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[To help point brewvana readers to the delightful underdogs hiding in the shadows of craft beer’s rocket-ride into the limelight, I’ve recruited a flock of fellow beer bloggers to help me underscore some of the Awesomeness you may not have heard of…]

Seventh Sun Brewery

By Gerard Walen of Roadtrips for Beer

Is it fair to call a very young brewery “underrated.”? It certainly isn’t “underrated” by the folks who have tried its creations.

Seventh Sun Brewery, a.k.a. 7venth Sun, in Dunedin, Florida, is the brainchild and the longtime dream of co-owners Justin Stange and Devon Kreps (pictured below). Justin has the chops to pull this off: He’s brewed at Cigar City Brewing in Tampa, before that at Sweetwater Brewing Company in Atlanta, and he and girlfriend/business partner Devon have been working for years on opening a craft brewery in the Tampa Bay area. The business opened in December 2011, serving other breweries’ craft beers, before the licensing came through to allow them to begin pouring their own creations in January 2012.

Heavy on Belgian and German weissbier styles, Justin also brews IPAs, second use spirit barrel aged beer, oak aged sour beers and others, including Donut Porter, a delicious chocolate porter brewed with glazed doughnuts. A lot of fruit flavors find their way into several of the beers, as evidenced by the names: Key Lime Berliner Weiss, Kiwi-Cherry Coconut Berliner, Pearvocative FYA (based on the FYA single-hopped Extra Pale Ale) and Pilot Series Orange Creamsicle.

The cozy taproom in Dunedin is a fine place to while away a few hours on a sunny Florida afternoon. Or a rainy one, for that matter. Some Seventh Sun products are showing up on tap at other Tampa Bay area craft beer venues, but for now, distribution is limited. Growlers are available, and there have already been some extremely limited bottle releases.

About Gerard Walen

Gerard Walen runs two craft beer websites: Road Trips for Beer and Beer in Florida. He’s fooled enough people into thinking he knows enough about beer to have been quoted in national and local publications. Gerard has conducted presentations on taking road trips for beer at the 2011 Beer Bloggers Conference and the Savannah Craft Brew Fest. He’s the fill-in writer for the Beer Geek column in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, and if the stars are aligned, you’ll soon see his byline in a national beer publication.  You can follow his Twitter accounts: @RoadTrips4Beer and @BeerInFlorida.

Follow Gerard on Twitter: @RoadTrips4Beer and @BeerInFlorida

[To help point brewvana readers to the delightful underdogs hiding in the shadows of craft beer’s rocket-ride into the limelight, I’ve recruited a flock of fellow beer bloggers to help me underscore some of the Awesomeness you may not have heard of…]

Grimm Brothers Brewhouse

By Dave Butler of Fermentedly Challenged

Colorado has over 140 breweries scattered across the state and for each community that has a brewery, each one of them is a hidden gem. When asked to come up with a brewery I thought was one of the best in my area that nobody outside of Colorado may have heard of, I did what any beer blogger would do, I asked my readers to come up with a brewery.

I opened up a voting Poll on Facebook and asked everyone to nominate a Colorado brewery that they thought was outstanding but probably nobody had ever heard of (outside of Colorado). The poll was open for over a full week. After receiving over 334 votes and 34 unique nominations, my readers selected Grimm Brothers Brewhouse of Loveland, Colorado as the Best Brewery You Never Heard Of.

So what’s the story on Grimm Brothers Brewhouse anyway?

Grimm Brothers Brewhouse was a small start-up brewery that opened in July 2010 by three guys who were award winning homebrewers:  Don Chapman (President + head brewer), Aaron Heaton (Vice President + Business Manager) and Russell Fruits (Sales Manager + Assistant Brewer).  They saw a need for creating a line of quality German-style beers in the Northern Colorado area and came up with a small line-up of year round beer recipes and some tasty seasonal and specialty beers and went to work.

They opened up a small brewery with an equally small taproom out front at 547 North Denver Avenue in Denver. The tap room was so small that it could only seat about 20 people comfortably. It didn’t take long for their popularity to grow and a year later they were looking to expand.  By December 2011, they found another empty unit in the same business complex (literally across a huge parking lot) and created a much larger tap room, enough to hold 60+ people and free up room to expand their brewhouse.  The new taproom was a big hit.  To top all that off, they also added a brand new bottling line at the end of 2011 and now bottle most of their year-round beers in 22oz bottles.

