The Brewery Adventure Ep. 7 Surly Brewing

Summary

In this episode of the Brewery Adventure, hosts Tim and Courtney explore Surly Brewing, a significant player in the Twin Cities brewing scene. They discuss their personal experiences at Surly, its historical impact on brewing laws in Minnesota, and the vibrant atmosphere that makes it a unique destination. The conversation also touches on personal memories associated with the brewery and the importance of community in the craft beer culture. They also explore a nearby culinary destination, Malcolm Yards. The conversation wraps up with a humorous bathroom review and reflections on their brewery adventures.

You can contact us by going through our website at https://thebreweryadventure.com or by sending us an email at tim@thebreweryadventure.com or courtney@thebreweryadventure.com.

You can also take a quick visual look at the breweries we visit on our Youtube channel! https://www.youtube.com/@TheBreweryAdventure

Transcript

Tim (00:01.174)
Welcome to the Brewery Adventure where we explore the vibrant world of local breweries and the incredible atmosphere they create. I'm Tim.

Courtney (00:08.014)
And I'm Courtney. If you've ever wondered what makes a brewery more than just a place to grab a drink, you're in for a treat.

Tim (00:14.028)
In each episode, we'll cover the places making beer from the cozy corners of neighborhood taprooms to the bustling energy of larger brew houses.

Courtney (00:21.582)
We are not just talking about the beer. We are celebrating the ambiance, the culture, and the community that make each brewery a unique destination.

Tim (00:28.792)
So whether you're a regular at your local brew pub or just curious about what's out there, join us as we uncover the magic behind the taps.

Courtney (00:36.972)
Let's embark on the brewery adventure together. Cheers! Nailed it!

Tim (00:39.854)
Cheers! Yes! Courtney, yeah, we nailed it again. We're getting better and better every time.

Courtney (00:47.886)
We are, we really are.

Tim (00:48.482)
I mean, think, I think so. I think so. And it doesn't matter if we're not, because we're still having fun. We're still having fun. Well, welcome to the brewery adventure. We are here to talk about yet another brewery here in the Twin Cities Metro area of Minnesota. Tonight, we will be talking about Surly Brewing. It is a big one, both because it's important to the history of brewing, brewing here in Minneapolis area, and also just because it is big.

Courtney (00:52.442)
Exactly.

Courtney (01:07.13)
This is a big one.

Courtney (01:17.134)
It is big.

Tim (01:17.898)
It is big. It is one of the biggest in the state and it's a cool place to visit. So look forward to talking about it. Courtney, how are you today?

Courtney (01:26.764)
I am doing pretty good, how are you?

Tim (01:29.304)
Doing well, doing well. I've had a lot of time to spend with my grandson in the last couple of days. We went over to his house and visited there and then he came over to my house yesterday and we played outside in the kind of the muddy snowy backyard, you know, because, you know, it's kind of getting to spring around here. But not quite, you know, we're in that in between. wonderful. We are in that in between time, no doubt.

Courtney (01:34.77)
Aww.

Courtney (01:43.992)
Yeah, the good stuff.

Courtney (01:50.926)
Not quite. I got out my spring jacket, so we're done with winter. It can't come back.

Tim (01:59.286)
No doubt. And I look forward to when we're not in that in-between time when we can be outside on patios at breweries.

Courtney (02:05.996)
I think you snuck out to a brewery patio over the weekend.

Tim (02:09.78)
I did. Some friends invited my wife and I out to Ven Brewing, which is in Minneapolis near Minnehaha Park, right on the light rail line. So it's got a lot going on there and it was very, very busy and we ended up sitting outside even though it was a little chilly.

Courtney (02:27.94)
thought it was just like intentional. Like it's really great outside. So that's where we're going to be.

Tim (02:32.366)
You know, we've had a couple of those days here recently where you could have sat outside very comfortably, but that day was a little chilly and we sat outside. So we only had the one beer and then we moved on to another restaurant for dinner. But it was, it was a nice visit. It was very busy. So I didn't really get a chance to really scope out the brewery all that much. So we're going to have to make a visit or two to Venn Brewing. Yeah, absolutely. We will do that. It will be on the list in the future.

Courtney (02:53.498)
We're gonna have to go there. I'm in.

Tim (02:59.906)
Well, let's talk about Surly since that's what we're here for.

Courtney (03:03.0)
We can't talk about Surly until we open a Surly.

Tim (03:06.099)
that is right. You're so smart. You just didn't want to forget that part of it.

Courtney (03:11.97)
I just have that beer here taunting me waiting to be opened.

Tim (03:15.342)
Okay, so tell me which beer you have provided yourself tonight.

Courtney (03:20.846)
Well, I may be prepared with two beers. So I have a Mosh Pit Hazy IPA and my favorite, Furious.

Tim (03:24.14)
Okay. Okay.

