advocate and lover of the craft beer scene, I have become alarmed at the sign of the times in the industry.  It has been known for some time that people, in general, are drinking less beer.  In fact, I just read something today that says even the younger generation of Germans have gone away from beer.  Scheisse!  That same trend is at work here in the US too.  My own son and his friends are proof of this trend.  Craft beer is about 13.3% of the beer market, which is a dent in the big boring brewers, but not enough apparently.  Production has been down and a decrease in the number of breweries has shaped the business for the past two years.  2024 saw a 4% decrease in beer volume and 2025 is on pace for a 5%+ decrease over 2024.  Last year 529 breweries went out of business and the numbers for this year might be sobering when it is all said and done.  I suppose that economics says this was inevitable.  The microbrew craze had been going strong for 40 years and downturns happen.  Perhaps, in some places, microbreweries were overdone, not sure on that, but it seems possible.  If you look at my outdated pictures above, these are from www.vinepair.com and show the huge growth in breweries from 250 in 1990 to 7,190 in 2016.  Today it has grown to 9,269, but declining daily.  Other economic factors have played a role too.

It was a beautiful weekend to head up to the North Shore of Minnesota and Wisconsin.  The leaves were at peak color and the weather was cool, but not cold.  I had a board meeting up that way and after the meeting, like I usually do, while everyone else headed to dinner, I hit a brewery.  I had spied Warrior Brewing on my phone while looking for a new place to try before the meeting and it was directly on the way to dinner.  

Camden Town was a bit of a surprise.  When you get off the underground and come to the surface, you may think Camden Town is run down and a b it sketchy.  In reality, it is an older part of town, but has a vibrant artistic side and is known for its street markets, music and shops.  The Camden Market is a cool area of small, mostly independent shops and eateries that is a must-see and do when you go there.  It stretches across the street in two sections, where it follows along a canal and it is here you will find 3 Locks Brewing.  We were there very early as my son was looking for anime merch, which the area is full of and even though I had searched ahead of time, I really didn't look where the brewery was exactly.  We kind of stumbled upon it a few minutes before they opened.  Their taproom over looks the canal and has outside seating along it.  It really is a great setting for a brewery.  As you can see, I took a terribly blurry picture, so no, you aren't drunk.  Are you?  

I recently visited the UK for vacation and took my opportunity to try many beers, among other things.  The last time I was there the UK was in a bit of a sea change in the pub business.  There were about 58,000 pubs in the UK in 2000.  That number has declined to around 47,000 now.  Big breweries had stepped in and bought a huge chunk of the pubs in order to control beer sales.  I've seen some different numbers, but the six biggest owned about 75% of all the pubs.  In fact, Fuller, a well known brewery, sold it's beer making operation to the Asahi Group in 2019 so it could focus on it's pub operations.  Fuller made one of the best known British beers, London Pride, that it had brewed in London since 1958.  Asahi is a Japanese beer company, which you can easily find here in the states and I drank a lot when I was in Japan a few years ago.  There were marketing agreements in place, as part of the deal, but it shows you how the pubs is where the money is.  For awhile, there were laws put in place to limit the number of pubs the big brewers could own, but that has since been repealed.  For me, the drawback is that you can only find a small selection of beers available at any pub and the food choices were the same at all of them I visited.  There are about 3,800 pubs in London and I was in only about 8, but they were either owned by Greene King or Fuller.  The beers were good, but the choices were nil.

As I left Milwaukee after going to a con with my son, I decided to hit a brew pub.  The one I chose was closed for rebranding upon reaching the property.  Google Maps, which I despise, lied to us again.  It mentioned nothing about being closed and said it was moderately busy.  First they track your every move, then openly lie to you.  I hate Google, but that is for another time.  I chose a different brewery not too far away and we were starving, so it had to have food.  When you get to the building Brewfinity is in, you ,might just think they are out of business too as it looked like a shutdown warehouse out front, but a sign directs you to the left, so I drove around the building and found the brewery.  It is tucked away, but was a nice little space for a tap room.  There were just five other people in there on a very hot Saturday, so we grabbed a spot near the front.  The bartender came right over and gave us some menus.  Since I hadn't been there before, he asked me what kind of beer I like and directed me to their flagship beer, the Sailor's Delight, which is an American Amber.  I probably would've chose this beer anyway, so it was a good call.  Biscuity and malty, just like I like it.  The beer was a nice amber color and was really good.  It finished well, not too hoppy, and smelled  just right.  American Ambers are unique in that they use American hops and derive their sweetness from the malts they use.  They are fermented in a cleaner way than their British cousins and are distinct by their balance.  I get the feeling that the hey day of IPA's is over and that vacuum will be filled by amber ales.  They are far more drinkable, yet may struggle to earn their keep as a summer beer.  Perhaps less refreshing to some drinkers as a number of IPA's can be, but I tend to think they appeal to a far broader audience of beer enthusiasts.  Every brewery makes one, they just don't experiment as deeply and wrongly, in my opinion, as they did with a rash of IPA's.  

It was a sweltering weekend in Minnesota and a stop at a local brewery was definitely in the offing.  I wanted something different so I chose Waldmann's Brewery.  It was a good choice.  Nestled in a neighborhood of houses off the main road, you'll literally stumble upon an old stone house.  It was in the fall of 1857, before Minnesota was even a state, and before the Civil War, when Waldmann's was established.  It is in the oldest surviving commercial building in St Paul to be exact, so the history here is remarkable.  To be fair, there was a long 154 year break between when Waldmann's saloon came alive again in 2017 as Waldmann's Brewery, but that doesn't matter.  

It only took me three trips here to write a blog about it.  I was always out with co-workers and forgot or just didn't have time to take a pic or two.  This time it was just me and a vendor, so I remembered and got the job done.  When in Sioux City, I've always stayed at the hotel right across the street, so going to Marto was just a no-brainer.

Being a fan of the old Hartford Whalers, I had always wanted to go to Hartford.  The fact that there was a brewery on the old Colt firearms complex in Hartford was a win for everyone.  I would've loved to tour the Colt facility during its hayday.  Samuel Colt was born in Hartford in 1814 and began making guns in 1836.  He founded Colt firearms in 1855.  As it is for gun-makers it was feast or famine.  During wartime, Colt did great, but suffered in the aftermath.  Known for innovation, Colt was the first manufacturer to offer interchangeable parts for its guns and used powerful steam engines in its plants before others were doing it.  He also was the first to build a tenement for his workers with housing, daycare, churches and food.  He established a ten hour work day with a required one hour lunch break. 

On Memorial Day weekend I took my annual trip with my brothers.  This time is was the East Coast.  We hit six states during this trip and one of the better experiences was at East Regiment Beer Company in Salem.   It is nestled in the middle of downtown and was a welcome site for my hungry stomach.  

