The Brewery Adventure Ep.12 Boom Island Brewing

In this episode of Brewery Adventure, hosts Tim and Courtney spotlight Boom Island Brewery in Minnetonka, MN. From its backstory to its lively taproom vibe, they share firsthand stories and flavor-packed insights from their latest tasting journey. The duo chats about standout events like Knights and Pints, explores the brewery’s one-of-a-kind offerings, and breaks down the perks of joining their membership program. With plenty of laughs, local flavor, and a true passion for community, Tim and Courtney celebrate what makes brewery hopping such an unforgettable experience—and tease what’s on tap for future 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

Timothy Larsen (00:01.742)
Welcome to the Brewery Adventure where we explore the vibrant world of local breweries and the incredible atmosphere they create. I'm Tim.

Courtney (00:08.398)
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.

Timothy Larsen (00:14.03)
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 (00:21.294)
We're not just talking about the beer. We are celebrating the ambiance, the culture, and the community that make each brewery a unique destination.

Timothy Larsen (00:28.159)
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 (00:36.194)
Let's embark on the brewery adventure together. Cheers! Tim, welcome to another fine episode of the Brewery Adventure.

Timothy Larsen (00:39.056)
Cheers.

Timothy Larsen (00:45.038)
Yes, it is so fun. I'm looking forward to this one as usual because every brewery we go to is fun.

Courtney (00:51.554)
Everyone is fun. This one has some particular funness to it. But first, we've got some business to take care of.

Timothy Larsen (00:55.398)
Okay.

Courtney (00:59.362)
We need to open our beers. I think that is the first thing that we need to do. And then we need to talk briefly about a little bit of details from the last brewery that we covered, which was Steel Toe in St. Louis Park.

Timothy Larsen (01:00.708)
Yes. Yes, we do.

Timothy Larsen (01:10.946)
Yes, I think we should do that. But yeah, let's get to the beers. What do you have?

Courtney (01:15.162)
I have the Boom Island Fixie Abbey Blonde Ale with a really cool label that has like an orange brick wall and a cool little blue bike on it.

Timothy Larsen (01:20.294)
Mmm.

Timothy Larsen (01:26.51)
Yes, I had that one in my flight last time we were there and I'll talk about that later. It is very good. Go ahead and pop it.

Courtney (01:32.974)
All right, here we go.

Courtney (01:39.596)
Like always, I'm making a huge mess. It's going to be fine.

Timothy Larsen (01:42.47)
Yeah, it's all fine. It's all fine. As as your computer keeps working, we're good.

Courtney (01:49.11)
I should be prepared for this by now and I just, I'm not. There we go.

Timothy Larsen (01:55.078)
All right.

Courtney (01:57.834)
Yeah, that's happiness.

Timothy Larsen (01:58.36)
Yeah, yeah, she was ready for that. I have another one that I had as part of my flight called Ducks on the Pond. It's a saison and it's got a cool green grass logo with a blue kind of a baseball diamond on it and ducks that are on the bases.

Courtney (02:17.294)
I've had this one and I really like the imagery that they have for it. It's adorable.

Timothy Larsen (02:19.718)
Yeah, it's a Saison. It's 6.6 % ABV.

Timothy Larsen (02:27.814)
See, I made a mess too. boy.

Courtney (02:33.826)
That means we're in for a good episode.

Timothy Larsen (02:33.85)
Getting it everywhere. My computer's gonna spill.

bit like beer.

Courtney (02:40.728)
That's good for.

Timothy Larsen (02:42.15)
It sounded good. It's also making a mess. I have beer everywhere. And nothing to clean it up with. What's that? We are messy. That's OK. Let me taste it.

Courtney (02:48.45)
Did you even take a sip? we're just going to be messy.

Timothy Larsen (02:58.114)
yeah, that is good. I remember it being good and I like this one. It's got a nice taste to it. Cezanne is a style of beer I generally like, so I'm right on board with this one. Yeah, very cool. Very cool. Now that we have the beers open.

Courtney (03:09.09)
Love it.

Before, yeah, before we dive into Boom Island, we do need to talk about a couple of things about Steel Toe.

We've got a couple of details. They reached out to us after the episode and gave us some more detail about the mural that we discussed, the Adam Turbin mural.