Tim (03:30.05)
Furious is one of Surly's most well-known beers. And they're both, I've had both of those and they're both good.

Courtney (03:42.042)
That's what I'm.

Tim (03:42.862)
I have something that I went to the store and I thought I was going to buy either Furious or Hell, which is their regular lager. And I ended up finding a, I think something they're making for the winter time. It's called Winter Lager. So I assume for the winter time, it's called Winter Rise. So I'm excited to try it. I'm going to, you want to pop yours first since you're so excited to have your beer? Go for it. Go for it.

Courtney (04:00.452)
I've not had that.

Courtney (04:06.264)
Yes, I'm, yeah, let me make some adjustments here, get it up by the microphone.

Tim (04:10.998)
Yeah. wonderful. Bring it on.

Courtney (04:17.268)
And I was prepared tonight. I'm super prepared. I have a glass. I'm fancy.

Tim (04:22.542)
All right, let's hear it.

Love it.

Courtney (04:29.028)
my beer.

Tim (04:29.58)
Alright, here's the winter eyes will pop that too.

Tim (04:37.826)
Mmm, smells good.

Courtney (04:40.74)
I don't remember seeing that one on the menu.

Tim (04:44.27)
It's got a nice, you know, not a dark color, but a nice golden color to it. Kind of a dark golden color. Smells delicious.

Courtney (04:50.446)
very pretty.

Tim (04:56.96)
Mmm.

Tim (05:00.608)
If. OK, OK, if anyone if anyone out there is wondering, we do drink a beer while we're talking about the brewery that we that is the focus of that that episode. And so that's why we have beers from Surly. We always drink a beer from the brewery that we're talking about, and we welcome any of you that are listening to the podcast to also drink a beer while you're listening to the podcast as long as you're doing it in a safe place.

Courtney (05:00.632)
I did not get myself a good pour.

Courtney (05:30.586)
Yes, if you're commuting right now, don't pop a beer, please.

Tim (05:32.342)
Yeah, if you're commuting, probably not good. If you're on the treadmill at Lifetime Fitness, probably also not a good time, but you can get one afterwards.

Courtney (05:38.35)
They frown upon that kind of thing. Exactly.

Tim (05:45.23)
wonderful. Okay, we have our beers open. Wonderful tasting. This winter lager is really good.

Courtney (05:54.584)
I'm now prepared. I'm ready.

Tim (05:55.65)
Very tasty. Okay. Which one did you pour?

Courtney (05:59.552)
I ended up pouring the hazy, the mosh pit hazy.

Tim (06:03.106)
The Mosh Pit Hazy, that is one of the ones I had when we visited the brewery the other day.

Courtney (06:07.736)
It was. Furious is normally what I get if I just need to run into the liquor store and grab some beer. I'm grabbing Furious.

Tim (06:15.874)
Yeah, I don't. It's one of the things I'll talk about here. I don't generally buy Surly beer in the store. it's not that I don't like their beer. Every time I go to the brewery, I enjoy it. Excuse me, I am burping because of the beer.

Courtney (06:32.814)
Yeah.

Tim (06:35.054)
so I don't buy a lot of surly like in can form. if I do, I buy the hell the light lager. It's a nice light lager to have in the house. I like that. I'll drink a few of this when I go to the brewery, but not necessarily buy it. But I know you like to actually have it on hand. Yeah. What do you think of the mosh pit hazy?

Courtney (06:53.4)
I do, I do.

It's delicious. I don't know that it's going to replace furious for me, but it's delicious.

Tim (06:59.37)
I wrote, yeah, here's what I wrote on untapped when we were at the brewery the other day and I had mosh pit hazy. Nice but not too hoppy. And then I said not as pineapply as I thought it might be. Because I think they described it as being pineapple and I didn't get as much of it as I wanted.

Courtney (07:21.06)
I don't know if I'm tasting pineapple, but it doesn't have the same kind of bite that Furious does.

Tim (07:22.646)
Yeah, but I also put down that it's a good drinker.

Courtney (07:27.674)
Good drinker. I like that. Nothing wrong with that.

Tim (07:29.228)
Yeah, nothing wrong with it. Nothing wrong with it. Yep, nothing wrong with it. Okay, let's talk a little bit about Surly. So we both have a little bit of history at Surly. You more so than me, you've probably been there a lot more times than me because you've been there for some outdoor events and things.

Courtney (07:48.408)
been there for a lot of things. And I remember, did you ever go to their original location?

Tim (07:49.806)
Yeah.

I never did. Heard about it from friends, but never made my way there.

Courtney (07:57.732)
So, certainly originally, I had to go look up some of their history, but I do remember going to their original facility that was in Brooklyn Center, Brooklyn Park. It was up a little bit north. It was in an abrasives factory that they converted part of it into this little craft brewery, but it was very small. I remember going there with my friend Kyle. We had a great time, got a t-shirt.

Tim (08:09.452)
I think Brooklyn Center.