Phallic symbols are funny, but then again, I'm a juvenile.  Naming your brewery Big Wood is probably an homage to the mighty schlong, but you could try to get away saying it is about lumberjacks or something, though no guy would believe you.  I think they did call it Big Wood because it was funny and it took big wood to launch a brewery and do it their way.  If you have a rager for craft beer and want to sell a lot of merch, it goes hand in hand.  When you call your first beer, Morning Wood Coffee Stout, there is no doubt it was the culmination of a wet dream for Big Wood.

In Canada, eh.  On a recent trip to Toronto I didn't have to search far to find a brewery to hit.  Elsinore had a commanding view of the city from its perch on a hill.  The brewery was first opened in 1983 and runs a taproom out of it's huge facility, oddly enough near an old Royal Canadian mental asylum.  Crazy, right?  The brewery stands as a monolith of older times when beer was king.  The factory was large with two smoke stacks that didn't appear to be running while we were there.  It's almost spooky now as it runs at a much lower capacity than it once did, according to the bartender, a nice older guy with a funny accent, wearing all black.  I bet the place has many secrets to tell.

I love it when a brewery has a lot of history to it's setting.  This isn't possible for many, but it really adds to the experience for me and is what I think of when I think about brew pubs.  St Paul Brewing has a home run in this regard.  Hamm's Brewing started in St Paul in 1865 by a German immigrant named, Theodore Hamm.  Hamm actually acquired the small brewery through holding the deed to a foreclosed loan from the prior owner, Andrew Keller.  Hamm's has a long tradition in Minnesota and I remember seeing Hamm's Beer commercials on tv as a kid.  An animated bear with the famous saying, "from the land of sky blue waters." were quite memorable for a kid.  At one point, Hamm's was the 5th largest brewery in the country, having expanded to San Francisco, Baltimore and Houston by the 1950's.  Shortly after their 100th anniversary, the brewery went through a series of purchases, in 1965 to Heublein, then in 1973 to a group of distributors, who sold to Olympia Brewing in 1975 and again to Pabst in 1983.   The brewery itself was traded to Stroh's at this time, who ran it until closing it in 1997, ending a 137 year run.  The brewery sat idle and was left to decay and vandalism.  A 2005 fire damaged some of the building, which was actually the original stables and carpentry shop.  In 2024 a new owner came in and reimagined the site for a new brewery, building a taproom and restaurant out of the keg room and using the stables and shop as an outdoor biergarten.  It is now the home of St Paul Brewing.  Be careful as you drive there as you might miss it, tucked back in the bowels of the old building site.  

As an advocate and lover of the craft beer scene, I have become alarmed at the sign of the times in the industry.  It has been known for some time that people, in general, are drinking less beer.  In fact, I just read something today that says even the younger generation of Germans have gone away from beer.  Scheisse!  That same trend is at work here in the US too.  My own son and his friends are proof of this trend.  Craft beer is about 13.3% of the beer market, which is a dent in the big boring brewers, but not enough apparently.  Production has been down and a decrease in the number of breweries has shaped the business for the past two years.  2024 saw a 4% decrease in beer volume and 2025 is on pace for a 5%+ decrease over 2024.  Last year 529 breweries went out of business and the numbers for this year might be sobering when it is all said and done.  I suppose that economics says this was inevitable.  The microbrew craze had been going strong for 40 years and downturns happen.  Perhaps, in some places, microbreweries were overdone, not sure on that, but it seems possible.  If you look at my outdated pictures above, these are from www.vinepair.com and show the huge growth in breweries from 250 in 1990 to 7,190 in 2016.  Today it has grown to 9,269, but declining daily.  Other economic factors have played a role too.

It was a beautiful weekend to head up to the North Shore of Minnesota and Wisconsin.  The leaves were at peak color and the weather was cool, but not cold.  I had a board meeting up that way and after the meeting, like I usually do, while everyone else headed to dinner, I hit a brewery.  I had spied Warrior Brewing on my phone while looking for a new place to try before the meeting and it was directly on the way to dinner.  

Camden Town was a bit of a surprise.  When you get off the underground and come to the surface, you may think Camden Town is run down and a b it sketchy.  In reality, it is an older part of town, but has a vibrant artistic side and is known for its street markets, music and shops.  The Camden Market is a cool area of small, mostly independent shops and eateries that is a must-see and do when you go there.  It stretches across the street in two sections, where it follows along a canal and it is here you will find 3 Locks Brewing.  We were there very early as my son was looking for anime merch, which the area is full of and even though I had searched ahead of time, I really didn't look where the brewery was exactly.  We kind of stumbled upon it a few minutes before they opened.  Their taproom over looks the canal and has outside seating along it.  It really is a great setting for a brewery.  As you can see, I took a terribly blurry picture, so no, you aren't drunk.  Are you?  

I recently visited the UK for vacation and took my opportunity to try many beers, among other things.  The last time I was there the UK was in a bit of a sea change in the pub business.  There were about 58,000 pubs in the UK in 2000.  That number has declined to around 47,000 now.  Big breweries had stepped in and bought a huge chunk of the pubs in order to control beer sales.  I've seen some different numbers, but the six biggest owned about 75% of all the pubs.  In fact, Fuller, a well known brewery, sold it's beer making operation to the Asahi Group in 2019 so it could focus on it's pub operations.  Fuller made one of the best known British beers, London Pride, that it had brewed in London since 1958.  Asahi is a Japanese beer company, which you can easily find here in the states and I drank a lot when I was in Japan a few years ago.  There were marketing agreements in place, as part of the deal, but it shows you how the pubs is where the money is.  For awhile, there were laws put in place to limit the number of pubs the big brewers could own, but that has since been repealed.  For me, the drawback is that you can only find a small selection of beers available at any pub and the food choices were the same at all of them I visited.  There are about 3,800 pubs in London and I was in only about 8, but they were either owned by Greene King or Fuller.  The beers were good, but the choices were nil.