Timothy Larsen (03:31.3)
Right, that untermined mural that's on the side of the parking ramp outside their brewery.

Courtney (03:36.194)
Yes, they told us that it was a project that the city was putting together and they got to vote on which local artist project would best fit that space. So they didn't, it wasn't their project to do, but it was a project they got to vote on and have a say in what was gonna be there.

Timothy Larsen (03:45.646)
That's very cool. I'm glad that.

Right.

I'm glad they chose Adam Terman because I like his work a lot. have many of his prints in my home.

Courtney (03:57.698)
They made an excellent choice.

Timothy Larsen (03:59.044)
Yeah, it's beautiful. does brighten up their patio.

Courtney (04:02.316)
The other part of this, put a little challenge out on the last episode. A little challenge. We kept adding detail to the challenge, but we did put out a challenge if someone could go to Steel Toe, find our sticker, take a picture of it. And I think we also threw in, it had to be a picture with them holding a beer.

Timothy Larsen (04:06.372)
Yeah, a little challenge. Yep.

Timothy Larsen (04:11.75)
Yeah, right. Yep.

Yes. Yeah.

Timothy Larsen (04:22.862)
Yes, they had to have a beer. Yep.

Courtney (04:24.962)
Yes. Of all people.

Timothy Larsen (04:27.174)
And they had, and then you added, they had to tag us, they had to put it in like an Instagram post and tag us. Yes. of them. Yes, the day the episode was released, it was accomplished. Very cool.

Courtney (04:33.506)
Yes, all of these things were accomplished the day the episode was released.

Courtney (04:43.148)
Yes, our friend Josh went over to Steel Toe, got his picture taken, had a beer in hand. Josh are really he's our beer drinking friend in training. He's not a big beer person. We're trying to get him there.

Timothy Larsen (04:53.241)
Yes.

He is not. He's traditionally been kind of a champagne of beers kind of guy. Yeah, which is fine. I'll drink that too. know Courtney probably wouldn't, but I would. And so yeah, he's in training for sure.

Courtney (05:01.325)
Yes.

Courtney (05:11.022)
But he's learning. think he's making progress.

Timothy Larsen (05:13.594)
But he's a huge fan of the podcast. You heard his voice on the Oudipils episode, right? And huge fan of the podcast. And he rushed right out to go find that sticker.

Courtney (05:18.818)
Absolutely.

Courtney (05:26.008)
I did have to ask him if he, you know, purposely like heard the episode, ran over there to get his picture taken, but he was kind of in the area already, but he did make an effort to get over there specifically for that.

Timothy Larsen (05:30.618)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mmm.

Very cool. Thanks so much, Josh, for supporting our podcast, and we will get you the podcast stickers that we promised you.

Courtney (05:44.354)
Yes, we appreciate it.

Timothy Larsen (05:46.446)
I will see Josh this week because I'm traveling to the same place he is. We'll talk a little bit about that later.

Courtney (05:53.39)
We've got a lot to talk about later, but we're going to get into it because today we are talking about a brewery that again is another one that's pretty close to both of us. Boom Island in Minnetonka.

Timothy Larsen (05:55.236)
we have a lot to talk about

Timothy Larsen (06:06.406)
Yeah, which is a confusing name, right? For Minnetonka. It's a confusing name for a brewery in Minnetonka. Because if you're from the Twin Cities, know, Boom Island is a area, a park on the Mississippi River in Minneapolis.

Courtney (06:10.318)
a little bit.

Courtney (06:14.626)
Yes.

Courtney (06:23.938)
Yes, not really close to Minnetonka.

Timothy Larsen (06:26.646)
not really close to Minnetonka. So how did that come to be?

Courtney (06:31.022)
Well, the brewery was founded in 2011 and they had a very tiny space near Boom Island Park in Northeast Minneapolis. They started small. They ended up expanding one time in Minneapolis to another location that was close by. And then they expanded a second time. They needed much more space. They wanted more room for production space, a larger tap room. And so they came out to Minnetonk.

Timothy Larsen (06:39.184)
Mmm.

Timothy Larsen (06:55.14)
Yeah, very cool. I don't think I ever went to either one of their Minneapolis locations.

Courtney (07:02.592)
I am sad to say that I didn't either.