Tim (08:25.314)
Mm-hmm. Nice.

Courtney (08:27.096)
I think we were intending to do a tour or something, but that didn't work out. So we just drank some beer.

Tim (08:31.534)
When did they open that? Do we know when they opened that one?

Courtney (08:36.024)
That I had a couple of conflicting dates. I saw one that was December 30th of 2005. And then I think on Surly's website, they just listed as 2006.

Tim (08:45.006)
So this is really early in the brewery development of the Twin Cities. Really early. Yeah.

Courtney (08:50.242)
Yeah. Yeah. And it was a cool place to go then when it was just this tiny little space. And then all of a sudden.

Tim (09:02.38)
Yeah, I had heard good things about it. I just never made my way there.

Courtney (09:08.794)
It's all good.

Tim (09:08.832)
And then, so Surly is important to the brewing history of Minneapolis because for a long time we didn't really have a lot of breweries here because they weren't allowed to sell their beer on site, either to drink right there or to pick up and go. They couldn't do either one of those things. So we just didn't have a big brewery culture. We had a couple of breweries that were making beer to be put out into distribution and sold in liquor stores.

and things like that. But we didn't have taprooms, we didn't have a lot of other breweries popping up because they weren't allowed to sell on site, which of course is a way to make some quick money when you open a brewery. It's to kind of build that, to build a knowledge base of the people who are going to be drinking it and so they can know what your beer is. And that just wasn't a thing that we had. But Surly was instrumental in making the change in the laws here in the state of Minnesota, the loud

Courtney (09:49.838)
Yes.

Tim (10:08.43)
for breweries to do those things, to sell beer on site so you can have a beer while you're there. And then also later on, we got more laws changed so that they can, when they're canning their beer, they can actually sell it to you on site. You can actually buy some at the brewery and take it home with you rather than having to go through a liquor store. Otherwise, Minnesota has a three tiered system that is producers, distributors, and sellers, and you can't be all of those parts. You have to just be involved.

in one of those parts, but Surley was very instrumental in getting those laws changed.

Courtney (10:42.564)
And I'm so glad they did. It changed a lot of things.

Tim (10:43.98)
Yeah. Otherwise we wouldn't have all the brews we have now and we have so many. and we wouldn't have this podcast either. Yeah. Or, we, or we'd be talking about, I don't know, fast food restaurants or something. I don't know. Yeah. Much more, much more boring topics.

Courtney (10:51.894)
Exactly. None of this would be here.

Courtney (10:57.774)
Ooh. Hmm. I don't know about that. You might have a different co-host for that one.

Tim (11:04.076)
Yeah. What? OK, what did you want to say about Surly Courtney with your recent experiences at Surly compared to other breweries? What do you think?

Courtney (11:19.556)
Well, recent experiences are going to be maybe a little slim at Surly. I used to go to Surly all the time. They opened up this beautiful facility in Minneapolis. They've got all kinds of outdoor space. The building itself is enormous. They used to have a, it's two stories, they used to have a fancy restaurant that was up on the second floor that unfortunately I never went to. That space is now a pizza parlor and they have event space up there.

Tim (11:38.51)
Yeah.

Tim (11:45.964)
Right, there's a separate event space that can be rented out and then the pizza thing which we experienced last time we were there. Yeah, their outdoor space is wonderful and it's in an old and kind of an old industrial area of Minneapolis near the University of Minnesota. But it is, the building itself is brand new. They didn't rehab a building, they built that building. But it still kind of fits into the older buildings around it. There's some old grain silos next door and...

Courtney (11:52.068)
Fabulous.

Tim (12:14.606)
Yeah, their outdoor space is wonderful. So large and cool.

Courtney (12:18.382)
It's a great place when it's nice weather outside. It's super fun to just hang out outside there. They've got bags going on, kids are running around. They have all kinds of little fire pits and stuff that you can sit by if it does get a little bit chilly.

Tim (12:32.002)
Yeah, it's a really cool place when you can be outside. For me, I love it. I love Surly in the summertime. It's a cool place to go. It can be really busy. It can be really busy, but it is a cool place to go in the summer. I find it less so in the winter because it's not the kind of brewery experience that I really look for. The smaller breweries tend to be more relaxed. You walk in, you...

Courtney (12:41.356)
It can be really busy.

Courtney (12:58.67)
Yeah.

Tim (12:59.084)
either order a beer up at the bar or some of them will come to you and get your beer order. But you basically just sit where you want and people just kind of mill around and that kind of thing. Where at Surly, because they have a restaurant on their main level, you have to talk to the hostess and they have to seat you at a table and all that. And then if you go up to the pizza place, same thing. It's kind of, it's a little more relaxed in the pizza place where you can kind of pick where you want to sit in general. But it's still...

I know because of the restaurant situation, it's still just a little more organized in that way. It's not as free flowing and relaxed. It's the kind of thing that I like in a brewery.