As I left Milwaukee after going to a con with my son, I decided to hit a brew pub.  The one I chose was closed for rebranding upon reaching the property.  Google Maps, which I despise, lied to us again.  It mentioned nothing about being closed and said it was moderately busy.  First they track your every move, then openly lie to you.  I hate Google, but that is for another time.  I chose a different brewery not too far away and we were starving, so it had to have food.  When you get to the building Brewfinity is in, you ,might just think they are out of business too as it looked like a shutdown warehouse out front, but a sign directs you to the left, so I drove around the building and found the brewery.  It is tucked away, but was a nice little space for a tap room.  There were just five other people in there on a very hot Saturday, so we grabbed a spot near the front.  The bartender came right over and gave us some menus.  Since I hadn't been there before, he asked me what kind of beer I like and directed me to their flagship beer, the Sailor's Delight, which is an American Amber.  I probably would've chose this beer anyway, so it was a good call.  Biscuity and malty, just like I like it.  The beer was a nice amber color and was really good.  It finished well, not too hoppy, and smelled  just right.  American Ambers are unique in that they use American hops and derive their sweetness from the malts they use.  They are fermented in a cleaner way than their British cousins and are distinct by their balance.  I get the feeling that the hey day of IPA's is over and that vacuum will be filled by amber ales.  They are far more drinkable, yet may struggle to earn their keep as a summer beer.  Perhaps less refreshing to some drinkers as a number of IPA's can be, but I tend to think they appeal to a far broader audience of beer enthusiasts.  Every brewery makes one, they just don't experiment as deeply and wrongly, in my opinion, as they did with a rash of IPA's.  

It was a sweltering weekend in Minnesota and a stop at a local brewery was definitely in the offing.  I wanted something different so I chose Waldmann's Brewery.  It was a good choice.  Nestled in a neighborhood of houses off the main road, you'll literally stumble upon an old stone house.  It was in the fall of 1857, before Minnesota was even a state, and before the Civil War, when Waldmann's was established.  It is in the oldest surviving commercial building in St Paul to be exact, so the history here is remarkable.  To be fair, there was a long 154 year break between when Waldmann's saloon came alive again in 2017 as Waldmann's Brewery, but that doesn't matter.  

It only took me three trips here to write a blog about it.  I was always out with co-workers and forgot or just didn't have time to take a pic or two.  This time it was just me and a vendor, so I remembered and got the job done.  When in Sioux City, I've always stayed at the hotel right across the street, so going to Marto was just a no-brainer.

Being a fan of the old Hartford Whalers, I had always wanted to go to Hartford.  The fact that there was a brewery on the old Colt firearms complex in Hartford was a win for everyone.  I would've loved to tour the Colt facility during its hayday.  Samuel Colt was born in Hartford in 1814 and began making guns in 1836.  He founded Colt firearms in 1855.  As it is for gun-makers it was feast or famine.  During wartime, Colt did great, but suffered in the aftermath.  Known for innovation, Colt was the first manufacturer to offer interchangeable parts for its guns and used powerful steam engines in its plants before others were doing it.  He also was the first to build a tenement for his workers with housing, daycare, churches and food.  He established a ten hour work day with a required one hour lunch break. 

On Memorial Day weekend I took my annual trip with my brothers.  This time is was the East Coast.  We hit six states during this trip and one of the better experiences was at East Regiment Beer Company in Salem.   It is nestled in the middle of downtown and was a welcome site for my hungry stomach.  

Phallic symbols are funny, but then again, I'm a juvenile.  Naming your brewery Big Wood is probably an homage to the mighty schlong, but you could try to get away saying it is about lumberjacks or something, though no guy would believe you.  I think they did call it Big Wood because it was funny and it took big wood to launch a brewery and do it their way.  If you have a rager for craft beer and want to sell a lot of merch, it goes hand in hand.  When you call your first beer, Morning Wood Coffee Stout, there is no doubt it was the culmination of a wet dream for Big Wood.

In Canada, eh.  On a recent trip to Toronto I didn't have to search far to find a brewery to hit.  Elsinore had a commanding view of the city from its perch on a hill.  The brewery was first opened in 1983 and runs a taproom out of it's huge facility, oddly enough near an old Royal Canadian mental asylum.  Crazy, right?  The brewery stands as a monolith of older times when beer was king.  The factory was large with two smoke stacks that didn't appear to be running while we were there.  It's almost spooky now as it runs at a much lower capacity than it once did, according to the bartender, a nice older guy with a funny accent, wearing all black.  I bet the place has many secrets to tell.

I love it when a brewery has a lot of history to it's setting.  This isn't possible for many, but it really adds to the experience for me and is what I think of when I think about brew pubs.  St Paul Brewing has a home run in this regard.  Hamm's Brewing started in St Paul in 1865 by a German immigrant named, Theodore Hamm.  Hamm actually acquired the small brewery through holding the deed to a foreclosed loan from the prior owner, Andrew Keller.  Hamm's has a long tradition in Minnesota and I remember seeing Hamm's Beer commercials on tv as a kid.  An animated bear with the famous saying, "from the land of sky blue waters." were quite memorable for a kid.  At one point, Hamm's was the 5th largest brewery in the country, having expanded to San Francisco, Baltimore and Houston by the 1950's.  Shortly after their 100th anniversary, the brewery went through a series of purchases, in 1965 to Heublein, then in 1973 to a group of distributors, who sold to Olympia Brewing in 1975 and again to Pabst in 1983.   The brewery itself was traded to Stroh's at this time, who ran it until closing it in 1997, ending a 137 year run.  The brewery sat idle and was left to decay and vandalism.  A 2005 fire damaged some of the building, which was actually the original stables and carpentry shop.  In 2024 a new owner came in and reimagined the site for a new brewery, building a taproom and restaurant out of the keg room and using the stables and shop as an outdoor biergarten.  It is now the home of St Paul Brewing.  Be careful as you drive there as you might miss it, tucked back in the bowels of the old building site.  

As an advocate and lover of the craft beer scene, I have become alarmed at the sign of the times in the industry.  It has been known for some time that people, in general, are drinking less beer.  In fact, I just read something today that says even the younger generation of Germans have gone away from beer.  Scheisse!  That same trend is at work here in the US too.  My own son and his friends are proof of this trend.  Craft beer is about 13.3% of the beer market, which is a dent in the big boring brewers, but not enough apparently.  Production has been down and a decrease in the number of breweries has shaped the business for the past two years.  2024 saw a 4% decrease in beer volume and 2025 is on pace for a 5%+ decrease over 2024.  Last year 529 breweries went out of business and the numbers for this year might be sobering when it is all said and done.  I suppose that economics says this was inevitable.  The microbrew craze had been going strong for 40 years and downturns happen.  Perhaps, in some places, microbreweries were overdone, not sure on that, but it seems possible.  If you look at my outdated pictures above, these are from www.vinepair.com and show the huge growth in breweries from 250 in 1990 to 7,190 in 2016.  Today it has grown to 9,269, but declining daily.  Other economic factors have played a role too.

It was a beautiful weekend to head up to the North Shore of Minnesota and Wisconsin.  The leaves were at peak color and the weather was cool, but not cold.  I had a board meeting up that way and after the meeting, like I usually do, while everyone else headed to dinner, I hit a brewery.  I had spied Warrior Brewing on my phone while looking for a new place to try before the meeting and it was directly on the way to dinner.  

