A look back at 2014 (Yeah, it's one of these)

So I was going to start working on this post early next week since I was originally going to designate this holiday weekend to playing video games and not much else. However due to Playstation Network being down thanks to a hacker group that hates humanity and not being able to play Destiny (You need an internet connection to play the game,) I decided to pass the time by starting to write about this year in review.

2014 has been a year full surprises and life-changing events; Some of which I saw coming and others I did not expect. Here I'll be writing about the beers I've had as well as some happenings to mix it up. So without further ado, I give you my recap of 2014!

**Disclaimer: I'm also going to point out right now that this is also a fairly long post, so just a heads up**

January

What can be said about January? To be honest, not a whole lot. I guess the only memorable things I could take away from January would be the record breaking god-awful cold temperatures we had and a little something called Deschutes The Abyss.

With its rich and complex flavor, this beer easily stood out as the best beer in a month that I considered to be lacking. New Glarus' Raspberry Tart also was pretty good but The Abyss edged that one out, though it did make for a good trade a few months down the road.

February

The month of love was also a fairly slow month. However there was one beer that stood out to me...for all the wrong reasons. My regular readers probably know what I'm talking about but I'll explain a little further. I follow a philosophy that I never turn down free beer, regardless of who it's from. In other words, you have to screw up pretty badly to make a beer so horrible that even I wouldn't take it even if it were free.

Lo and behold, a beer matching that description made its way into my hands and it went by the name Miller Fortune.

I promise this is the last time I talk about Miller Fortune. Fortune was Miller's answer to Budweiser Black Crown and was no doubt marketed to the craft beer drinking crowd by promising bourbon-like flavors and toting a higher-than-normal ABV; Which I've mentioned a couple times before is pretentious and unnecessary. 

Needless to say, this ended up being one of the worst beers I had ever had. How could somebody take a wonderful thing like beer and make it so awful? I understand that it's a Miller product and all, but even their regular stuff like MGD, Pabst & Miller Lite, while not great, I would still consider to be tolerable at the very least. In any case, I hope Miller's next attempt at trying to gain a share of the craft beer market is....less terrible.

March

Finally a month that isn't mediocre! In early March, I was contacted by David Grandmaison and was offered the opportunity to help promote The Duluth Experience's North Shore Craft Beer Roundtable, which was a series of four roundtable events pertaining to the craft beer scene in NE Minnesota & NW Wisconsin. 

I cannot express enough how great it was to see well-respected individuals in the craft beer scene sit down, talk, and share their experiences in the industry. On top of that, I got to meet and network with so many great people.

April

April saw the continuation of the The Duluth Experience's Roundtable event, which featured the head-brewers from the various breweries located in the Duluth-Superior area. Much like the first event, the second part was just as engaging and interesting as the first one. 

So what made this month as interesting as March? Well for me it was the interviews I conducted. The first being the interview I did with David Grandmaison from The Duluth Experience, which I found to be extremely interesting and insightful. The second interview I did was with these guys....

I met Seth from Regular Guy Brewing on Twitter in the wee months of 2014 and we have since become good friends. Seth was awesome enough to give me the chance to interview him, which we managed to pull-off despite Google Hangout's attempts to cut our connection. Overall it was a fun month but it was only a prelude to what was to come.

May

During the first half of May, I spent a week down in Minneapolis/St. Paul for Minnesota Craft Beer Week, in which I covered various events which celebrated Minnesota Craft Beer. It was a week full of fun and it made memories that I will remember for the rest of my life. Needless to say it was also a very busy time but they always say time flies when you're having fun.

Among the thing I did during that week:

• Went to Dangerous Man for the first time and checked out Northbound Smokehouse's Buckwheat Honey Porter
• Going to Great Waters Brewing for the first time and going to a keg tapping of Surly Blakkr with Simcoe & Centennial Hops at the Four Firkins
• Making a trip to Pitchfork Brewing in Hudson, Wisconsin (It's not Minnesota beer, but I still consider it local)
• Checking out The Freehouse in downtown Minneapolis & going to Barley John's keg tapping for Warrior's Passage 2.0 Imperial IPA w/ Falconer's Flight Hops.
• Attending the food truck rally at Harriet Brewing, complete with barrel aged sours and Nutella and Bacon covered chocolate chip cookies

Those events were awesome and all, but they don't hold a candle to what the final day of Minnesota Craft Beer week had in store for me. That's because on the last day of Minnesota Craft Beer week, I met these guys for the first time....