Timothy Larsen (07:05.54)
Yeah, I didn't really, I didn't know about Boom Island, don't think, or at least make an effort to get to it until they moved to Minnetonka.

Courtney (07:12.728)
Well, and even they've been in Minnetonka since 2019. And I would say I never went there until the last couple of months, maybe recently. So I'm kind of sad about that because it's really a fun space. It's a very comfortable space. I've been going there quite a bit.

Timothy Larsen (07:15.768)
Yeah, it's been a while already.

Timothy Larsen (07:21.936)
Yeah. Yeah.

Timothy Larsen (07:31.883)
Yeah. Some of the history that you looked up earlier too, I thought was interesting that they're musicians. Did they both play French horn? Is that what they're at a French horn symposium, it says when they met in China.

Courtney (07:38.488)
Yeah, yeah.

Courtney (07:44.854)
It said they met at a French horn symposium, so I'm assuming that they both play French horn.

Timothy Larsen (07:48.966)
That's pretty cool. And they've both been involved with the Minnesota Orchestra, the Symphony of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Minnesota Opera, all of that stuff. So very cool. But they fell in love with home-brewed beer. that is usually the instigator of starting a brewery. Yeah, falling in love with the beer. But yeah, it's very cool. And I do enjoy

Courtney (07:59.267)
Yeah, musical background.

Courtney (08:04.876)
Yes.

Courtney (08:11.864)
Fall in love with a beer, step one.

Timothy Larsen (08:19.266)
Boone Island, been there a number of times. Not as many times as you have because you have been hanging out there. I think the people that work in there know you now. They recognize you.

Courtney (08:26.22)
It's been an easy stop.

Courtney (08:31.83)
One of the beer tenders and I, we've bonded, we talk, yeah.

Timothy Larsen (08:34.03)
Yeah. So we were there just the other day. You and myself and my wife, Krista, we hung out there for an evening to enjoy some beers and reacquaint our minds with exactly what's going on at Boone Island. That night they were doing another trivia game thing, which had drawn, yeah, the initials game, which is kind of a new trivia thing. And that had drawn in some people.

Courtney (08:39.885)
Yes.

Courtney (08:55.64)
The initials game.

Timothy Larsen (09:01.478)
but we kind of set off more into the corner so we can get away from that noise a little bit and enjoy our beers. And I did enjoy them. I had a flight to begin with, which is... know, and that's weird. Usually you always get the flights and quite often I go for a pint, but I wanted to try more of their variety. And that's what Krista said too. She's not usually a flight purchaser.

Courtney (09:05.784)
Yes.

Courtney (09:14.466)
You and Krista both had flights and I was the one who didn't have a flight.

Courtney (09:28.844)
No.

Timothy Larsen (09:30.244)
but she saw that they had a number of darker beers on their menu and she loves that style. So she wanted to try all of them. So that's why she got the flight.

Courtney (09:38.594)
Yes, and one of the dark beers that's my favorite, Dark Horse, is just a really nice drinkable porter that they have. And I did notice on their website that this summer they're going to have a couple of different varieties of the Dark Horse porter. There's going to be a S'mores and a coconut flavor.

Timothy Larsen (09:42.662)
Mm.

Timothy Larsen (09:53.176)
Really?

Timothy Larsen (09:57.536)
coconut flavor. I've had some coconut flavored beers and sometimes when they hit it right, it can be really, really good. Sometimes if they hit it wrong, you don't really notice it. It's like coconut, I don't even know, it's there.

Courtney (10:04.684)
Yes. And if they hit it wrong?

Timothy Larsen (10:13.944)
I will see what Boom Island does with it. But anyway, in my flight, I had a baby, what they call baby box.

which was delicious. It's a dark lager. I really like that one. I had the Nitro Donnybrook and that's a red ale, an Irish red, and that one was disappointing. It was kind of flat, I thought. It didn't really have the Nitro feel. It just felt flat. So, yep.

Courtney (10:39.586)
Yeah.

Courtney (10:45.368)
And I tasted yours and it did taste a little flat. And I know I've had that beer there before and it's been good. So I don't know if it was just like an off night kind of thing.

