Kansas City, MO: BBQ & Boulevard Beer, Oh Yes!

In 2011 Sj and I went on a tour of Ireland with the amazing Kansas City celtic rock band The Elders.  On that fated trip to the storied Emerald Isle we met two wonderful people:  Ali is sparkling (literally often covered with glitter,) effervescent and draws friendship like a flower brings honeybees; while Greg is solid, calm, yet quick with a grin or subtle joke.  These two had love we could see radiating off them in waves and at first we assumed they were newlyweds.  In fact this perfectly matched couple had known each other for years, but had only started dating fairly recently.  Fast forward to current day Kansas City and their upcoming nuptials.  They were kind enough to invite us down for the wedding and this was just the kick we needed to finally check out the home of our favorite band and of Boulevard beer!

On Wednesday we awoke early, packed up the car and started our trek due south on Highway 35.  The trip took about seven hours (minus a stop at the saddest Culver's ever in Iowa,)  and we were accompanied by a fine drizzle most of the way.  Sj and I spent the trip there and back listening to Stephen King's Duma Key on CD, narrated by John Slattery (Roger Sterling from Mad Men!) As per most SK books, it is enormous and we barely made it past half way through the book on the entire trip.  I was actually surprised that KC was almost as close to us by car as Milwaukee.  Maybe heading south just seems farther away!  We hit KC just at rush-hour, but traffic was nearly non-existent and we sailed through town and to our hotel.  This peculiar lack of traffic persisted during our stay resulting in relative ease navigating the city.

The first evening we were lucky to be able to meet up with Ali and Greg in between their extreme wedding decoration binges.  We met at The Record Bar, an old joint in a strip mall with a very relaxed and personable feel.  Bob Walkenhorst from The Rainmakers was playing that night and the band included Norm and Brent from The Elders.  They were a solid band, playing rock, bluegrass, country and Americana music.  Interestingly, The Rainmakers' lyrics were quoted in Stephen King's The Tommyknockers and Gerald's Game.  I'm pretty sure that Ali knew everyone in the bar and we met all sorts of different people over the evening.  They had several local brews on tap (as well as PBR) and I tried Mother's Three Blind Mice brown ale and Boulevard's Dark Truth there.  The food was standard bar fare, but with great names based on classic rock songs...I had meat-tastic sandwich fittingly called The Nuge.

Day two started early with a trip down to Boulevard Brewing.  This was one of the cornerstones of our trip to KC and had been percolating in my beer-addled brain since we met the brew master at a Happy Gnome dinner several years ago.  They offer a special 1.5 hour tour but it sells out months in advance and I cursed my inability to get into it.  They have a free tour a few times a day, with the ticket sales starting promptly at 10 AM.  Driving up to the sprawling complex just before 10, there was already a queue of thirsty beer fans forming out front.  We stood in line for a short time, with more people slowly adding to the snaking line behind us.  While waiting, we struck up a conversation with some people from Des Moines and they pointed us toward a new brewpub there for our way back to Minnesota.  More on that in a future entry!  The flood gates opened and we got our free tickets for the 12:30 tour.  The gift shop was packed with lots of good brewery swag including Patagonia clothing, glassware, mustard, and of course beer!  They offered a 10% discount with my AHA card, so I had to buy some brewerania for the home.  In addition to the discount you actually get a free pint of beer at the tasting room with your membership!  So at 10:30 AM we were allowed into the "closed" tasting room and got to bother Dane, a very pleasant guy who offered several suggestions of things to do in KC as well as letting us try several of the beers on tap.

The iconic chimney stack!

In addition to their standards, they had four experimental beers available and all were very interesting.  One was what they unofficially call Dillsner: a version of their pilsner with an experimental numbered hop that tastes like dill, cucumber and melon.  They had a West Coast IPA and Session IPA that were both better than the Single and Double Wide versions.  The stand-out was a beer made with Nelson Sauvin hops from New Zealand and muscat grape juice.  That unnamed beer was brilliant, with a light refreshing wine-like flavor and aroma.  I would buy a case of it if I could.  Dane said that they were tossing around the idea of making it a seasonal and I would highly encourage them to make it so!