I met with Jon & Josh from Angry Inch Brewing in Rosemount, Minnesota for a private tasting event. Originally it was supposed to be an hour long affair but it ended up turning into a 3 hour conversation about their experiences in brewing as well as the story behind each beer and just getting to know them; All the while drinking some fantastic beers which they made for the tasting event. 

June

June started off with me moving into my new place, which put me in close proximity to all the breweries & brewpubs located in Duluth. It was during this time I started doing weekly roundup posts which continued until the end of July; I would also like to take this time to point out that those posts WILL be making a return in the near future. As for when, I don't know yet.

June also marked the final event in The Duluth Experience North Shore Craft Beer Roundtable event, which focused on the role of women in the Craft Brewing Industry. Of all the roundtable events, I found that one to be the most educational and interesting of the topics that were covered during the Roundtable series

As for the beer, there was a lot of great beers that I had that month but the one I found to be the most memorable was Heady Topper from The Alchemist. Talk about a great and well balanced Imperial IPA, I can see why all the craft beer fanatics love to post pictures and boast about this beer online.

July

July brought about something new for me: an interview with a film director. I sat down with Dave Okar, director of Crafted to Last: Minnesota Beer Blossoms, a documentary which covered the rapid expansion of Minnesota Craft Beer movement thanks to the Taproom Bill that was passed back in 2011. It was a fun interview and it gave me a really good appreciation for all the local beer which we here in Minnesota have the pleasure of drinking.

Next up is The Duluth Experience Saturday Evening Brewery Tour, which consisted of tours at Vikre Distillery, Bent Paddle Brewing Company & Fitger's Brewhouse. For me, it was my own fun little mini-bachelor party that I threw for myself. It was a great time and it gave me a much greater appreciation for the craft beer scene in Duluth.

I ended July by going to camp.....Beer Camp that is! I acquired a 12-pack of Sierra Nevada's Beer Camp, which featured collaborations between Sierra Nevada and twelve different breweries across the country. Some of my favorites included:

• Electric Ray IPL - Brewed in collaboration with Ballast Point.
• Yonker Bock Tropical Maibock - Brewed in collaboration with Cigar City Brewing.
• CANfusion Rye Maibock - Brewing in collaboration with Oskar Blues (Probably my favorite of the bunch)

Just a few days after I finished with that 12-pack, a big life changing event happened to me....

August

I got married.

Wait, that doesn't count? My mistake!

I suppose if I were to talk about anything beer related, the first order of business would be my mini-honeymoon up to Ely, MN for a couple of days right after we got married. It was my first time going through the Mesabi Iron Range and the sights were truly something to behold. 

Nestled deep in the northern edge of the Iron Range is a small brewery called the Boathouse Brewpub. It was a far cry in terms of size and scale when compared to other brewpubs in Minnesota. With that said, it was a nice and cozy place to eat and drink. 

Speaking of which, the beers were fantastic and quite tasty. I can also tell that it doesn't possess the same traffic and reputation as Town Hall & Fitger's but any craft beer fan owes it to themselves to check this place out. On top of that, the drive up there is gorgeous.

September

This the month of homebrew reviews. I reviewed not one, not two but seven homebrews. Remember Regular Guy & Angry Inch Brewing? Well I finally was able to sit down and do a proper review of their beers. 

From Angry Inch Brewing:

• Daddy's Honey Pot Saison
• 42 Short & Portly
• Menage a Trois Tripel
• Four Horseman IPA 

From Regular Guy Brewing:

• Smokey Grove Porter
• Hot Blonde Jalapeno
• Unnamed Extra Pale Ale 

Also worth noting is my interview with Sarina Otabi, who is the co-founder of Bluenose Gopher Brewery, an upcoming brewpub that will be based out of Granite Falls, MN which is scheduled to open sometime in the near future. It was a fun interview and I enjoyed learning more about the brewpub and what the future plans are.

October

The big thing to happen to me in October was being brought on board by Northland Beer, a website that is dedicated to raising awareness of the craft beer scene in the Upper Midwest. I am extremely grateful to be part of such a wonderful team and I really enjoy having another outlet to get my name and writing out there.