Grimm Brothers is known locally for their German-style beers.  They have five year-round beers whose names are based on fairy tale themes: Snow Drop (a Kottbusser style), The Fearless Youth (a Munich Dunkel Lager), Little Red Cap (an Altbier), Master Thief (a German porter),  and The Griffin (a German style Hefeweizen) .

One thing that helped Grimm Brothers Brewhouse stand out, besides their great tasting beers, were the eye-catching beer label logos (pictured above).  Local business – Ten Fold Collective – worked with Grimm Brothers to come up with some colorful characters to represent each of their year-round beers.  The graphics were a hit and have become the icons of the brewery.

It didn’t take long for Grimm Brothers Brewhouse to start earning awards and recognition from the community.  During the 2010 and 2011 Gnarly Barley Beer Festival – Grimm Brothers has was named the People’s Choice Winner of the festival.  In addition, the City of Loveland Colorado named Grimm Brothers Brewhouse the Small Business of the Year for 2011 for their outstanding contribution to the community. And top that off, in 2011 Grimm Brothers was awarded a gold medal at the Great American Beer Festival for their Little Red Cap in the German-style Altbier category, beating out 29 other entries.

Grimm Brothers Brewhouse brews up more than just their mainline beers. They also produce a Fabled Series of beers that are in essence an Imperial version of their year-round beers.  Add to that, they’ve acquired several bourbon and wine barrels and have put out some outstanding barrel-aged beers including the recent Imperial stout called The Count.  The City of Loveland also partnered with Grimm Brothers to come up with an official Valentine’s Day beer of Loveland called: The Bleeding Heart – a cherry chocolate porter.

The brewers are also experimenting with brettanomyces and soured beers and have put out a couple of beers like “Big Bad Bret” and a “Brett Bock” beer.  The list of experimental beers they put out is constantly growing. They’ve done smoked beers, chai beers, an Oktoberfest and a Wet Hop beer.  They plan to do some firkins coming up in the summer months as well.

While the brewery is growing in popularity, the owners are already looking ahead to their next expansion.  As business units in their complex open up and vacate, they plan to buy out those units and expand the taproom and brewhouse.

So why haven’t you heard of them?

Simply put, these guys only distribute their beer around Northern Colorado.  They don’t even ship down to Denver at present.  All of their client accounts are scattered from Fort Collins, to Greeley, to Estes Park, around town in Loveland and down to Longmont.  But you won’t see them statewide, at least not yet.  They’d like to expand distribution at some point down the road, but for now, they’ve got all they can handle in their own corner of the state and like it that way.  They are in essence, one of our best kept secrets in Northern Colorado.  Check them out next time your near Loveland.

Taproom hours:

Monday – Thursday:            1:00 PM to 7:00 PM
Friday:                                    1:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Saturday:                              12:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Sunday:                                 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM

Grimm Brother Brewhouse

623 North Denver Avenue (taproom)

Loveland, CO 80538

(970) 624-6045

www.grimmbrosbrewhouse.com

About Dave Butler

Dave Butler has been writing the beer blog Fermentedly Challenged since 2007. He’s written over 1000 articles on his blog and focuses primarily on the craft beer industry of Colorado.  He’s also been the Northern Colorado Beer Examiner for examiner.com, has written a successful poker blog and also works full-time as an IT Engineer for a major Fortune 500 company. Dave makes his home in Greeley, Colorado where he lives with his wife of nearly 30 years and has raised 3 grown children.

Follow Dave on Twitter: @ChipperDave

Or check him on Facebook at:  facebook.com/FermentedlyChallenged.

Stay tuned. I’ve got one more guest blogger to round out the week!

When most people think of craft beer in Oregon, nine times out of ten they think of Portland, arguably the beer capital of the Pacific Northwest. One out of those ten might think of Bend with its exploding craft beer scene anchored by Deschutes Brewery, or Eugene with powerhouses like Ninkasi and Oakshire Brewing, or even the occasional Baker City with its somewhat obscure brewpub that’s been winning GABF medals these last few years.

Odds are the town of Oakridge, Oregon is completely off their radar, as is the local brewpub: the Brewers Union Local 180. Nestled midway between Eugene and Bend and completely surrounded by National Forest, this small town of barely 3300 seems an unlikely place of a brewery of any kind, much less one that has the distinction of being the only Real Ale brewery in the entire state. They are modeled after a classic English pub and serve their own “Real Ale” exclusively–live, unfiltered, unpasteurized, cask-conditioned beer at cellar temperatures. Oh, and in an era of race-to-the-top high-alcohol and extreme beers, they buck that trend too: lower-alcohol, sessionable and quaffable tipples that encourage enjoyment and contemplation rather than rowdy loud behavior. The pub itself encourages this as well: comfortable, homey, unhurried, eclectic, with an English-style menu and unmatched atmosphere. I love it.