After killing time (and possibly brain cells) at the tasting room, we walked through some unsavory chop-shop areas along the Boulevard to Danny Edward's BBQ.  In classic KC fashion, this unpretentious place felt like a throw-back to the 1950's with cheap Formica tables, counter service and simple but extremely flavorful dishes.  The pulled pork sandwich was out of this world...but get the regular size, not the large!  Seriously, that bad-boy stayed with me all day!  Despite the counter service, the place had several ladies bussing dishes, refilling sodas and bustling about.  Perhaps TMI, but on entry to the tiny bathroom you are hit by a wave of BBQ smoke, making this the best smelling men's room in the world.

In the ghetto, KC

Which is more disturbing?

After levering my over-stuffed bulk out of the old rickety chair, Sj and I tottered back through the Barrio toward the brewery once more.  On the way back we passed a giant old derelict brewery, multiple examples of spray-paint art murals, shady tex-mex joints, and of course more chop-shops.  From a distance we saw a WWII era DC 3 prop plane soaring over the tops of the local squat buildings and self-storage facilities.  Drawn to this out-of-place marvel we headed for it and discovered a gem hidden amongst the tattered and somewhat decrepit surroundings.  This was the warehouse/storefront of The Roasterie, a 20 year old local coffee company.  They offer tours, have a relaxing cafe, have photo-ops and of course sell coffee.  We later picked up a bottle of Vodka infused with their coffee, and we will have to experiment with that little purchase...  This is one of the examples of why one should wander through new territory when traveling.

Upon our return to Boulevard we had a very nice tour of the facilities given by Ted and Dane and ended up in the tasting room for more free samples.  Between the morning excursion and splitting our afternoon samples we were able to sample pretty much all of the 12 beers they had on tap!  Not a bad deal for free, but plan ahead and get there early for tickets...they were turning away people at the door since they had sold out when we were there earlier.

After this we moved on to more ephemeral pursuits, taking a long and arduous hike to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.  The grounds are epic with massively scaled shuttlecocks scattered about the area.  We wandered the sprawling sculpture gardens ogling great strange bloody bronzes, disturbing headless ranks of grey people, and shiny metallic trees that might have escaped from H.P. Lovecraft's Chthulhu mythos.  We spent less time in doors, but made sure to look at the photography exhibit since I have been messing around with my iphone camera recently.

After that, more walking to the nearby Westport District for dinner and a beer.  Since our friend Nick has been working at McCoy's Public House here in Minnesota, I figured we should stop by their primary brewpub site right there walking distance from our hotel.  The brewpub is located near The Foundry and Beer Kitchen (also owned by the same people, but not brewpubs.)  The bar and restaurant are inviting and hopping, with multiple levels of action, as well as an outdoor seating area with accessory bar.  We had an excellent bartender who served us up a sampler of the house brews.  How shall I say this...The beer wasn't good.  Per my wonderful wife, "The brown ale smells like lakewater."  And tasted like it as well.  The maibock was not too bad, but most of these beers had flaws that I rarely see at commercial breweries nowadays.  If the food is anything like our MN site, I can recommend it, but we didn't have any room left to try it during this trip.  I'm happy that McCoy's in Minnesota has moved to just commercial beers.

Off to bed and another day in KC!  Oh and check out my wife's blog entry for a different take on the same trip!

American Craft Beer Week: One Week Among Many

So first off, let me be honest: I try to live each week like it is Craft Beer Week.  But for this official nod to the growing craft beer industry, I figured I'd go over what the week meant to me.  And Sj drove me around a lot so she gets props too! 

I think it was about three years ago that MN had its first CBW, which was pretty small and only involved a few brew pubs and mostly college bars.  That first one was not well publicised and seemed fairly thrown-together, but was still a cool thing for the budding local beer scene.  That year and the next they had a stamp book that people would try to get completed at each participating bar or pub and attempt to win prizes like a New Belgium bike.  Living out in the hinterlands I didn't even come close to finishing one.  During one trip down to 7 Corners for this we ended up at Preston's where they tried to tell us that the oxidized and completely flat cask beer they were serving was the way cask beer was supposed to be.  Things have come a long way in the last few years!  Now Preston's has been replaced by the very beer-centric Republic, and they actually know what a cask is. 