Courtney (13:36.398)
You have some formalities you have to go through.

Tim (13:38.35)
That is it is true and then they will check you at the door too for IDs and stamp your hand there.

Courtney (13:45.028)
We got carted and we got really cool stamps that didn't come off for a couple days.

Tim (13:47.98)
Yeah, and I think it's not because they thought we looked really young. It's because I think they do it to everybody.

Courtney (13:54.807)
We can say it's because we looked young,

Tim (13:55.246)
There you go. Yeah, well, it's probably because it was with you and you looked you. OK, so yeah, so that's what I that's what I like about Surly their outdoor space. What I don't like is it's kind of I know it's more corporate. It's more modern. It's more. Restauranty. If that's a word. I have no. They do, yeah.

Courtney (14:16.238)
Yes. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it is restauranty. They do have their own food on both levels. They've got the pizza parlor upstairs and then a regular menu of really great food downstairs.

Tim (14:26.508)
Yeah, so you were saying that you used to go to Surly a lot and you've been there for some big events too, like concerts and things like that.

Courtney (14:32.864)
yeah I did get to go to one of the concerts that was outside and that was phenomenal. They had a great space for it, it was super super fun and I was thinking when we were planning this, gosh I haven't been to Surly in a long time and I was thinking it's because there's all these other places, there's all these other options to go and explore and I pick something new instead of going back to Surly which I had been to a million times. I don't think that's the reason I hadn't gone back to Surly.

Tim (14:42.413)
Yeah.

Right.

Tim (14:51.758)
Sure.

Tim (15:01.014)
Okay. Yes, you were telling me about this. So this is a little insight into Courtney. Yeah.

Courtney (15:01.626)
Courtney (15:10.082)
little insight into Courtney, I had a bad breakup at Surly. I had a bad breakup at Surly. Someone I had been to been to Surly with many many times decided that would be a great location to sit at the bar right in front of the tap and end a relationship.

Tim (15:14.408)
I know. It's just, this is, yeah.

Tim (15:22.743)
Right.

Tim (15:32.844)
I can see why you didn't go back for a while.

Courtney (15:34.98)
So I didn't go back a while and it even, I mean, it's been years, like years and years, but it even just felt weird going back there when we were there just a little while ago. It comes back.

Tim (15:36.844)
Yeah.

Tim (15:45.484)
Yeah, well, I'm glad that I could help you reintroduce yourself to Surly and kind of build new positive memories there. We'll have to go back, we'll definitely go back when the weather warms up and we'll enjoy some beer outside.

Courtney (15:54.777)
Yes.

Courtney (16:01.882)
But we have a mission now to make better memories at CERTE.

Tim (16:05.088)
Make better memories at surly. Yes It's me it's not you Okay, well that's that I can understand why you weren't there for a while and like you said there are a lot of brewery choices in the twin cities, so it's not It's not it's not like you were hurting. Well, I have some i've only been to surly. I mean i'm gonna say maybe

Courtney (16:07.566)
because certainly the problem was me, it wasn't you. I'm sorry I haven't been there.

Yeah.

Courtney (16:25.092)
There's other places to go where I don't have that memory when I walk in the door.

Tim (16:34.432)
six or seven times overall. All of them were in nicer weather except for the last two times. We went this winter and it was we sat inside because it was winter outside. And then I was also there this Valentine's Day with my wife. I happen to see online, you know, if you're involved in something like we're doing here with the Brewery Podcast, you tend to Google a lot of brewery things and the whole internet knows that I'm interested in beer things. So

Courtney (16:44.612)
haha

Courtney (17:01.668)
You just get inundated with beer events happening.

Tim (17:02.7)
Try to get ads for like any beer thing that's going on. And I happen to see one for surly for Valentine's Day and my wife also enjoys a beer. So, we made our way there on Valentine's day and we had a reservation up in the pizza area. You could sit downstairs or upstairs and we chose the pizza area and we had pizza. We had an appetizer there as well as I was a meatball appetizer. was delicious. They did a really good. They also cook the meatball appetizer in that big brick.

oven thing where they cook the pizzas and it was very good. We also had, I had arranged for a bottle service for a 2000, what was it? 2018 bottle of Surly Darkness, which is their Imperial Russian Stout. And so this bottle was bottled in 2018. He's been sitting, they've stored it.

Courtney (17:33.049)
Nice.

Courtney (17:48.57)
Courtney (17:59.47)
Just saying bottle service sounds so fancy.

Tim (18:01.486)
I know it didn't it? It did sound fancy and I had to pay 20 bucks for that bottle. But it was so cool because the young guy who came to help us when we sat down, he's like, you also ordered the bottle service, sir? And I'm like, yeah. And he said, would you like the Surly Darkness? And I think he offered me one other one too. There was a darkness and then one of their other beers that they had also stored old bottles of. I knew I wanted the darkness. So I said, we'll take the darkness. And he went over and got a bottle and he

Courtney (18:05.658)
haha

Courtney (18:23.374)
You just stopped listening after darkness.