Camden Town was a bit of a surprise.  When you get off the underground and come to the surface, you may think Camden Town is run down and a b it sketchy.  In reality, it is an older part of town, but has a vibrant artistic side and is known for its street markets, music and shops.  The Camden Market is a cool area of small, mostly independent shops and eateries that is a must-see and do when you go there.  It stretches across the street in two sections, where it follows along a canal and it is here you will find 3 Locks Brewing.  We were there very early as my son was looking for anime merch, which the area is full of and even though I had searched ahead of time, I really didn't look where the brewery was exactly.  We kind of stumbled upon it a few minutes before they opened.  Their taproom over looks the canal and has outside seating along it.  It really is a great setting for a brewery.  As you can see, I took a terribly blurry picture, so no, you aren't drunk.  Are you?  

I recently visited the UK for vacation and took my opportunity to try many beers, among other things.  The last time I was there the UK was in a bit of a sea change in the pub business.  There were about 58,000 pubs in the UK in 2000.  That number has declined to around 47,000 now.  Big breweries had stepped in and bought a huge chunk of the pubs in order to control beer sales.  I've seen some different numbers, but the six biggest owned about 75% of all the pubs.  In fact, Fuller, a well known brewery, sold it's beer making operation to the Asahi Group in 2019 so it could focus on it's pub operations.  Fuller made one of the best known British beers, London Pride, that it had brewed in London since 1958.  Asahi is a Japanese beer company, which you can easily find here in the states and I drank a lot when I was in Japan a few years ago.  There were marketing agreements in place, as part of the deal, but it shows you how the pubs is where the money is.  For awhile, there were laws put in place to limit the number of pubs the big brewers could own, but that has since been repealed.  For me, the drawback is that you can only find a small selection of beers available at any pub and the food choices were the same at all of them I visited.  There are about 3,800 pubs in London and I was in only about 8, but they were either owned by Greene King or Fuller.  The beers were good, but the choices were nil.

As I left Milwaukee after going to a con with my son, I decided to hit a brew pub.  The one I chose was closed for rebranding upon reaching the property.  Google Maps, which I despise, lied to us again.  It mentioned nothing about being closed and said it was moderately busy.  First they track your every move, then openly lie to you.  I hate Google, but that is for another time.  I chose a different brewery not too far away and we were starving, so it had to have food.  When you get to the building Brewfinity is in, you ,might just think they are out of business too as it looked like a shutdown warehouse out front, but a sign directs you to the left, so I drove around the building and found the brewery.  It is tucked away, but was a nice little space for a tap room.  There were just five other people in there on a very hot Saturday, so we grabbed a spot near the front.  The bartender came right over and gave us some menus.  Since I hadn't been there before, he asked me what kind of beer I like and directed me to their flagship beer, the Sailor's Delight, which is an American Amber.  I probably would've chose this beer anyway, so it was a good call.  Biscuity and malty, just like I like it.  The beer was a nice amber color and was really good.  It finished well, not too hoppy, and smelled  just right.  American Ambers are unique in that they use American hops and derive their sweetness from the malts they use.  They are fermented in a cleaner way than their British cousins and are distinct by their balance.  I get the feeling that the hey day of IPA's is over and that vacuum will be filled by amber ales.  They are far more drinkable, yet may struggle to earn their keep as a summer beer.  Perhaps less refreshing to some drinkers as a number of IPA's can be, but I tend to think they appeal to a far broader audience of beer enthusiasts.  Every brewery makes one, they just don't experiment as deeply and wrongly, in my opinion, as they did with a rash of IPA's.  

It was a sweltering weekend in Minnesota and a stop at a local brewery was definitely in the offing.  I wanted something different so I chose Waldmann's Brewery.  It was a good choice.  Nestled in a neighborhood of houses off the main road, you'll literally stumble upon an old stone house.  It was in the fall of 1857, before Minnesota was even a state, and before the Civil War, when Waldmann's was established.  It is in the oldest surviving commercial building in St Paul to be exact, so the history here is remarkable.  To be fair, there was a long 154 year break between when Waldmann's saloon came alive again in 2017 as Waldmann's Brewery, but that doesn't matter.  

It only took me three trips here to write a blog about it.  I was always out with co-workers and forgot or just didn't have time to take a pic or two.  This time it was just me and a vendor, so I remembered and got the job done.  When in Sioux City, I've always stayed at the hotel right across the street, so going to Marto was just a no-brainer.

Being a fan of the old Hartford Whalers, I had always wanted to go to Hartford.  The fact that there was a brewery on the old Colt firearms complex in Hartford was a win for everyone.  I would've loved to tour the Colt facility during its hayday.  Samuel Colt was born in Hartford in 1814 and began making guns in 1836.  He founded Colt firearms in 1855.  As it is for gun-makers it was feast or famine.  During wartime, Colt did great, but suffered in the aftermath.  Known for innovation, Colt was the first manufacturer to offer interchangeable parts for its guns and used powerful steam engines in its plants before others were doing it.  He also was the first to build a tenement for his workers with housing, daycare, churches and food.  He established a ten hour work day with a required one hour lunch break. 

On Memorial Day weekend I took my annual trip with my brothers.  This time is was the East Coast.  We hit six states during this trip and one of the better experiences was at East Regiment Beer Company in Salem.   It is nestled in the middle of downtown and was a welcome site for my hungry stomach.  

Phallic symbols are funny, but then again, I'm a juvenile.  Naming your brewery Big Wood is probably an homage to the mighty schlong, but you could try to get away saying it is about lumberjacks or something, though no guy would believe you.  I think they did call it Big Wood because it was funny and it took big wood to launch a brewery and do it their way.  If you have a rager for craft beer and want to sell a lot of merch, it goes hand in hand.  When you call your first beer, Morning Wood Coffee Stout, there is no doubt it was the culmination of a wet dream for Big Wood.

In Canada, eh.  On a recent trip to Toronto I didn't have to search far to find a brewery to hit.  Elsinore had a commanding view of the city from its perch on a hill.  The brewery was first opened in 1983 and runs a taproom out of it's huge facility, oddly enough near an old Royal Canadian mental asylum.  Crazy, right?  The brewery stands as a monolith of older times when beer was king.  The factory was large with two smoke stacks that didn't appear to be running while we were there.  It's almost spooky now as it runs at a much lower capacity than it once did, according to the bartender, a nice older guy with a funny accent, wearing all black.  I bet the place has many secrets to tell.