With the now wide-spread availability of craft beer in the Twin Cities there is no way that the old stamp method was going to work this year.  On the positive side, this points out the massive amount of options we beer geeks now have to find new and cool beers.  On the negative, this week seems less cohesive and is more of a collection of single-shot tastings/events.  I am actually surprised that many of the big beer places like Republic are not really involved in the official events, though many of them are still having special beers and tappings on their own.

Monday:  Not able to drink Monday so this is a wasted day!

Tuesday:  Sj and I both had Tuesday off, so we went to Uptown for haircuts and to refill on spices from Penzey's.  Having finished early, we walked in the 100 degree heat over to Republic Uptown for our first craft beers of the week.  Sj had a Curious Traveller Shandy (not really beer...) and I had the very pleasant and newly released Surly Diminished Seviin.  I think that this is a second runnings beer from the mash of Surly 7 (which is freaking awesome by the way...) and is a light and fruity Belgian Blonde or Single.  Perfect for a crazy hot day. 

After killing some time indoors, we braved the heat stroke to walk back to our car and then travelled to St. Paul for part two of our day.  Our favorite restaurant and pub in the TC: The Happy Gnome!  This particular week was the Grand Teton Beer Dinner, featuring the dynamic brewmaster Rob Mullin.  I have not been a huge follower of this brand in the past, but due to the always amazing food we signed up for this one anyway!  I was pleasantly surprised.  Rob's relaxed but funny talks between dishes were worth the price of admission.  We also got to meet the young (really can you legally drink yet?) and earnest son of the new brewery owners who lives in St. Paul.  The beers were better than I remember and the quality control and packaging have all been improved over the past few years.  My favorite of the beers was the Oud Bruin, I'd buy that one any day.  As usual, we had several friends with us for dinner and met some other folks at our table to talk to as well.  A great evening and a perfect kick-off to a beer filled week.

Wednesday:  This was our big outing for the week.  We spontaneously picked up our friends Matt and Anna and forged ahead to the 7 Corners area.  We started at Town Hall Brewery for one of their gratuitously yummy burgers and the special release of the Wee Jack.  This wee heavy aged in Jack Daniels barrels is really strong and malty, bordering on too sweet, but worth a try.  They also had the Russian Roulette (an amazing Imperial stout with cocoa nibs,) and this was the best beer of the night.  On our way into Town Hall we ran into Gera out on the patio, and then Mike L. inside doing some shady business dealings. 

Matt hamming it up for the camera!

While logging in all of our beers at Town Hall on Untappd, like good beer geeks, I noticed that someone had logged a Founder's Kentucky Breakfast Stout from the nearby Nomad World Pub.  So Mike joined us and our group put their trust in my beer-finding skills.  Off we wandered through the looming dusk and discovered that the Nomad did indeed have an unadvertised keg of KBS on tap.  About half of the crowd there was drinking KBS and the other half were happily downing PBR tall boys.  More KBS for us!  We sat outside on the patio watching Bocce until the hipsters got a bit too ironic for us (and smoked too many cigarettes right next to us...) and headed out in search of further adventures.

Dusk falls over Minneapolis

On the way back to the car we passed right by Republic.  Well...we might as well stop.  Sitting in their street-side patio area as darkness fell around us, we ordered a couple beer samplers and shared them around.  This evening of spontaneous pub-hopping/bar-crawling was incredibly fun and relaxing for me.  I hope that Sj and the rest of my friends had a good a time as I did.  To me this is what Craft Beer Week is all about.

Thursday:  A long day at work today and no energy left to head downtown for an event.  I did fire up my brand new Kamado Joe grill and smoked some True Cost Farm brats and fresh sweet corn over cherry wood.  Once I got the hang of regulating the temperature by messing with the upper and lower draft system on the grill things went really well.  While messing with this I sipped on one of my few remaining hoard of Surly Abrasive in its proper 20 oz pint glass.  Ahhh!  Summer is finally here!  After our smoky repast (served with a very good Greek salad made by my wife) we had Matt over to watch an episode of Game Of Thrones on the DVR.  The usual adult content and violence ensued on the big screen, paired with a tasty desert snifter of Lift Bridge Irish Coffee Stout. 