Tim (18:31.298)
He was so happy to hold it out like a sommelier would hold out a bottle of wine and describe it to you. And he was describing everything about darkness and the history of the Surly darkness, which you were, I think, going to talk a little bit about how they do a darkness day every year. And how they had set these bottles aside every year. They set some aside so they can do this kind of thing. And he was so funny because he's like, well, we keep them.

Courtney (18:36.035)
Tim (18:58.88)
in a cooler, they're kept cold, but I know that they should be served just a little bit warmer. on nights like this, I bring them out and let them start warming up a little bit as I'm serving them. He was just so happy to be able to share all of the stuff about the beer. And he was just really just very informative and very happy to be doing it. You could tell that he loves beer and loves working at Surly. So it was a fun night. It was a nice...

Courtney (19:11.512)
I love this.

Courtney (19:20.484)
Yeah.

Tim (19:28.266)
a nice relaxing night. None of that crazy valentine pressure, you know.

I got married in 1991, so we don't have a lot of Valentine pressure. We don't even normally go out on Valentine's Day, but this was a cool thing that I saw and I'm glad we went. so it was, it was a good deal too. Yeah. So a lot of things I like about Surly, their food is really good. Yeah. I've not had any food there that's been bad. The pizzas are great. The food they have downstairs, have a wide variety of things in their menu from salads to

Courtney (19:36.538)
Perfect night.

haha

Courtney (19:47.576)
It looked like they had a good deal for it.

Courtney (19:56.676)
So good.

Tim (20:05.538)
burgers and everything else. it's, it's all very good. And I don't have any, I don't have any problems with any of their beer. I've had some IPAs in there from the Furious and the Mosh Pit Hazy. And what else did I try? I tried something called Death Western this last time, which I think was a collaboration with another brewery. it was a nice dark malty beer that had a really deep flavor and it was very tasty.

Courtney (20:09.678)
You can't go wrong.

Courtney (20:20.163)
Hahaha!

Tim (20:31.905)
So I think they make a good variety of beers. When you go to the brewery, you'll see a long list and there's a good variety of beers to have there. So that's a big positive.

Courtney (20:38.958)
Yes. And even though they have a long list and a lot of variety, I couldn't make my own flight.

Tim (20:46.722)
Yeah. Yeah.

Courtney (20:48.026)
They did have a couple of different like pre-made flights to pick from. I remember one they wouldn't let me order because one of the beers was out and they weren't just going to replace it with something else. So this was a flightless event for me. Yeah. Well, it was OK. I did have I had a full metal bake sale, which was a pastry stout. And then I had their Black Hops Dark Ale and both of them were delicious.

Tim (20:50.518)
Right. Yep.

Tim (20:57.293)
Yeah.

A flightless event. That's okay. It be okay sometimes.

Tim (21:10.422)
yeah.

Tim (21:15.884)
Yeah. And we sat, when we arrived, we saw the hostess and we sat downstairs first and we had a beer and a big pretzel. had the great spicy mustard was very delicious. And also what was the other thing that came with it? was, Pimento cheese. Yes. And yes, all of that was wonderful. So we sat downstairs and enjoyed those and, the server kept wanting us to order more, but we knew we were going to go.

Courtney (21:24.44)
with spicy mustard.

Courtney (21:31.962)
Pimento cheese, yeah.

Tim (21:43.028)
upstairs afterwards because we wanted to go upstairs and enjoy the pizza area as well where they have another bar to sit at up there, pinball machines, it kind of overlooked, there's a deck out there that overlooks the backyard area which of course again we were there in the winter no one's using. But all of that was just good fun we had a good time sitting all the people we talked to at Surly were cool too, the servers and whatnot so no issues.

Courtney (21:51.236)
Yeah.

Courtney (22:06.882)
Absolutely. Yeah.

Courtney (22:11.246)
There is very curiously in that pizza area, we were facing it, there's a big surly sign like the surly letters on the wall, but they're backwards.

Tim (22:20.942)
Yeah, lit up in red and it's certainly backwards and it even goes like there's part of the wall that like covers part of it. It's like they had it and then they like covered part of it. It's kind of weird. And we did ask the beer tender, what is the deal? Why is it backwards? It's a big sign, big individual glowing red letters. And it's like, why is it backwards? And the only response was,

Courtney (22:41.07)
Yes.

Tim (22:48.524)
I was told it matches the sign on the outside of the building. So if you go, and we did look when we walked out the door, if you look up to that spot, it does say Surly on the side of the building there.

Courtney (23:00.058)
but it's not the same sign. mean, there's a wall in between all of that.