I love it when a brewery has a lot of history to it's setting.  This isn't possible for many, but it really adds to the experience for me and is what I think of when I think about brew pubs.  St Paul Brewing has a home run in this regard.  Hamm's Brewing started in St Paul in 1865 by a German immigrant named, Theodore Hamm.  Hamm actually acquired the small brewery through holding the deed to a foreclosed loan from the prior owner, Andrew Keller.  Hamm's has a long tradition in Minnesota and I remember seeing Hamm's Beer commercials on tv as a kid.  An animated bear with the famous saying, "from the land of sky blue waters." were quite memorable for a kid.  At one point, Hamm's was the 5th largest brewery in the country, having expanded to San Francisco, Baltimore and Houston by the 1950's.  Shortly after their 100th anniversary, the brewery went through a series of purchases, in 1965 to Heublein, then in 1973 to a group of distributors, who sold to Olympia Brewing in 1975 and again to Pabst in 1983.   The brewery itself was traded to Stroh's at this time, who ran it until closing it in 1997, ending a 137 year run.  The brewery sat idle and was left to decay and vandalism.  A 2005 fire damaged some of the building, which was actually the original stables and carpentry shop.  In 2024 a new owner came in and reimagined the site for a new brewery, building a taproom and restaurant out of the keg room and using the stables and shop as an outdoor biergarten.  It is now the home of St Paul Brewing.  Be careful as you drive there as you might miss it, tucked back in the bowels of the old building site.  

As an advocate and lover of the craft beer scene, I have become alarmed at the sign of the times in the industry.  It has been known for some time that people, in general, are drinking less beer.  In fact, I just read something today that says even the younger generation of Germans have gone away from beer.  Scheisse!  That same trend is at work here in the US too.  My own son and his friends are proof of this trend.  Craft beer is about 13.3% of the beer market, which is a dent in the big boring brewers, but not enough apparently.  Production has been down and a decrease in the number of breweries has shaped the business for the past two years.  2024 saw a 4% decrease in beer volume and 2025 is on pace for a 5%+ decrease over 2024.  Last year 529 breweries went out of business and the numbers for this year might be sobering when it is all said and done.  I suppose that economics says this was inevitable.  The microbrew craze had been going strong for 40 years and downturns happen.  Perhaps, in some places, microbreweries were overdone, not sure on that, but it seems possible.  If you look at my outdated pictures above, these are from www.vinepair.com and show the huge growth in breweries from 250 in 1990 to 7,190 in 2016.  Today it has grown to 9,269, but declining daily.  Other economic factors have played a role too.

It was a beautiful weekend to head up to the North Shore of Minnesota and Wisconsin.  The leaves were at peak color and the weather was cool, but not cold.  I had a board meeting up that way and after the meeting, like I usually do, while everyone else headed to dinner, I hit a brewery.  I had spied Warrior Brewing on my phone while looking for a new place to try before the meeting and it was directly on the way to dinner.  

Camden Town was a bit of a surprise.  When you get off the underground and come to the surface, you may think Camden Town is run down and a b it sketchy.  In reality, it is an older part of town, but has a vibrant artistic side and is known for its street markets, music and shops.  The Camden Market is a cool area of small, mostly independent shops and eateries that is a must-see and do when you go there.  It stretches across the street in two sections, where it follows along a canal and it is here you will find 3 Locks Brewing.  We were there very early as my son was looking for anime merch, which the area is full of and even though I had searched ahead of time, I really didn't look where the brewery was exactly.  We kind of stumbled upon it a few minutes before they opened.  Their taproom over looks the canal and has outside seating along it.  It really is a great setting for a brewery.  As you can see, I took a terribly blurry picture, so no, you aren't drunk.  Are you?  

I recently visited the UK for vacation and took my opportunity to try many beers, among other things.  The last time I was there the UK was in a bit of a sea change in the pub business.  There were about 58,000 pubs in the UK in 2000.  That number has declined to around 47,000 now.  Big breweries had stepped in and bought a huge chunk of the pubs in order to control beer sales.  I've seen some different numbers, but the six biggest owned about 75% of all the pubs.  In fact, Fuller, a well known brewery, sold it's beer making operation to the Asahi Group in 2019 so it could focus on it's pub operations.  Fuller made one of the best known British beers, London Pride, that it had brewed in London since 1958.  Asahi is a Japanese beer company, which you can easily find here in the states and I drank a lot when I was in Japan a few years ago.  There were marketing agreements in place, as part of the deal, but it shows you how the pubs is where the money is.  For awhile, there were laws put in place to limit the number of pubs the big brewers could own, but that has since been repealed.  For me, the drawback is that you can only find a small selection of beers available at any pub and the food choices were the same at all of them I visited.  There are about 3,800 pubs in London and I was in only about 8, but they were either owned by Greene King or Fuller.  The beers were good, but the choices were nil.

As I left Milwaukee after going to a con with my son, I decided to hit a brew pub.  The one I chose was closed for rebranding upon reaching the property.  Google Maps, which I despise, lied to us again.  It mentioned nothing about being closed and said it was moderately busy.  First they track your every move, then openly lie to you.  I hate Google, but that is for another time.  I chose a different brewery not too far away and we were starving, so it had to have food.  When you get to the building Brewfinity is in, you ,might just think they are out of business too as it looked like a shutdown warehouse out front, but a sign directs you to the left, so I drove around the building and found the brewery.  It is tucked away, but was a nice little space for a tap room.  There were just five other people in there on a very hot Saturday, so we grabbed a spot near the front.  The bartender came right over and gave us some menus.  Since I hadn't been there before, he asked me what kind of beer I like and directed me to their flagship beer, the Sailor's Delight, which is an American Amber.  I probably would've chose this beer anyway, so it was a good call.  Biscuity and malty, just like I like it.  The beer was a nice amber color and was really good.  It finished well, not too hoppy, and smelled  just right.  American Ambers are unique in that they use American hops and derive their sweetness from the malts they use.  They are fermented in a cleaner way than their British cousins and are distinct by their balance.  I get the feeling that the hey day of IPA's is over and that vacuum will be filled by amber ales.  They are far more drinkable, yet may struggle to earn their keep as a summer beer.  Perhaps less refreshing to some drinkers as a number of IPA's can be, but I tend to think they appeal to a far broader audience of beer enthusiasts.  Every brewery makes one, they just don't experiment as deeply and wrongly, in my opinion, as they did with a rash of IPA's.  

It was a sweltering weekend in Minnesota and a stop at a local brewery was definitely in the offing.  I wanted something different so I chose Waldmann's Brewery.  It was a good choice.  Nestled in a neighborhood of houses off the main road, you'll literally stumble upon an old stone house.  It was in the fall of 1857, before Minnesota was even a state, and before the Civil War, when Waldmann's was established.  It is in the oldest surviving commercial building in St Paul to be exact, so the history here is remarkable.  To be fair, there was a long 154 year break between when Waldmann's saloon came alive again in 2017 as Waldmann's Brewery, but that doesn't matter.  