November & December

Finally to wrap up the year, a couple of pretty big things happened and the first thing I'd like to bring up is finding out that Angry Inch Brewing is planning on opening up their own brewery sometime next year in Lakeville, MN. They were also kind enough to let me officially announce the opening on Northland Beer's main website. 

During a tasting party I attended for Angry Inch Brewing back in November, several people who were at the event were familiar with my blog thanks to word of mouth by Angry Inch and quite fond of my work. To me, it was a very humbling experience and it was fun talking with everyone. 

Overall, it was a fun year and I am looking forward to what next year has in store for me. In fact, I know 2015 is going to be a great year. How do I know this? You'll just have to wait and see.

Thanks for reading and have a Happy New Year!

- Nick

Interview with Sarina Otaibi of Bluenose Gopher Brewery

Bluenose Gopher Brewing is an upcoming brewery which will be based out of Granite Falls, MN and it will be a cooperatively owned brewery in Minnesota. Granite Falls, MN is also, interestingly enough, the home of Andrew Volstead, who was responsible for the National Prohibition Act which banned the sales of alcohol in the United States from 1920 to 1933.

I sat down with Sarina Otaibi, Chair for Board of Directors of Bluenose Gopher, to discuss the history behind the brewery and what the plans are for the future.

Now I read a little bit about your background. You went to Stetson University in Florida and University of Maryland - College Park and now you're all the way out in Granite Falls, Minnesota. How did you end up there?

So I'm originally from the area, so I have a connection here already and I did goto high school here for a couple years while I was here but I did grow up in the Middle East so every summer I'd spend summers in Minnesota and travel back and forth. So after graduate school, I was offered a job to work for a non-profitc called Clean Up the River Environment (CURE) and D.C. was expensive and it was very competitive over there so I just decided to leave, take a chance and move out to the middle of nowhere and see where it took me.

Granite Falls, Minnesota, Birthplace of Andrew Volstead, who was the reason why Prohibition happened in the 1920's. Everyone who knows Minnesota Beer and it's history knows who Andrew Volstead is. Was the choice to set up Bluenose Gopher there a coincidence, an ironic gesture or just because?

So I'm really into history and I'm a historic preservationist, like that's my passion and I'm also on the Granite Falls Historical Society Board and we actually manage the Volstead House. I also learned through preservation that old buildings and breweries really go well together and brewpubs and that's very well known and so with people using Volstead's name in marketing and what-not for their breweries. I'm really into revitalizing downtowns and small towns, especially in rural areas. So, on purpose, I had a gut feeling that having a brewpub or brewery in Volstead's hometown is.....to me, has to work. So it was the perfect combination especially using the cooperative model as well because he did some really important legislature for that movement as well. So it was taking those two combined that we wanted to base the story and kind of bring it to the town's history as well as combine it with community and beer and what-not. It definitely wasn't an accident that is was directly related to the history of the town with Volstead's history and what-not.

Andrew Volsread

Speaking of the cooperative model, for those not familiar with it, how does the brewery model work?

So the cooperative model......people are familiar with food co-ops, but it's going to be similar to that structure. It's basically the business....in this example will not be owned by certain individuals, it'll actually be owned by members and it will be overseen by and run but not on the day-to-day operations but overall operations by a board of directors that are elected by it's membership. That will happen on an annual basis and any profits that the brewery makes will go to it's members. At first it will go to business itself but later on in the years it will go to it's members; It doesn't goto one entity and it also serves the community and it's members. It's more of a consumer run business than say...run by a couple of individuals, so it's that different model.

Now this will be the fourth cooperatively run brewery in the United States, is that correct?

There's actually....through internet research, there's a few that I found but I don't know what stages they are at. So there are so many cooperative breweries and I found at least over ten just through looking it up frequently. I don't know the exact number, I have it on a document that I have been updating and that they're in-progress. So we're still in progress but we have been incorporated as a co-op and we are accepting memberships so we're on our way but we are not as far along as Fair State (Brewing) where they have the building; Like they're already open, so they're different stages that different co-op breweries are at. So I don't know what number we are and I wouldn't want to say as I don't know the stages of other breweries.