Friday:  Both of us were pretty exhausted after work and debated the merits of going out.  CBW won out and we headed into St. Louis Park to visit the SLP Trifecta.  First was the Steel Toe Brewing taproom for the special release of three barrel aged beers.  I have crowed about their English barleywine, Lunker,  previously in this blog, and any excuse to have it again is worth the effort.  This time we got to taste a sampler of barrel aged Dissent stout, barrel aged Wee Heavy and Lunker.  Generous pours of amazing beers.  Sj and I both put the Wee Heavy slightly higher on our lists than Lunker!

Next up was a "quick" trip over to the Four Firkins (under a mile away.)  Pretty much the entire crew was working this particular evening.  I love going in there and getting to talk to Alvey, Michael, Ian, Bryan and Doug!  They were sampling an eclectic mix of beers including the Great Divide 19 (made with birch sap and aged on birch chips), the newly released Surly Bitter Brewer (one of my favorite session beers), and the Indeed Shenanigans.  We bought some beers while there, including a couple of bottles from Moonlight Meadery.  I'll probably do a blog entry about mead at some point in the future.

Finishing off the Trifecta, we headed over to McCoy's Public House for dinner.  Bar Manager, Nick, kept us entertained and handed us a newly renovated beer list.  We split a bucket of tater tots, and then moved on to Thai pizza and shrimp atop cheesy grits.  A perfect finish to a great night out.

Saturday:  Sj had to work Saturday so I was on my own.  I headed back down to Steel Toe for the Size 11 Triple IPA release.  I entirely missed this beer last year when it came out and really wanted to get a few bottles this time around.  They started selling right at noon, and I arrived within 5 minutes of that start time.  There was a cash line into the rear entrance to the brewery and a longer credit line into the front/taproom area.  I brought cash.  I got 6 bottles with little trouble and took them back to my car.  One of these is ear-marked for my mom, another for Rob Wengler, and one more to share at the next JAB meeting.  The other three are mine-all-mine!

The taproom still had the barrel aged threesome from the previous day on tap, so I had to brave the crowd and have those again.  Between all the folks snaking their way into the taproom for bottles of Size 11 and the crowd returning from dropping off those bottles, this tiny taproom was a sardine can.  But a sardine can with truly awe-inspiring beers!  I ran into Garrett and his son (who needs to come to a JAB meeting sometime and hang with us oldsters) and apparently missed Keith by minutes.  Great minds drink alike!  That was the extent of my CBW experience for Saturday, but I have some great Size 11 in the fridge now.

Sunday:  OK, by this day even I was feeling a little worn out from beer exploits.  Also there has been a lot of travel into "town" involved and gas jumped over $4 a gallon this week.  I almost let Sunday go, but saw a facebook post about brunch at the Northbound Smokehouse.  We had to go into EP anyway to pick up my freshly tailored suit, so why not go a little farther?  The food was pleasant but not quite as good as the lunch sandwiches had been on a previous trip.  The double IPA was pretty good too.  Once back home I settled into study mode and did that for the rest of the afternoon/evening.  By dinner time Sj and I worked on a growler of Town Hall Maibock, making me sad that I missed the Blessing Of The Bock event this year, but happy that I still got to try this wonderfully balanced lager.

Overall:  A lot of beer events and venues are to be found throughout the Twin Cities these days, especially during Craft Beer Week.  I'm guessing I could have found nearly the same amount of cool tappings, breweries, beer dinners, etc on nearly any week.  This was a nice excuse to take some time off from study and also to see good friends and spend some time with my wife.  Best thing of the week?  Probably our group Wednesday outing, but the barrel aged beers at Steel Toe were not to be missed.  Thanks again to Sj, and to my other friends!

Up Next:  Either an interview or possibly some reviews of places we stop at in Kansas City, MO...stay tuned!  And make sure to watch the Limited Release episode from my last blog post if you haven't yet!