It only took me three trips here to write a blog about it.  I was always out with co-workers and forgot or just didn't have time to take a pic or two.  This time it was just me and a vendor, so I remembered and got the job done.  When in Sioux City, I've always stayed at the hotel right across the street, so going to Marto was just a no-brainer.

Being a fan of the old Hartford Whalers, I had always wanted to go to Hartford.  The fact that there was a brewery on the old Colt firearms complex in Hartford was a win for everyone.  I would've loved to tour the Colt facility during its hayday.  Samuel Colt was born in Hartford in 1814 and began making guns in 1836.  He founded Colt firearms in 1855.  As it is for gun-makers it was feast or famine.  During wartime, Colt did great, but suffered in the aftermath.  Known for innovation, Colt was the first manufacturer to offer interchangeable parts for its guns and used powerful steam engines in its plants before others were doing it.  He also was the first to build a tenement for his workers with housing, daycare, churches and food.  He established a ten hour work day with a required one hour lunch break. 

On Memorial Day weekend I took my annual trip with my brothers.  This time is was the East Coast.  We hit six states during this trip and one of the better experiences was at East Regiment Beer Company in Salem.   It is nestled in the middle of downtown and was a welcome site for my hungry stomach.  

Phallic symbols are funny, but then again, I'm a juvenile.  Naming your brewery Big Wood is probably an homage to the mighty schlong, but you could try to get away saying it is about lumberjacks or something, though no guy would believe you.  I think they did call it Big Wood because it was funny and it took big wood to launch a brewery and do it their way.  If you have a rager for craft beer and want to sell a lot of merch, it goes hand in hand.  When you call your first beer, Morning Wood Coffee Stout, there is no doubt it was the culmination of a wet dream for Big Wood.

In Canada, eh.  On a recent trip to Toronto I didn't have to search far to find a brewery to hit.  Elsinore had a commanding view of the city from its perch on a hill.  The brewery was first opened in 1983 and runs a taproom out of it's huge facility, oddly enough near an old Royal Canadian mental asylum.  Crazy, right?  The brewery stands as a monolith of older times when beer was king.  The factory was large with two smoke stacks that didn't appear to be running while we were there.  It's almost spooky now as it runs at a much lower capacity than it once did, according to the bartender, a nice older guy with a funny accent, wearing all black.  I bet the place has many secrets to tell.

I love it when a brewery has a lot of history to it's setting.  This isn't possible for many, but it really adds to the experience for me and is what I think of when I think about brew pubs.  St Paul Brewing has a home run in this regard.  Hamm's Brewing started in St Paul in 1865 by a German immigrant named, Theodore Hamm.  Hamm actually acquired the small brewery through holding the deed to a foreclosed loan from the prior owner, Andrew Keller.  Hamm's has a long tradition in Minnesota and I remember seeing Hamm's Beer commercials on tv as a kid.  An animated bear with the famous saying, "from the land of sky blue waters." were quite memorable for a kid.  At one point, Hamm's was the 5th largest brewery in the country, having expanded to San Francisco, Baltimore and Houston by the 1950's.  Shortly after their 100th anniversary, the brewery went through a series of purchases, in 1965 to Heublein, then in 1973 to a group of distributors, who sold to Olympia Brewing in 1975 and again to Pabst in 1983.   The brewery itself was traded to Stroh's at this time, who ran it until closing it in 1997, ending a 137 year run.  The brewery sat idle and was left to decay and vandalism.  A 2005 fire damaged some of the building, which was actually the original stables and carpentry shop.  In 2024 a new owner came in and reimagined the site for a new brewery, building a taproom and restaurant out of the keg room and using the stables and shop as an outdoor biergarten.  It is now the home of St Paul Brewing.  Be careful as you drive there as you might miss it, tucked back in the bowels of the old building site.  

As an advocate and lover of the craft beer scene, I have become alarmed at the sign of the times in the industry.  It has been known for some time that people, in general, are drinking less beer.  In fact, I just read something today that says even the younger generation of Germans have gone away from beer.  Scheisse!  That same trend is at work here in the US too.  My own son and his friends are proof of this trend.  Craft beer is about 13.3% of the beer market, which is a dent in the big boring brewers, but not enough apparently.  Production has been down and a decrease in the number of breweries has shaped the business for the past two years.  2024 saw a 4% decrease in beer volume and 2025 is on pace for a 5%+ decrease over 2024.  Last year 529 breweries went out of business and the numbers for this year might be sobering when it is all said and done.  I suppose that economics says this was inevitable.  The microbrew craze had been going strong for 40 years and downturns happen.  Perhaps, in some places, microbreweries were overdone, not sure on that, but it seems possible.  If you look at my outdated pictures above, these are from www.vinepair.com and show the huge growth in breweries from 250 in 1990 to 7,190 in 2016.  Today it has grown to 9,269, but declining daily.  Other economic factors have played a role too.

It was a beautiful weekend to head up to the North Shore of Minnesota and Wisconsin.  The leaves were at peak color and the weather was cool, but not cold.  I had a board meeting up that way and after the meeting, like I usually do, while everyone else headed to dinner, I hit a brewery.  I had spied Warrior Brewing on my phone while looking for a new place to try before the meeting and it was directly on the way to dinner.  

Camden Town was a bit of a surprise.  When you get off the underground and come to the surface, you may think Camden Town is run down and a b it sketchy.  In reality, it is an older part of town, but has a vibrant artistic side and is known for its street markets, music and shops.  The Camden Market is a cool area of small, mostly independent shops and eateries that is a must-see and do when you go there.  It stretches across the street in two sections, where it follows along a canal and it is here you will find 3 Locks Brewing.  We were there very early as my son was looking for anime merch, which the area is full of and even though I had searched ahead of time, I really didn't look where the brewery was exactly.  We kind of stumbled upon it a few minutes before they opened.  Their taproom over looks the canal and has outside seating along it.  It really is a great setting for a brewery.  As you can see, I took a terribly blurry picture, so no, you aren't drunk.  Are you?  