The beers are great, too; there is a loose assortment of regular beers that may or not be on tap (depending on owner/brewer Ted Sobel’s whims) but when I first visited there was a Dark Mild, a Best Bitter, a Porter, a Stock Ale and two IPAs on the menu–and only one of those broke 6% alcohol by volume. (As of this writing the current list on their website are a Bitter, a Special Bitter, an “ORA” [Oregon Red Ale] and IPA and a Winter Stout.) The lower-alcohol beers pulled via handpump from the cask all exhibit a lovely depth and complexity and are quite unlike most of the other stronger hop-bombs so characteristic of West Coast beers. The only caveat–the beer needs to be fresh. When cask ales start to stale, it’s very apparent (such is the nature of Real Ales); fortunately, Brewers Union seems to keep a good rotation so that I haven’t yet encountered any issues.

Underrated? Hell yes: being located 150 miles from Portland (100 miles from Bend) in a tiny mountain town dependent upon seasonal tourism, brewing a style (or more properly, a technique) of beer foreign to most Oregonians, the odds are definitely stacked against Brewers Union. But they are bucking those odds, and they are near the top of my list for favorite Oregon breweries–and if you visit they may well be on your list, too.

About Jon Abernathy

[To help point brewvana readers to the delightful underdogs hiding in the shadows of craft beer’s rocket-ride into the limelight, I’ve recruited a flock of fellow beer bloggers to help me underscore some of the Awesomeness you may not have heard of…]

Throwback Brewery

By Brian Aldrich of Seacoast Beverage Lab

When Throwback launched less than a year ago, they stood out (and still stand out) above the rest of the breweries by not just sourcing their grain from local farms, but sourcing the majority of ingredients from farms in the area.

While you may think this is just a phase for this brewery, think again. This is the foundation of Throwback’s existence. Nicole and Annette put local ingredients in every beer they produce. From the local wheat in their Hog Happy Hefeweizen, to the local maple syrup in their Maple Kissed Wheat Porter, there is more hard work in every pint that goes far and beyond the brewing process.

Once more, they are tipping their caps to both stout lovers and more local farms by creating their Unafraid of the Dark Stout Series. I’m am positive this is what I have been waiting for as a stout lover, a punch card for stouts! Here is a peak at 4 of the 6 beers they made for series.

• Wake Robin Farm Chocolate Ginger Stout
• White Heron Chai Porter
• Meadow’s Mirth Fennel Flower Stout
• Brookford Farm Hidatsa Squash Porter

I enjoy watching and tasting the experiments from Nicole and Annette. The fennel stout comes from taking left over fennel flowers and trying it in a stout. One of my favorite experiments from them is their Spicy Bohemian, where they grilled Jalapenos on a grill outside their brewery and tossed them in the brew. The result is liquid nachos in the best of ways. Once they are happy with the recipe, they put it on tap and you can guarantee its going to be a solid product. While I don’t think other breweries will go full boar into local sourcing of all of their ingredients, Throwback definitely started the trend if there will ever be one.

If you have yet to visit Throwback I suggest getting a map of New Hampshire (if you are unfamiliar with the area) and stopping by for a taste and a growler fill. You can also find their bottles in some stores around town. For more information about Annette and Nicole head over to the Throwback website.

About Brian Aldrich

Seacoast Beverage Lab started in March 2010 and since then, Brian has been focused on getting people excited about the craft beer scene in the Seacoast area of the US (NH, ME). Brian co-ran the 3rd annual Portsmouth Beer Week and is the official Kate the Great Day live blogger, 2 years running. Brian’s recent experiment was attaching a live webcam to the Portsmouth Brewery to watch over the line outside of the brewery during Kate the Great Day. While Seacoast Beverage Lab is a local blog by name, Brian likes to blog about my travels and my interactions with other beverage lovers and I hope you enjoy reading about them.

Follow Brian on Twitter: @SeacoastBevLab

Or check him on Facebook:Facebook.com/SeacoastBevLab

Stay tuned. I’ve got guest bloggers lined up all week for this special series!

