….Bee Line to Chicago, still hot but anxious to return to the Windy city…but not for the wind. After a lovely walk around Millennium park we opted to take the long and slow way up Lake Shore drive towards Evanston into the bucolic Chicagoland suburbs. Surrounded by beautiful homes, fancy cars, boutique restaurants, prep schools, yoga shops and six dollar a gallon gas, we found a brewery. Now I’m not going to give the name of the establishment (or name of the town as they are synonymous) because the beer was bad and given the BMWs and Barbour jackets passing by, one gets the sense that this kit beer tasting nano-brewery is riding the craft beer wave. The gorgeous smartly decorated bar, lacked authenticity in its obvious attempt to draw a specific clientele, the one that carries gold and black credit cards, the one that doesn’t wear socks in their penny loafers, one that is so pathetically nouveau riche they are unable to recognize a beer from a ginger ale. Without finishing our glasses of slop we paid the check and split, but tipped our hats to the moxy of a business owner who can get away with charging top dollar for a shitty product. Continue reading
Downtown Kalamazoo
…..continued – We reluctantly left Detroit on Monday, September 9th. It was humid and rainy, but by the time we reached Kalamazoo there was a blazing sun beating down on us. We walked the quaint, quasi cosmopolitan city in the early evening and while Julie captured a gorgeous sunset the humidity thickened the air considerably. Kalamazoo was not just a point on the map, it was west and we were headed west, but most importantly Kalamazoo is home to the Bells Brewery.
Outdoor Oktober, Julie had their lovely Heffe offering, I didn’t take it’s picture.
Lounging on the Bells outdoor patio, too excited to have my first Oktober beer to worry about the lake of sweat forming on me in places no man wants moisture, I was relaxed and ready for a beer. The Marzen came and was good. Of course it had the proper aroma, was malty without fruit, down the center as far as bitterness, however not as classic Bavarian a Marzen as I’m accustomed to, feeling like an American Amber dressed as a Marzen. I often like when breweries take something classic and delicately spin it to fit their aesthetic, doesn’t always work, but for Bells it does. Continue reading
Following an enjoyable labor-day weekend we left western New York and continued along Lake Erie.
The King in Cleveland.
After stopping in Cleveland for a sunset beer, “the king of beers” we spent the night on highway 90 outside of Elyria, Ohio. Without a particular destination in mind, we heard the city of Detroit calling to us and set our compass. Being Julia’s birthday “season” I found a brewery that crafted Belgian’s named Dragonmead, which as luck would have it, was close to our hotel.
By the way, Detroit and the surrounding metro area is an awesome city, zombie land, abandoned, condemned, forgotten but beautiful in it’s dystopian, post-apocalyptic Cormack McCarthy charm, which feels like a theme for the cities we travel to these days. Continue reading
