2015 BEER DISCOVERY TOUR: Granite City Food & Brewery, Lincoln NE (June 28, Brewery Stop #10)

2015 BEER DISCOVERY TOUR: Granite City Food & Brewery, Lincoln NE (June 28, Brewery Stop #10) The 10th brewery we stopped at during the beer discovery tour (click here to read about the whole trip)was Granite City Food & Brewery in Lincoln NE. We slept in a little bit (as it was a Sunday) and decided to go out for lunch to Granite City out by the mall. This is a corporate chain in the mid-west that can be found in most major cities. It’s sort of like the “Appleby’s of Breweries” as the food is ‘ok’ and the beer is drinkable but not outstanding. We got there about 11am, forgetting that they actually do a Sunday brunch, but we were going to do some tasting so eggs with beer, not a good call. We decided to sit up at the bar and chat up the bartender to see what he thought about their beers and the local scene. He was happy to pour us the full lineup, and give us his opinions of them, which surprisingly wasn’t that great considering that there isn’t a lot of choices in Lincoln when it comes to locally made beer. The food we …

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2015 BEER DISCOVERY TOUR, Portland OR to Portland ME and back… 24 June-9 July, 2015

2015 BEER DISCOVERY TOUR, Portland OR to Portland ME and back…7800 miles later… From late June to early July 2015 I was lucky enough to go on a cross country road trip with Gary and our nephew Devin. We drove my car from Portland Oregon to Portland Maine in just about three weeks. We took a ‘central US’ path East and came back taking a more northern passage. Regarding where we went each day, we made it to about 40 breweries and a handful of tap-houses, bars, and brewpubs to find local beers and food along the way. While the long distance driving was challenging some days (10+ hrs at a time), we really enjoyed the trip with it’s the ever-changing scenery and wonderful cities, towns, and people we met. Before leaving on the trip, we gathered and then took a couple of cases of local specialty beers for our friend Rusty in Pittsburgh. The sucky part was that while we wanted the beers to not get ruined by the heat, we ended up unloading and reloading it a LOT as we stopped each night. This is a valuable learning experience, to stick to mailing stuff like beer and wine, …

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