[To help point brewvana readers to the delightful underdogs hiding in the shadows of craft beer’s rocket-ride into the limelight, I’ve recruited a flock of fellow beer bloggers to help me underscore some of the Awesomeness you may not have heard of…]

Eagle Rock Brewery

By Sean Inman of Beer Search Party

Why is Eagle Rock Brewery under-rated? It may be that it is too young having just celebrated its second anniversary a few months back. And outside of Los Angeles, I bet not many people have heard about it. That may be because San Diego is considered the beer city to be in California or San Francisco has the food and beer cachet and history with Anchor Steam, but Eagle Rock has really kickstarted the craft beer scene in Los Angeles.

I have been following Eagle Rock Brewing from before they were brewing all the way through their initial bottling runs of their special beers like Deuce, their second anniversary Imperial Mild and Equinox, their young sour ale. They are also the proud winners of a Great American Beer Festival gold medal in the hotly contested Pro-Am category for their Red Velvet beer (which was just re-released and is tasting very good).

Eagle Rock has done brewery dinners across Los Angeles, they have trivia nights and food trucks, special beers for the last two L.A. Beer Weeks, and they have a great Women’s Forums as well as being the first production brewery in Los Angeles in over 60 years. Most of all, Jeremy, Ting, Lee and Andrew at the brewery are just really nice people who happen to make some really great beer (and they are starting to do more barrel aging too, which I am excited about!)

Here are some of their beers: Populist, Equinox, Libertine Imperial Amber Wit, Revolution XPA, Solidarity Black Mild and Manifesto Eagle Rock Wit.

About Sean Inman

I have been blogging since 2009 and covering the L.A. craft beer scene as well as my hometown of Portland and, frankly, any other beers, breweries and news that I think are cool. I also do a weekly post on FoodGPS.com and do the weekly L.A. Beer Blast that e-mails the current beer lists and events at Los Angeles craft beer bars every Thursday. I am a fan of Goses and IPAs and am glad to be living in a time with so many great beer choices.

Follow Sean on Twitter: @beersearchparty

Stay tuned. I’ve got guest bloggers lined up all week for this special series!

I didn’t always know about Mountain Sun Pub and Brewery. I parked in front of it by accident (my boys wanted to track down an army surplus store in the neighborhood), walked in to check it out because it was the right thing to do, and was floored by its awesomeness because the beers were awesome and because at that point, I’d never heard of them. This was a Bob Ross Happy Accident, but it shouldn’t always happen that way. To help point my readers to the delightful underdogs hiding in the shadows of craft beer’s rocket-ride into the limelight, I’ve recruited a flock of fellow beer bloggers to help me underscore some of the Awesomeness you may not have heard of…

I’ll start.

I live in Iowa, which isn’t nearly as beer-cool sounding as if I introduced myself from Portland or Asheville. However. We truly have solid beer here—and our scene is improving every day. To highlight just one is a challenge, but I want to make sure you know about Backpocket Brewing Company.

Backpocket is the spinoff production brewery born of Old Man River Brewery in McGregor. Brewer Jake Simmons is a true talent and the success of a trial run in pushing his Old Man-brewed Einfach line of beers into the market on draught revealed a demand for his liquid love. Struggling to keep up with the thirst for his beers, Old Man River plotted an expansion, and today, Backpocket Brewing Company is a 30-barrel work-in-progress in Coralville. Slated to green light this summer, the production facility will become the largest brewery in Iowa, and for good reason.

Jake Simmons. This guy makes good beer. Spread the word.

Jake brews with great respect to German deliciousness—but he deviates from the missionary position to produce some tasty elixirs. Oftentimes, when I taste his beers, I exclaim phrases like, “Oh, my goodness!” and “Holy shit!”

Here are my three favorites, though every beer I’ve tasted from this guy has been outstanding:

Slingshot Dunkel (4.8%): instead of drinking this smooth, dark offering occasionally, I’d like to drink it daily.

Jackknife GPA (6.2%): A German Pale Ale utilizing German hops for a smooth bitterness and American hops for flashy aroma, this beer will make IPA drinkers question their loyalty.

Wooden Nickel Scottish Peated Lager (5.7%): German-inspired brewing but tweaked with Scottish malts, this beer is ridiculously yummy and interesting.

The good news is that, soon, I will be able to find Backpocket in bottles. If you find yourself in Iowa, I’m tellin’ ya, you won’t be disappointed to track down Jake’s beers.

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Stay tuned. I’ve got guest bloggers lined up all week for this special series!