Tim (23:01.358)
It's not like it, yeah, it doesn't go through the wall. The one on the outside of the wall is literally just printed on the wall, I think, or painted on the wall. Anyway, it was an interesting side note to that. But yeah, pinball machines up there, kind of a relaxed, the pizza place, you know, even more relaxing than downstairs. Yeah, very casual.

Courtney (23:13.014)
haha

Courtney (23:23.662)
Yeah. And I think we need to, we need to start doing some of these pinball machines.

Tim (23:30.614)
Yeah. Yeah, we're both horrible at it, so we might want to bring some bucks. Yeah. You never know. It could happen. It could happen. Yeah. So we talked a little bit about how Surly has been instrumental in the brewing business in Minneapolis. They were huge pushers when they wanted to build this place that they have now, of getting the laws changed so that they could do it.

Courtney (23:35.246)
Yeah, we can bring some bucks, but we could be pinball wizards.

Courtney (23:41.248)
Absolutely. Just a little practice, Tim. Just a little practice.

Tim (23:58.942)
But them doing it allowed a whole bunch of other breweries to open before Surly even opened, which was really interesting that they really pushed to get these laws changed and had a lot of legislators on their side to try to get it changed, obviously. And people were for it, which is why it got passed. But even before Surly could build them this big place, because they were building a huge place, lots of other little breweries opened in the Twin Cities.

Courtney (24:04.1)
Yes.

Courtney (24:27.898)
They helped a lot of people.

Tim (24:29.004)
They really did, and they helped all of us, because now we all have a bunch of breweries to look at and go to. Darkness Day, we mentioned it.

Courtney (24:39.012)
So I have not been to Darkness Day. I really think this year we need to... I don't know if they've announced a date for it. It happens in October. You haven't been to it either, have you? So we should mark off our calendar for this.

Tim (24:45.825)
OK.

I haven't been to Darkness Day either. The Darkness, yeah, we should, we should. We're doing a brewery podcast now, so I think we should. The surly darkness of anyone doesn't know what kind of beer that is. It's a Russian Imperial Stout. the alcohol content of it fluctuates a little bit, but it's always in the double digits. It's somewhere up around 11, 12, 13 % alcohol.

Courtney (24:57.4)
Hahaha!

Tim (25:15.334)
I think the one I had the other day when I was there was 12.4 something like that. It's something that you know you're drinking when you're drinking it. It's heavy. It's delicious, but you gotta take it easy on that one. Take it easy. It's a good thing. mean, my wife and I split the bottle and that's all I needed of it.

Courtney (25:26.404)
but good.

Courtney (25:30.975)
Hahaha!

Courtney (25:39.748)
So Darkness Day, they'll have a huge celebration for their release of Darkness and there's music and there's like just a big party.

Tim (25:40.814)
But yeah.

Right.

Yeah, and the bottles are things that people collect because of the artwork on them. Quite often the artwork, I don't know if it's every time, but quite often the artwork is done by Adam Turman, who's a huge artist here in the Twin Cities, does a lot of very cool art that I really love. I have a lot of his art actually at home in my house. And he does the bottle designs and yeah, it's just all...

Courtney (25:50.734)
Yes.

Courtney (26:10.008)
when he had a big mural inside. It's early too.

Tim (26:11.746)
Yeah, there's a big mural inside. Yeah, it's very cool. It's very cool. They do so many big things at Surly. I that's what they are. They're big. And so they do a lot of big things.

Courtney (26:22.702)
Yeah, including Surly gives a damn. They've got a whole volunteer charity kind of thing where they partner with different organizations in the area and do things from food drives to blood banks, housing families, cleaning up neighborhoods. They do a bunch of volunteerism through their, charity organization.

Tim (26:39.736)
That's cool. I like that. Sure. Absolutely. interesting note. You look this up early. We're wondering why Surly is called Surly. Cause you know, Surly, that means like, you know, yeah, you're, you're, you're just feeling, feeling it. Right. and there's also another company here called Surly bikes, which they're not related. The two are not related in the least. Well,

Courtney (26:41.784)
Makes you feel good.

Courtney (26:55.406)
Grrr.

Courtney (27:04.537)
Yes.

Tim (27:09.642)
Surly says it, they're called Surly due to their inability to find a good beer in town. yeah, it's a good reason, right? Yeah, and then they, so they created Furious, which we talked about earlier, and then obviously the rest is history with lots of their other beers that they had, some of which we've talked about. So we...

Courtney (27:18.35)
I like it.

An excellent reason.

Tim (27:36.064)
On our recent visit to Surly, were, it first time we'd been there together. And you had been there many times and I'd been there a few times, but you didn't know about the place that was right down the street from Surly that we also visited. Yeah.

Courtney (27:40.164)
Yes.

Courtney (27:47.562)
You have told me about this place and I think a few other people have mentioned it, but I have never been there or like that's all I know about it is that you guys have talked about it.

