1 Flat Earth
Brewing and Distinctive Local Brews
Located a few stones’ throws from the digs of venerable Summit Brewing in St. Paul, Flat Earth started making beer last winter. Like most of the new wave of microbreweries, Flat Earth isn’t producing the standard lagers and pale ales that liquor-store shelves are already awash in. Instead, it focuses on more distinctive products: a “Belgian-style” ale with an orange color and bright flavors; the darker, chocolaty Curly Tail (available only at St. Paul Saints games); and a kind of lager-ale hybrid called Element 115. (More about Flat Earth in this issue.)
2 Surly in Cans
Brooklyn Center’s Surly Brewing, which began pumping out its distinctive, well-hopped suds a couple of years ago, started selling them in stores last fall—in cans. Cans? Isn’t good beer packaged only in bottles? My friend, you labor under a misconception born of your youth, when your cheap, steel-swaddled coldies were infused with an unpleasant metallic tang. But Colorado-based Ball Corporation now produces high-end lined cans that prevent that. Canning also protects the beer from potentially harmful light (seen any glass kegs around?). And new small-batch canning technology from a Calgary company called Cask Brewing Systems makes canning more cost efficient for little brewers like Surly. Though the tapped stuff is still better (as it almost always is with beer), Surly’s canned Furious, Bender, and Cynic still taste cheerfully good.
3 Summit Brewing’s Social Element Web Site
Summit introduced its “secondary Web site,” The Social Element, this summer, an entertaining compendium of benign local weirdness. Through the site, you’ll meet Minnesota groups that perform Morris dancing, surf Lake Superior, and build absurdly tall bicycles. (Descriptions of Summit beers and local pubs that serve them are, of course, liberally interspersed.) The site design was done by Happy Monday in Stillwater. In its details alone, it’s unlike any site we’ve ever seen. (How about a pint glass as a cursor?) Click and see.
