Beer Day in Saint Paul

This past Saturday, a couple friends and I had a fun day that centered around our favorite beverage. It started as a plan to have a few beers at our favorite brewpub, Great Waters Brewing Company. Then it changed for the better when one of my friends suggested that we try to go to Flat Earth Brewing to buy some growlers. So we decided to plan our whole day around beer.

We started with a tour of Summit Brewing. Summit has scheduled tours on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 1:00pm and on Saturdays at 10:30am and 1:00pm. We chose to go with the 1pm tour on Saturday. If you ever decide to go to a Summit tour on Saturday, reservations are required. The tour is well done and very informative, and of course, you get to have some beer at the end. I was able to try their new Unchained Series #3, an india rye ale, and it was quite tasty! The gift shop is open right after the tour and has some cool Summit gear you can purchase (which we did).

After the Summit tour, we went to burn up some time at a nearby Famous Dave's while we waited for the next portion of our beer day to begin. Then we went to Flat Earth brewery for their tour. Flat Earth typically schedules 2 tours a month. They are on Saturdays at 4pm and reservations are required by email. If you visit their website, you can find out which days they will have tours. This is a much smaller brewery than Summit, but there are a lot of people that come to these tours. Flat Earth head brewer Jeff Williamson was there to tell us the story of his brewery and answered any questions people had. Then, of course, we were given samples of 4 Flat Earth beers. After the tour, you are able to purchase growlers of whatever beers they have available (which we did). Great day so far!

Finally, we ended our beer day with the place that we originally planned on visiting before it turned into a day-long event: Great Waters Brewing Company. We sampled many of their beers including their newest, Winterye Mix. Their beers are always of excellent quality, and so is their food. We ordered ourselves some dinner while there and were very pleased with our meals. We had meant to buy some growlers during our visit, but we forgot our empties!

At the end of our Saint Paul beer day, we walked to our hotel in downtown. We had previously decided that with all the beer we would be drinking, it would be smart to avoid driving. We made reservations and stayed at the Hilton Garden Inn.

If you ever have an opportunity and the time required, I highly recommend planning the same type of day. It was educational and fun, and we had some very good beer. Check out any of these websites for more info:

www.summitbrewing.com

www.flatearthbrewing.com

www.greatwatersbc.com