Visiting Summit

Sam in front of Summit's bar

The last in a series of Summit related posts, I promise.  But as brother Sam gave me a tour of the now 25 year old brewery, it is worth talking about.

Fermenting/conditioning tanks

Summit now resides in a purpose built building that is located close to the Mississippi river in St. Paul.  Apparently they bought, for $1, the land for the building on a brownfield site that the city was interested in redeveloping.  What they built is an enormous brewery using the guts of the old ---- brewery in Germany including a lovely copper lauter tun and boil kettle:
 

The scale of the place is impressive: their brewhouse is 150 barrels and it runs about 20 hours a day.  They also bought Sierra Nevada's old bottling line which bottles at the rate of ten twelve ounce bottles a second (and yes, that tells you how big Sierra Nevada has become).  It is an impressive place, the scale of which is rarely seen in the craft beer world.

Summit's bottling line

It also gave me the chance to finally try Summit beer.  I had just about the full gamut at their in-house bar, and thus everything was a bit too fast to give a real review but here are some impressions.  The beer I expected to like least, the Red Ale, I liked best: it was nicely hoppy (with Cascades prominently featured) and balanced, it was not malty like I associate with the non-style that is the American red.  I also liked the ridiculously hoppy (and out of balance) silver anniversary ale - I am a hop head after all and a full on blast of hops is always welcome as long as it is not simply bitter and harsh.  , The IPA is a wonderful British IPA - Northwesterners would not embrace it, but old-worlders would find it right in the wheelhouse, full of Norther Brewer and East Kent Goldings it has a lovely soft hop profile.  It is not as transcendent as the Old/New-world masterpiece that is Bridgeport's IPA but very, very nice.  The best selling Extra Pale Ale was not for me, but seems a perfect gateway into the world of craft brew for the macro set.  The porter and the stout were both nice with the stout on nitro and very much the Guinness clone in the sense of being a lower alcohol beer that is dark in color but light on the tongue.

Cold room

 The thing that was most remarkable to this Beeronomist was the fact that 300 barrels of the the one-off Honeymoon Saison were made.  This suggests that the Unchained series has an identity of its own and they are confident it will sell no matter what the style.  And with the PR folks doing a good job selling the human interest side of Sam and Cambers wedding beer story, it will probably not last long on shelves.  

Sam and his beer

Plus, it is a damn good beer.

Sam's Summit Honeymoon Saison

Photo credit: Elizabeth Flores/ Star-Tribune

I arrived in Minnesota to find a big Minneapolis Star-Tribune article on my brother Sam and his beer.  Fortunately it was written by a real beer writer and the result is a very good article on the beer from conception to completion.  Nowhere is it mentioned, but Sam used the same yeast as Upright and, not surprisingly, the end result is an exceptionally dry beer.  I think it is fantastic.  The honey is very faint, but I detect it a little on the nose and in the finish.  The honey I am sure added nothing to the color but Sam's grain bill produced a lovely honey colored beer.  It is a nice Minnesota Saison.

The article is well worth a read.

Summit Honeymoon Saison Released

My brother Sam's beer is out in Minnesota - the great unveiling was yesterday.  I have to wait for the wedding to try it - but fortunately that is but a couple of weeks away.  In the meantime here is Sam and his betrothed, Camber, on Minneapolis TV.  And for those who wonder about the answers to all the mysteries: Sam is the product of my mother's second marriage and he and his twin sister were born just before my 16th birthday.  Camber is Minnesota through and through (as is evident in the TV clip), which explains why Sam now brews in the Twin Cities, but it is a homecoming of sorts: he was born in Wisconsin while I was still in high school at Madison West.  I can only hope that he stays true to his roots: you are a Badger by birth, Sammy boy, don't you forget it there in Gopher territory.

Honey Saison

UPADATE: Sam e-mails to correct a misconception of mine.  He was never thinking of harvesting the yeast - he just wanted to get a sense of it from Upright's Five - though they did harvest a little to study in the lab.  My mistake.

Additionally, Sam writes:

As far as the beer goes, the first tank is done actively fermenting (finished at 1.4 degrees Plato (1.0056)) and we're going to lager it at 34 F for two weeks before we partially filter it and package it. We partially filter it so we can get target a yeast cell count in the bottle and that way get the exact amount of haze we want. Haze is good, chunks are bad! We brewed the last two brews yesterday and they are looking good so far.

I can't wait to try it!



My brother Sam is a brewer for Minnesota's Summit Brewing Company and as such, he gets to make is own beer that will be bottled and sold as a part of their Unchained Series.

He is also getting married this summer (far off in the Minnesota north woods - thanks for that Sam).  So for his own personal brew he decided to brew a Saison.  His recipe calls for honey so he decided to name it 'Honeymoon Saison.'  Here is a Summit video which shows Sam adding the honey to the kettle.

His inspiration, in part, came from Portland's own Upright.  He asked me to send him two bottles of the Five, which I did (at great expense), one of which apparently created a stir when he brought it to work to share. Sam was thinking of harvesting the yeast until Jeff told him the identity of the yeast which is far from a secret.  I hope he is ready to deal with it.

What is particularly wonderful is that the character of this beer will continue to evolve and so if you grab a bottle and store it for a little while the little indefatigable yeasties will keep eating away and the beer will get dryer and dryer.

Anyway, for those in the Summit distribution region, look for it in July and for my buddies, I'll be bringing some back from the wedding.