Timothy Larsen (10:53.606)
Maybe it was hitting the end of a keg or something. You who knows? It was drinkable. I drank it, believe me. anyway, and I also had the ducks on the pond, which I'm drinking tonight. That's a farmhouse ale or a saison. It's a delicious, delicious beer. And I also had what you're drinking tonight, the Fixie, the Belgian blonde. And that's an easy drinking beer. Very tasty, light.

Courtney (10:57.411)
Yeah.

Hahaha

Courtney (11:14.744)
Yeah.

Courtney (11:21.826)
Delicious.

Timothy Larsen (11:22.456)
Yeah, delicious. Yeah, that's the ones I had. And then I finished the night with a pint of que pasa, which is a Mexican lager.

Courtney (11:29.646)
You

Courtney (11:34.008)
named.

Timothy Larsen (11:34.778)
Yeah, pale, they call it, actually they call it a pale lager, but I think on their board they call it a pale Mexican lager. But anyway, whatever they call it, it was delicious. And that's how we ended our night. For me, anyway.

Courtney (11:52.098)
I think when I was there, I had the tropical layover when you guys had your flights, which is a passion fruit and guava sour. That was delicious. And the other one I like that is kind of new for them is the push-up hazy IPA, which is orange and vanilla. And it tastes exactly like it sounds.

Timothy Larsen (11:56.709)
Mm-hmm.

Timothy Larsen (12:01.209)
Mm-hmm.

Timothy Larsen (12:15.162)
So it did have that orange push-up flavor. Cool.

Courtney (12:17.974)
Absolutely. Yeah, loved it. Another fun thing, their flight holder, it could look like a couple of different things. It kind of looks like the lighthouse in their logo.

Timothy Larsen (12:21.99)
Cool. Yeah.

Timothy Larsen (12:29.904)
Mm-hmm.

Timothy Larsen (12:34.916)
Yeah, and that's at first what I thought it was because I thought what makes more sense than to do the lighthouse, right? I mean, it's in their logo. It's in their name. mean, what you going to do? What else are going to pick? But then when I look closer at it, it does look like a sword.

Courtney (12:40.366)
Yeah.

Courtney (12:50.476)
It looks like a sword.

Timothy Larsen (12:52.72)
So we didn't ask, did we? Like, what is this supposed to be?

Courtney (12:54.893)
No.

I, you know what? It's going to be my new mission to find out. I can ask the tough questions.

Timothy Larsen (13:00.836)
Yeah, I think we need to ask that question, find out what it is. But anyway, no matter what it is, it did hold the glasses and that's what's important. Easy to carry. I carried two of them all the way to the table by myself. So I did fine. I did fine. But anyway, we had a nice cozy spot kind of over in the corner near the tanks. In the brewery, we did notice what? was tank number five is missing, right? They're numbered. It's like one, two, three, four.

Courtney (13:08.204)
and it was easy to carry.

Courtney (13:12.598)
I was impressed. Yeah.

Courtney (13:22.893)
Yeah.

Courtney (13:26.978)
Yes.

Timothy Larsen (13:29.702)
and then five is nowhere to be seen, and then six, seven, eight, nine. And they didn't, we did ask that question. We did ask where five went and they didn't know, did they?

Courtney (13:34.594)
We have a lot of questions.

No, they didn't even realize that there wasn't a five. Yes.

Timothy Larsen (13:43.012)
Or at least the person we talked to didn't. Probably the head brewer probably knows what happened to five, I would guess.

Courtney (13:49.134)
I mean, there is a space, there's a hole where you could put something that has a five on it.

Timothy Larsen (13:50.918)
Yeah, don't know. Anyway, that was occupying our minds, I guess. But we had a nice cozy spot in the corner. They have like barrels, wood barrels around that edge, kind of separating where you sit from the tank area, from the production area. So that's kind of cool. They got a cozy little larger table over in that corner, kind of a little nook. Did you see that?

Courtney (14:08.142)
Yeah.

Courtney (14:15.596)
Yeah, and it had like little flowers up on the wall. Yeah.

Timothy Larsen (14:17.486)
Yeah, that looked like a really comfortable place to sit if you had a group of like five or six people or whatever you could sit in there. Otherwise, yeah, it's been a smattering of high tops and bench style tables and low tables, high tables all around the place. And then back around that corner, past the bar where you get your beers, in that corner, there was a more of a private rentable room. The boom room. Yeah.