Tim (27:55.882)
Yeah, so like I said before, Surly is kind of in an old industrial area of Minneapolis, which has completely turned over by the way. Most of the old warehouses are gone and these huge apartment buildings have been built. But just a block away from Surly is a place called the Market at Malcolm Yards. And it's called Malcolm Yards. I think that's what the railroad yards were called. They're kind of still, if you go back behind Surly, there's still railroad yards back there. And

It's a really cool place. It's in this old building that at one point, not that long ago, had a completely collapsed roof and was just falling down. It looked like ruins. And somebody decided to put some money into it, fix it up. But they left it very old and industrial looking. So like the graffiti that was on the walls is still there. Lots of old wood, old beams, old brick. know, it's just, it's a very cool looking place, but it's kind of a long thin building.

Courtney (28:31.48)
Ha ha!

Tim (28:54.808)
that's got a lot of little restaurant booths in it. So each restaurant has like a little space. And so there's lots of different choices in there. You can get Asian food, can get burgers, pizza. I mean, it kind of changes. There's a little bit of a rotation to it as well. But the main thing that we went over there for, because I told Courtney, is that they also have a tap wall. Where, know, when you go in, you you get a...

Courtney (29:05.792)
anything.

Courtney (29:17.508)
Who doesn't love a tap wall?

Tim (29:20.77)
You get a card, you give them your credit card information, you get a card that you can use to operate the taps. And so you can fill up whatever beer you want and however much of it you want. If you just want a little taste, you can do that. If you want a whole pint, you can do that. So we tried, I only had one that night, but it was really delicious. But it's a cool place, did you agree?

Courtney (29:44.258)
I loved it. I, we just had beer at Surly. So because you can pour your own, I was just going to have like a half of a glass of something. And I went with the dangerous man, peanut butter porter, because that's one of my absolute favorites and I haven't had it in forever. so I, I poured my half a glass and some very nice Malcolm Yards employee was there. did you, did you need me to top that off for you here? I'll just, I'll just take care of it.

Tim (29:48.268)
Yeah. Right.

Right.

Mm-hmm.

Tim (29:58.893)
Right.

Courtney (30:10.434)
So he took my half a glass, went back and like made it full. Like I had somehow not been able to do that. I was like,

Tim (30:10.573)
Yeah.

Tim (30:17.782)
Right. He thought you were trying to pour a full one, but maybe didn't know how to do it and only ended up with half a glass with a lot of foam or whatever. But he paid for the other half the glass then because he used his card to do it. So you didn't have to. Yeah, that was a nice service. No.

Courtney (30:23.533)
Yes.

Courtney (30:27.278)
Yeah.

Courtney (30:32.568)
He absolutely did. I drank it because you can't let that go to waste, but I had not been intending on having a full beer over there.

Tim (30:40.844)
Yeah, and again, like you, we had already had a couple of beers over at Surly and so didn't want to have another full pint. I was the driver, didn't want to have another full glass. So I just poured like a half a glass of a lighter sour that was on there called Tiny S's. It's from Prairie Artisan Ales. I don't even know where they're located. didn't, I don't remember looking that up. maybe Prairie Artisan Ales.

Courtney (30:58.091)
Courtney (31:05.242)
I thought they were Oklahoma.

Tim (31:09.984)
And it was a sour. Here's what I wrote about it untapped. Just a small pour from the self-serve taps. This is wonderful tart and sweet at the same time. It was kind of like drinking a sweet tart. It was, it was like candy. And yeah, and I, I, I'm glad I tried it and I'm definitely going to look for it again in the future. I think a lot of people who maybe don't like a lot of, if you're not a beer drinker, I think would like that one.

Courtney (31:24.046)
That that drink was like candy, but really good candy.

Tim (31:40.463)
Because it's not a you don't drink. I think if someone Was given that drink without being told it's a beer. They wouldn't call it a beer. They might call it something else. Yeah Very good

Courtney (31:48.686)
It did not have a beer flavor.

It just had candy fruit flavor.

Tim (31:54.734)
But if you're ever going to Surly, this place is just another block away and it's a very cool place to visit. If you need, want to get some other different food choices, you could go over there. And you got obviously a lot of beer choices because you can choose whatever you want from the whole wall and have a nice time over there. It's a cool place.

Courtney (32:12.59)
I want to go back when we're not full of pizza from Surly and try some of the food over there.

Tim (32:16.309)
Yeah, they do have some outdoor space over there as well. They have a patio on both sides of the building. I think there's a little bit of patio on both sides, but it's a cool place, cool industrial area in Minneapolis and there's still a lot of old grain elevators around, so it's got a cool look to it and a cool place to visit. If you're going to Surly, also give Malcolm Yards a try.

Courtney (32:24.943)
cool.

Courtney (32:39.598)
Why not do both?