I recently visited the UK for vacation and took my opportunity to try many beers, among other things.  The last time I was there the UK was in a bit of a sea change in the pub business.  There were about 58,000 pubs in the UK in 2000.  That number has declined to around 47,000 now.  Big breweries had stepped in and bought a huge chunk of the pubs in order to control beer sales.  I've seen some different numbers, but the six biggest owned about 75% of all the pubs.  In fact, Fuller, a well known brewery, sold it's beer making operation to the Asahi Group in 2019 so it could focus on it's pub operations.  Fuller made one of the best known British beers, London Pride, that it had brewed in London since 1958.  Asahi is a Japanese beer company, which you can easily find here in the states and I drank a lot when I was in Japan a few years ago.  There were marketing agreements in place, as part of the deal, but it shows you how the pubs is where the money is.  For awhile, there were laws put in place to limit the number of pubs the big brewers could own, but that has since been repealed.  For me, the drawback is that you can only find a small selection of beers available at any pub and the food choices were the same at all of them I visited.  There are about 3,800 pubs in London and I was in only about 8, but they were either owned by Greene King or Fuller.  The beers were good, but the choices were nil.

As I left Milwaukee after going to a con with my son, I decided to hit a brew pub.  The one I chose was closed for rebranding upon reaching the property.  Google Maps, which I despise, lied to us again.  It mentioned nothing about being closed and said it was moderately busy.  First they track your every move, then openly lie to you.  I hate Google, but that is for another time.  I chose a different brewery not too far away and we were starving, so it had to have food.  When you get to the building Brewfinity is in, you ,might just think they are out of business too as it looked like a shutdown warehouse out front, but a sign directs you to the left, so I drove around the building and found the brewery.  It is tucked away, but was a nice little space for a tap room.  There were just five other people in there on a very hot Saturday, so we grabbed a spot near the front.  The bartender came right over and gave us some menus.  Since I hadn't been there before, he asked me what kind of beer I like and directed me to their flagship beer, the Sailor's Delight, which is an American Amber.  I probably would've chose this beer anyway, so it was a good call.  Biscuity and malty, just like I like it.  The beer was a nice amber color and was really good.  It finished well, not too hoppy, and smelled  just right.  American Ambers are unique in that they use American hops and derive their sweetness from the malts they use.  They are fermented in a cleaner way than their British cousins and are distinct by their balance.  I get the feeling that the hey day of IPA's is over and that vacuum will be filled by amber ales.  They are far more drinkable, yet may struggle to earn their keep as a summer beer.  Perhaps less refreshing to some drinkers as a number of IPA's can be, but I tend to think they appeal to a far broader audience of beer enthusiasts.  Every brewery makes one, they just don't experiment as deeply and wrongly, in my opinion, as they did with a rash of IPA's.  

It was a sweltering weekend in Minnesota and a stop at a local brewery was definitely in the offing.  I wanted something different so I chose Waldmann's Brewery.  It was a good choice.  Nestled in a neighborhood of houses off the main road, you'll literally stumble upon an old stone house.  It was in the fall of 1857, before Minnesota was even a state, and before the Civil War, when Waldmann's was established.  It is in the oldest surviving commercial building in St Paul to be exact, so the history here is remarkable.  To be fair, there was a long 154 year break between when Waldmann's saloon came alive again in 2017 as Waldmann's Brewery, but that doesn't matter.  

It only took me three trips here to write a blog about it.  I was always out with co-workers and forgot or just didn't have time to take a pic or two.  This time it was just me and a vendor, so I remembered and got the job done.  When in Sioux City, I've always stayed at the hotel right across the street, so going to Marto was just a no-brainer.

Being a fan of the old Hartford Whalers, I had always wanted to go to Hartford.  The fact that there was a brewery on the old Colt firearms complex in Hartford was a win for everyone.  I would've loved to tour the Colt facility during its hayday.  Samuel Colt was born in Hartford in 1814 and began making guns in 1836.  He founded Colt firearms in 1855.  As it is for gun-makers it was feast or famine.  During wartime, Colt did great, but suffered in the aftermath.  Known for innovation, Colt was the first manufacturer to offer interchangeable parts for its guns and used powerful steam engines in its plants before others were doing it.  He also was the first to build a tenement for his workers with housing, daycare, churches and food.  He established a ten hour work day with a required one hour lunch break. 

On Memorial Day weekend I took my annual trip with my brothers.  This time is was the East Coast.  We hit six states during this trip and one of the better experiences was at East Regiment Beer Company in Salem.   It is nestled in the middle of downtown and was a welcome site for my hungry stomach.  

Phallic symbols are funny, but then again, I'm a juvenile.  Naming your brewery Big Wood is probably an homage to the mighty schlong, but you could try to get away saying it is about lumberjacks or something, though no guy would believe you.  I think they did call it Big Wood because it was funny and it took big wood to launch a brewery and do it their way.  If you have a rager for craft beer and want to sell a lot of merch, it goes hand in hand.  When you call your first beer, Morning Wood Coffee Stout, there is no doubt it was the culmination of a wet dream for Big Wood.

In Canada, eh.  On a recent trip to Toronto I didn't have to search far to find a brewery to hit.  Elsinore had a commanding view of the city from its perch on a hill.  The brewery was first opened in 1983 and runs a taproom out of it's huge facility, oddly enough near an old Royal Canadian mental asylum.  Crazy, right?  The brewery stands as a monolith of older times when beer was king.  The factory was large with two smoke stacks that didn't appear to be running while we were there.  It's almost spooky now as it runs at a much lower capacity than it once did, according to the bartender, a nice older guy with a funny accent, wearing all black.  I bet the place has many secrets to tell.

I love it when a brewery has a lot of history to it's setting.  This isn't possible for many, but it really adds to the experience for me and is what I think of when I think about brew pubs.  St Paul Brewing has a home run in this regard.  Hamm's Brewing started in St Paul in 1865 by a German immigrant named, Theodore Hamm.  Hamm actually acquired the small brewery through holding the deed to a foreclosed loan from the prior owner, Andrew Keller.  Hamm's has a long tradition in Minnesota and I remember seeing Hamm's Beer commercials on tv as a kid.  An animated bear with the famous saying, "from the land of sky blue waters." were quite memorable for a kid.  At one point, Hamm's was the 5th largest brewery in the country, having expanded to San Francisco, Baltimore and Houston by the 1950's.  Shortly after their 100th anniversary, the brewery went through a series of purchases, in 1965 to Heublein, then in 1973 to a group of distributors, who sold to Olympia Brewing in 1975 and again to Pabst in 1983.   The brewery itself was traded to Stroh's at this time, who ran it until closing it in 1997, ending a 137 year run.  The brewery sat idle and was left to decay and vandalism.  A 2005 fire damaged some of the building, which was actually the original stables and carpentry shop.  In 2024 a new owner came in and reimagined the site for a new brewery, building a taproom and restaurant out of the keg room and using the stables and shop as an outdoor biergarten.  It is now the home of St Paul Brewing.  Be careful as you drive there as you might miss it, tucked back in the bowels of the old building site.  