Courtney (14:40.77)
The boom room.

Timothy Larsen (14:45.05)
That looked like a nice space to rent if you need a little spot.

Courtney (14:48.534)
Yeah, it looked really cool back there. We did have a geocaching event there a little while ago, and I was thinking we were going to be in that back room, but they had it. They just had some high top tables reserved for us, which was great. It was fabulous.

Timothy Larsen (14:50.446)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Timothy Larsen (15:00.804)
Yeah, yeah, quite often for geocaching events, we don't want to rent space because it's a free event. It's a thing that just people show up to. So you don't really want to pay for rentals. So you generally just kind of find space. Some brewers will just set aside some space. It's pretty cool. Yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. What else we have?

Courtney (15:06.114)
No.

Courtney (15:17.858)
Yeah, they had tables reserved for us. They had little signs on them.

Timothy Larsen (15:27.173)
yes, you recently you went back. We were there together with my wife, Krista, and then you went back just a couple of days later for an event. What was that?

Courtney (15:31.618)
Yes.

Courtney (15:36.192)
It was the best day ever,

Timothy Larsen (15:39.622)
I was busy. I was busy with family things so I could not attend but I was jealous because it did sound cool

Courtney (15:47.416)
So they had an event called Knights and Pints. And I read about it a little bit on their website and thought, I'm gonna go to this. It'd be cool if other people came with me, but whatever, I'm gonna go by myself. And I ended up putting a message out to our geocaching group, The Day Of, and your brother ended up showing up. And then Josh ended up surprising us later.

Timothy Larsen (15:56.804)
Yeah.

Timothy Larsen (16:05.263)
Right.

Timothy Larsen (16:11.623)
really, Josh showed, I didn't know Josh was there.

Courtney (16:14.134)
Well, he so your brother Tom and I, we had a beer, we kind of walked around and looked at the different vendors that they had for this event. They had like a leather worker. They had a soap maker, candle maker. They had an actual blacksmith.

Timothy Larsen (16:31.096)
So kind of like a Renaissance fair kind of a feel. Okay, cool. Wow. Okay.

Courtney (16:32.96)
Yeah. Yes. People were in costume. even there was some armored combat that was going to be happening. So those people had like legitimate armor on, but there were

Timothy Larsen (16:44.83)
I saw some of your video of that, or maybe it Josh's video. I saw a video from somebody, and did you put it in our Instagram feed? Okay, Courtney's gonna do that. She's gonna put some video from that event, including the guys in armor hitting each other, right? Okay, so you can go look at our Instagram to see that. That looked really, I mean, a pretty cool thing for a brewery to do, I think.

Courtney (16:52.396)
Yeah.

Not yet, I was saving it.

Courtney (17:03.074)
Yeah.

Courtney (17:12.886)
It was really neat. again, just regular spectators were in costume. So your brother and I are standing outside waiting for the fighting to start. And I look over and see someone walking toward us with a helmet on, but also like normal clothes. And I was thinking, wow, that that guy's he's prepared. He could just jump in there and start fighting. And he came right over to us and then took his helmet off. And it was Josh. So the grand reveal.

Timothy Larsen (17:32.026)
Yeah.

Timothy Larsen (17:36.751)
What?

Timothy Larsen (17:41.498)
Did he bring a helmet or did he borrow it from somebody there?

Courtney (17:45.132)
He said he had it in his car.

Timothy Larsen (17:47.715)
that I could believe. That I could believe.

Courtney (17:51.694)
I don't know. He was prepared.

Timothy Larsen (17:53.19)
Anyway, so you watched, you had beer, you visited vendors, you saw the fighting.

Courtney (18:03.222)
It was it was combat. They did like one on one fights and they've got weapons that are kind of blunted out and they've got rules for safety. But this is like a like a formal kind of competition with a referee and all this kind of stuff happening. And there's national competitions, international competitions. It's like a whole it's a whole thing, but they're hitting each other.

Timothy Larsen (18:11.524)
Yeah.

Timothy Larsen (18:20.307)
wow. Okay. And there, there was no jousting though, right? No horses involved? Okay.

Courtney (18:27.713)
No horses.

No, but they would did one on one fights and then they did like a bigger brawl that had five guys in the ring at the same time. It was really neat.