Tim (32:40.94)
Why not? Why not? Well, one more thing. We got to go back to Surly for a moment. Because we forgot to do the bathroom review. And I don't want to leave an episode without a bathroom review. So one negative about the bathrooms at Surly is we were upstairs in the pizza restaurant and I asked someone, like, where's the bathroom? And they said, got to go downstairs.

Courtney (32:47.788)
Okay. gosh.

Courtney (32:54.959)
We can't do it.

Tim (33:05.858)
So I don't know why they don't have another bathroom for the pizza restaurant upstairs, but they don't. So you got to go back downstairs or back down the elevator. There is an elevator. And I guess so. I guess so. Well, their bathrooms are nice though. They're big because it's a big place. Surly is like we said, a big place. So they have large bathrooms. As I remember that there are no doors. just, it's one of those ones where you just kind of walk through a little curved entryway to the bathroom. So they don't need to have a door and clean.

Courtney (33:13.69)
They're gonna make you work off some of those pizza calories by going up and down the stairs.

Tim (33:35.126)
Wonderful didn't have to touch anything. So I have no complaints No complaints about the surly bathrooms whatsoever

Courtney (33:41.7)
What are we rating this bathroom on the 10 bathroom scale?

Tim (33:44.406)
I think we're still doing a one to 10 scale on bathrooms. And I would give the Surly bathrooms, I'm gonna give them a nine. And the only reason I give them a nine is because I had to walk downstairs. It wasn't on the level of the building I was on. Yeah, so that's only negative. And they're right inside kind of the main entrance when you come in, right on the right hand side if you're coming in, so you'll see them there. Okay, cool.

Courtney (33:57.124)
That's fair. Absolutely fair.

Tim (34:10.41)
Well, I think we've had a lot of positive things to say about Surly, hardly any negatives at all. Other than for me, like I said, it is not the kind of cozy brewery that I usually like to hang out in. Going to Surly is an event. It's kind of like a bigger event style kind of place. At least that's what it feels like to me. It's not the kind of place where I want to go and...

Courtney (34:28.76)
It is an event.

Tim (34:37.312)
and have a cozy experience and just enjoy a beer.

Courtney (34:41.282)
If you have people coming in from out of town and you want to take them someplace that is kind cool that they're going to remember, you go to Surly.

Tim (34:43.299)
Yeah.

Tim (34:46.912)
Yeah, I think so. Yes, I would definitely bring people there. Nothing about positive experiences there. But for me, I do like a smaller, cozy brewery as well. So there you go. That's my opinion.

Courtney (34:58.072)
Yeah. Well, my my negative is obviously don't take someone to surly and break up with them.

Tim (35:03.31)
Don't take someone anywhere and break up with them, okay?

Courtney (35:09.53)
How about, well, don't take someone to like their favorite place and break up with them.

Tim (35:12.866)
Yeah, don't ruin great places by taking someone there and breaking up with them. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Just break up with them out on the street or something. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. know, whatever. Pick a spot you already don't like. Anyway, so that was Surly. Any final thoughts you want to have for Surly?

Courtney (35:17.676)
Exactly. That's yes. Yep.

Courtney (35:26.106)
Yeah

in the street would be better.

Yeah, that would be ideal.

Courtney (35:41.594)
I'm committing myself to spending more time at Surly. I miss it.

Tim (35:46.39)
Okay, yeah, definitely when the better weather comes back, we will revisit again. Yeah, so we can sit outside. awesome. That sounds like fun.

Courtney (35:51.502)
Yes. And I will challenge you to bags outside.

You can pick a partner, I'll pick a partner. Game on.

Tim (36:01.954)
Yep. So once again, we're coming to the end of another episode of the Brewery Adventure and I don't think we've decided what brewery we're going to do next. This is becoming our way of doing business is that we don't plan that far ahead. So yes, we are open to suggestions. You can contact us through our email addresses, which is tim at thebreweryadventure.com or Courtney at thebreweryadventure.com. We also have, of course, just visiting our website, thebreweryadventure.com.

Courtney (36:10.126)
We haven't, we're open to suggestions.

Tim (36:32.31)
And you can find a contact form there where you can give us your suggestions about which brewery we should visit, what you do and don't like about bathrooms, what beers you like and don't like, what styles you like. We'd like to hear any of that information from you. And we'd be glad to have it.

Courtney (36:49.786)
To be fair, have a short list. It's not like we're just like, gosh, where are we going to go? We have a short list.

Tim (36:53.326)
Yes, we do have a list. We do have a list. just we should really just make a decision before we do a recording We should make a decision on the next one. What do you think?

Courtney (37:01.762)
It's more fun to not know. We'll leave everyone in suspense.

Tim (37:03.852)
Yeah, leave everyone in suspense. I love it. I love it. Well, thanks for coming along on this brewery adventure with Courtney and I, and we'll see you next time when we'll be visiting another brewery in the Twin Cities metro area. Until then, cheers.

Courtney (37:18.618)
Cheers!