As an advocate and lover of the craft beer scene, I have become alarmed at the sign of the times in the industry.  It has been known for some time that people, in general, are drinking less beer.  In fact, I just read something today that says even the younger generation of Germans have gone away from beer.  Scheisse!  That same trend is at work here in the US too.  My own son and his friends are proof of this trend.  Craft beer is about 13.3% of the beer market, which is a dent in the big boring brewers, but not enough apparently.  Production has been down and a decrease in the number of breweries has shaped the business for the past two years.  2024 saw a 4% decrease in beer volume and 2025 is on pace for a 5%+ decrease over 2024.  Last year 529 breweries went out of business and the numbers for this year might be sobering when it is all said and done.  I suppose that economics says this was inevitable.  The microbrew craze had been going strong for 40 years and downturns happen.  Perhaps, in some places, microbreweries were overdone, not sure on that, but it seems possible.  If you look at my outdated pictures above, these are from www.vinepair.com and show the huge growth in breweries from 250 in 1990 to 7,190 in 2016.  Today it has grown to 9,269, but declining daily.  Other economic factors have played a role too.

It was a beautiful weekend to head up to the North Shore of Minnesota and Wisconsin.  The leaves were at peak color and the weather was cool, but not cold.  I had a board meeting up that way and after the meeting, like I usually do, while everyone else headed to dinner, I hit a brewery.  I had spied Warrior Brewing on my phone while looking for a new place to try before the meeting and it was directly on the way to dinner.  

Camden Town was a bit of a surprise.  When you get off the underground and come to the surface, you may think Camden Town is run down and a b it sketchy.  In reality, it is an older part of town, but has a vibrant artistic side and is known for its street markets, music and shops.  The Camden Market is a cool area of small, mostly independent shops and eateries that is a must-see and do when you go there.  It stretches across the street in two sections, where it follows along a canal and it is here you will find 3 Locks Brewing.  We were there very early as my son was looking for anime merch, which the area is full of and even though I had searched ahead of time, I really didn't look where the brewery was exactly.  We kind of stumbled upon it a few minutes before they opened.  Their taproom over looks the canal and has outside seating along it.  It really is a great setting for a brewery.  As you can see, I took a terribly blurry picture, so no, you aren't drunk.  Are you?  

I recently visited the UK for vacation and took my opportunity to try many beers, among other things.  The last time I was there the UK was in a bit of a sea change in the pub business.  There were about 58,000 pubs in the UK in 2000.  That number has declined to around 47,000 now.  Big breweries had stepped in and bought a huge chunk of the pubs in order to control beer sales.  I've seen some different numbers, but the six biggest owned about 75% of all the pubs.  In fact, Fuller, a well known brewery, sold it's beer making operation to the Asahi Group in 2019 so it could focus on it's pub operations.  Fuller made one of the best known British beers, London Pride, that it had brewed in London since 1958.  Asahi is a Japanese beer company, which you can easily find here in the states and I drank a lot when I was in Japan a few years ago.  There were marketing agreements in place, as part of the deal, but it shows you how the pubs is where the money is.  For awhile, there were laws put in place to limit the number of pubs the big brewers could own, but that has since been repealed.  For me, the drawback is that you can only find a small selection of beers available at any pub and the food choices were the same at all of them I visited.  There are about 3,800 pubs in London and I was in only about 8, but they were either owned by Greene King or Fuller.  The beers were good, but the choices were nil.

As I left Milwaukee after going to a con with my son, I decided to hit a brew pub.  The one I chose was closed for rebranding upon reaching the property.  Google Maps, which I despise, lied to us again.  It mentioned nothing about being closed and said it was moderately busy.  First they track your every move, then openly lie to you.  I hate Google, but that is for another time.  I chose a different brewery not too far away and we were starving, so it had to have food.  When you get to the building Brewfinity is in, you ,might just think they are out of business too as it looked like a shutdown warehouse out front, but a sign directs you to the left, so I drove around the building and found the brewery.  It is tucked away, but was a nice little space for a tap room.  There were just five other people in there on a very hot Saturday, so we grabbed a spot near the front.  The bartender came right over and gave us some menus.  Since I hadn't been there before, he asked me what kind of beer I like and directed me to their flagship beer, the Sailor's Delight, which is an American Amber.  I probably would've chose this beer anyway, so it was a good call.  Biscuity and malty, just like I like it.  The beer was a nice amber color and was really good.  It finished well, not too hoppy, and smelled  just right.  American Ambers are unique in that they use American hops and derive their sweetness from the malts they use.  They are fermented in a cleaner way than their British cousins and are distinct by their balance.  I get the feeling that the hey day of IPA's is over and that vacuum will be filled by amber ales.  They are far more drinkable, yet may struggle to earn their keep as a summer beer.  Perhaps less refreshing to some drinkers as a number of IPA's can be, but I tend to think they appeal to a far broader audience of beer enthusiasts.  Every brewery makes one, they just don't experiment as deeply and wrongly, in my opinion, as they did with a rash of IPA's.  

It was a sweltering weekend in Minnesota and a stop at a local brewery was definitely in the offing.  I wanted something different so I chose Waldmann's Brewery.  It was a good choice.  Nestled in a neighborhood of houses off the main road, you'll literally stumble upon an old stone house.  It was in the fall of 1857, before Minnesota was even a state, and before the Civil War, when Waldmann's was established.  It is in the oldest surviving commercial building in St Paul to be exact, so the history here is remarkable.  To be fair, there was a long 154 year break between when Waldmann's saloon came alive again in 2017 as Waldmann's Brewery, but that doesn't matter.  

It only took me three trips here to write a blog about it.  I was always out with co-workers and forgot or just didn't have time to take a pic or two.  This time it was just me and a vendor, so I remembered and got the job done.  When in Sioux City, I've always stayed at the hotel right across the street, so going to Marto was just a no-brainer.

Being a fan of the old Hartford Whalers, I had always wanted to go to Hartford.  The fact that there was a brewery on the old Colt firearms complex in Hartford was a win for everyone.  I would've loved to tour the Colt facility during its hayday.  Samuel Colt was born in Hartford in 1814 and began making guns in 1836.  He founded Colt firearms in 1855.  As it is for gun-makers it was feast or famine.  During wartime, Colt did great, but suffered in the aftermath.  Known for innovation, Colt was the first manufacturer to offer interchangeable parts for its guns and used powerful steam engines in its plants before others were doing it.  He also was the first to build a tenement for his workers with housing, daycare, churches and food.  He established a ten hour work day with a required one hour lunch break. 

On Memorial Day weekend I took my annual trip with my brothers.  This time is was the East Coast.  We hit six states during this trip and one of the better experiences was at East Regiment Beer Company in Salem.   It is nestled in the middle of downtown and was a welcome site for my hungry stomach.