Timothy Larsen (18:37.252)
Wow. Okay, very cool. Check out the Instagram feed if you want to see what that looked like.

Courtney (18:44.974)
And they also did a special selection of beers for that event that were themed, which again makes me lean toward the flight holder being a bit of a sword.

Timothy Larsen (18:52.518)
okay, sure.

Courtney (18:57.942)
I don't know, because I don't know if that fits in with the rest of their stuff, but they had a beer called Sharpshooter that was a West Coast Pilsner, Dragon's Breath that was a smoky wheat ale that your brother and I both had and was really a nice smoky flavor, a Knight's Ale, which was an English pub ale, and then Maiden's Mead, which was a honey orange blossom jasmine hard seltzer.

Timothy Larsen (19:01.029)
Yeah.

Timothy Larsen (19:10.746)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Timothy Larsen (19:20.05)
Okay, they had a good selection of new things going on. That's cool. That's cool. Well, I'm glad you had a really good time at that event. Like I said, I was a little bit jealous not being able to be there, but I'm glad that you and Tom got to attend and Josh as well.

Courtney (19:23.031)
It was, yeah.

Courtney (19:38.478)
was good times.

Timothy Larsen (19:39.094)
Very cool. We have not really described Boone Island, I think the way that it looks. Boone Island is in a one level warehousey area. Would you call it that? Not industrial, but like warehousey. There's offices like the rest of their, the rest of their building, what there's a there's a vet, vet clinic and something else. I don't remember what else was in there. But they're on the end of it. And it's typical.

Courtney (19:54.669)
Yeah.

Timothy Larsen (20:08.578)
They have a permanent patio outside on the corner where there's seating outside and kind of a brick surface to walk on. And then they've also, I think, just realized they need more patio space and they've just kind of cordoned off a section of the parking lot there outside their door with a tent and more seating. So lots of space to sit outside as well as what we talked about inside.

Courtney (20:11.822)
Yes.

Courtney (20:32.302)
Yeah, and there's space for a food truck. There's typically a food truck there.

Timothy Larsen (20:34.766)
Yeah, right. Typically food trucks like most breweries that have a rotation of food trucks that come by.

Courtney (20:41.688)
but they also do pizza inside all the time.

Timothy Larsen (20:44.078)
Yeah, can get a pizza inside. And it's not like a frozen pizza. They're not just cooking you a frozen pizza.

Courtney (20:52.598)
No, there's a pizza place in the Skyway in Minneapolis called Sorrento Cucina? Cucina? Cucina? That's what it's called. They bring over fresh, freshly made pizza crusts that have the sauce and cheese already on them. And then the rest of the toppings Boom Island puts on at the brewery when you order it.

Timothy Larsen (20:55.994)
Mm-hmm. Okay, yep. Sure, either way. Sounds good. Yeah.

Timothy Larsen (21:09.135)
Mm-hmm.

Timothy Larsen (21:13.862)
Yeah, and we had the night I was there with you, we had a combination sausage, pepperoni pizza, which I thought was pretty good. Yeah. Good, good, good.

Courtney (21:21.336)
Delicious.

Courtney (21:26.094)
Yeah, the other thing that I had not been paying attention to, they have a rewards program. They have their own app, which I have. That's free app. Every seven beers, you get a free beer. So when you go pay for your beer, they'll like mark off that you've gotten a beer. And when you hit seven, it pops up and tells you that you have a free beer coming. But Tim, for $10 a month, you could get $2 off every pint.

Timothy Larsen (21:31.902)
yes.

Timothy Larsen (21:37.222)
Mmm.

Timothy Larsen (21:46.51)
Nice. Yeah.

Timothy Larsen (21:54.31)
Mm-hmm.

Courtney (21:54.508)
You could get two for ones all day every Tuesday, 15 % off merch, access to member only merch, and early access to new beers.

Timothy Larsen (22:03.77)
That's pretty cool. If you're...

Courtney (22:05.996)
I feel like their early access to new beers is very important. I have been there before and tried to order a new beer and been told I couldn't because I was not a member.

Timothy Larsen (22:14.662)
okay. Well, they recently won an award for one of their beers that you got to try, right? You got there at the right time to be able to try it.

