Appetites: 'Beer 2.0'
Now that the basic beer scene in the Twin Cities is strongly built and well-established, a new level of beers with advanced techniques and fascinating complexity is being built all around us.
"We're going into kind of a 'Beer 2.0' situation in Minnesota," said Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl, food and drink writer for Minneapolis Saint Paul Magazine.
She highlights two of these trends for MPR News host Tom Crann: barreled beers and sour beers with eccentric yeasts.
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Barreled beers
Barrels are coming into Duluth on ships and brewers are taking them and putting their beer inside. Moskowitz Grumdahl has tasted beer out of port barrels, whiskey barrels, chardonnay barrels and even bourbon barrels used for maple syrup and then for beer.
"The flavors become toastier, smokier, oakier, also kind of more mellow," she said.
Sour beers
If you're put off by the idea of a sour beer, don't be, says Moskowitz Grumdahl.
"It's not going to be sour like someone squeezed a lemon on your tongue," she said. But it will have — in the same way that maybe a lemonade does — it will have that energy and it will be in that profile."
That flavor comes from the yeast and bacteria used to brew the beer. Sour brewers look for interesting, expressive yeast. For example, Fair State in northeast Minneapolis has been cultivating yeast off prairie plants.
Schell's in New Ulm has an entirely separate building for its sour beers, so the yeasts don't interact.
Use the audio player above to hear the entire conversation.