Speaking of Fair State, what the decision to become a cooperative brewery based on what Fair State was doing or was it a choice independent of that?

It was definitely a choice independent of that because I didn't know that they existed actually. The way we found out we already started & incorporated and we found out through a friend actually that was picking hops in New London (Minnesota), trying to learn more about great beer and was talking to a friend about it and said to him that "My friend from college, he's actually starting one in the Cities" and I was like "Oh I thought we were going to be the first one." So it's just...that I found out through him that I looked them up and then they came out with their new website and what-not. So it was definitely the Volstead history with the co-op and the brewery but actually I should say that one of our board members, he became a member of Flying Bike (Brewing) in Seattle. I don't know if you've heard about them but they're still raising money and he became a member of their co-op brewery and that's actually how we made more of a connection like this is a thing that people are actually on this type of model. That's how I felt, just like how my friend who decided to become a co-op member of a brewery in Seattle which he's never been to or seen, that's where I got the idea that if he would do it, other people would be interested in it and that it would not be such an impossible concept.

How did you get together with the other people on the Board of Directors? 

It's actually made of people we know that have already started out since we haven't had an annual meeting yet where people are elected and we don't have any members, we just kind of started off with the founding Board of Directors. So the people that joined, it's just basically myself and this other guy Andrew Hodny, who's the Vice Chair; He's a lawyer in a neighboring town. My boyfriend, Tim Beckman, he's in charge of the brewing and learning that; He's an engineer in another town. Just our group of friends kind of. My mom, Mary Gillespie, she's a member of our board because she's a Chamber Director in our town and what not. So it's just kind of people like that which we started off with. There's only six of us right now but later on......we're still looking for another board member and hope next year to hold our first annual meeting where we can actually have proper election and people running and what-not.

Now I'm curious, where did the name Bluenose Gopher come from?

It actually came from a local blogger here and she's in Maynard. Sally Jo Sorensen, she's like a political blogger and she wrote as a status update one day "Well, I'll be a Bluenose Gopher" and she's actually referring to Volstead. My mom saw that and I saw it too and thought it was pretty funny and really catchy and so we have to credit her with that. We took it, she knows about it and she's proud! She does alot of research and what-not and I guess it was a term used in that time period and Bluenose, according to the dictionary, refers to somebody whose conservative, something similar to what prohibition kind of represents basically. For "Gopher", it's referring to the Minnesotan part. So it slyly refers to him without directly saying Volstead Brewery; Without using has name basically. We thought of other names but that one just kept coming up and it fit so well with the history and it was perfect, so it worked out.

Are there any plans of Bluenose Gopher to give back to the community? For example: Cleaning up the environment, etc.?

We do hope that where we succeed enough to where we can give to environmental causes. The brewery is right next to the Minnesota River; Actually our building is right along the Minnesota River and we have a view of it. So definitely those kind of things and also help revitalize the downtown and give to public art projects; We hope to be able to do that and we hope that we're successful enough to where we can do that. These are ideas we just talked about but we'd like to highlight non-profits, give certain proceeds. We do have to look at the business aspect of it  but yeah, we do hope to be giving somehow back to the community.

Now will this be a production brewery or brewpub?

We're going with a brewpub model. We weren't sure at first because we did think about using the taproom model, but after we figured out the differences and really thought it through, we felt like the brewpub model would work best in a small town in a rural area where people aren't as familiar with craft beer and so we like to have available other craft beers so we can help educate people about craft beer in general. Also we feel we need other options and food there to make it sustainable for now. Although we heard that it would be possible, if we want to expand in future years, to switch models if we could; I think that was my understanding anyway. Currently in our current building, it's a smaller building so a brewpub probably would work best right now.

And if people want to join, how do they go about doing that?

So our website would be a great place to start. We have a printout form that people can mail in if they prefer that method, but we also have an online application and it'll take credit cards pretty easily. We've actually gotten alot of memberships through our online application process. People can also email us at info@bluenose.coop with any questions or if they need any help.

For more information regarding membership, you can head on over the official website at www.bluenose.coop

You can follow them on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/BluenoseGopher
You can also follow them on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Bluenosebrew

A very special thanks to Sarina for taking time to sit down with me for an interview. I'm looking forward to trying out offerings from Bluenose Gopher in the future!