Courtney (22:25.634)
Yes, they recently won the 2025 Minnesota Brewers Cup Award for Best in Show for their pumpkin ale. And when they won that, they put it back on tap for a week.

Timothy Larsen (22:33.504)
and what

Timothy Larsen (22:37.764)
Yeah. And what was that like? And what was that like?

Courtney (22:39.426)
would recommend. It's an autumn ale and it has all the autumn spices. The spice flavor really comes through.

Timothy Larsen (22:47.75)
Hmm.

Timothy Larsen (22:51.332)
I think I would have really liked it. I'll look forward to it. I'm sure they'll bring it since they won an award for it. They'll probably bring it back again, right? This next fall, in the fall maybe?

Courtney (22:53.004)
I think you would have too.

Courtney (22:59.234)
I'm hoping so.

Yeah, we'll have to stock up on Crowlers.

Timothy Larsen (23:04.961)
yeah, yep, yep, yep. So they have the $10 a month Boom Squad membership. What else do they have?

Courtney (23:13.422)
They also have for a bigger membership for $750 a year, you could get Boomsquad premium. So you get all the perks of the regular membership. Plus you get a free beer every day, a free Crowler a week. You get a glass, which I've seen other people there with their special glasses.

Timothy Larsen (23:21.062)
Mm-hmm.

Timothy Larsen (23:30.672)
Yeah.

Timothy Larsen (23:34.104)
And does it? I'm reading this on the screen right in front of me. It says that glass is a 26 ounce glass. So they for their free pour, you could come in for your pour every day and get 26 ounces. Man.

Courtney (23:40.27)
That's what it said.

Courtney (23:46.648)
That's what it seems like. I don't know if that's how it is, but that's what it seems like.

Timothy Larsen (23:51.654)
That sounds like a dangerous, dangerous thing to be a member of.

Courtney (23:57.08)
Sounds like a pretty great thing to be a member of.

Timothy Larsen (23:59.246)
Yeah, you also get three hours of the boom room rental. I see. That's pretty cool. If you want to have a little birthday party or something, boom, you're in.

Courtney (24:03.074)
Yeah. Problem solved. You don't have to pay for it. Yeah. Boom, you're in.

Timothy Larsen (24:10.832)
Boom, you're in, right into the boom room. Very cool. Let's do a quick, we've talked about pizza. We talked about the environment there, which is very cool and relaxing. They got a big screen projector thing with a, when I've been in there, it's usually got some sort of sports thing going on on it. And dogs are allowed outside only, not inside. Just so you know that.

Courtney (24:28.482)
Yes.

Timothy Larsen (24:37.446)
And a quick bathroom review. Their bathrooms clean. I'll call them clean and accessible. That's what I will call them. But I didn't like the fact that I think they had paper towels, no kick thing on the door. So to get out, I had to try to use the paper towel, but then the garbage cans not quite close enough to the doors. You have to do that gymnastics move where you try to get the paper towel back into the trash can. Anyway, what does that give them? I think that's a

Courtney (24:58.199)
Yes.

Timothy Larsen (25:08.314)
That's a good eight out of 10, I think. that trash can a little bit closer to the door and we can bump them.

Courtney (25:11.32)
That's higher than I thought you were going to give them.

A little work to be done.

Timothy Larsen (25:17.83)
Right? Yeah, a little bit, a little bit. But perfectly fine bathrooms. So there's your bathroom review. We are quickly coming to the end of this episode, I believe. Unless there's anything else that Courtney would like to add.

Courtney (25:30.914)
Yeah.

Courtney (25:34.68)
I mean, I feel like I could talk about Boom Island for a while because I really enjoy being there.

Timothy Larsen (25:39.908)
Yeah, you have been hanging out there a little bit because you've it's convenient to you on the way home from another thing. And so you end up there. And that's that's pretty cool. That's what, you know, breweries kind of develop that neighborhood or community feel to certain people. LTD is like that. Like you've talked about, we've been there and lots of breweries are like that. They get their they get their group of regulars that are there on the regular.

Courtney (25:46.904)
Yes.

Courtney (26:01.272)
Yeah.

Timothy Larsen (26:09.752)
That's why they're called that. And then other people, of course, are coming in as well. And BooMindLin has kind of become that for you recently.

Courtney (26:18.584)
Except I'm not gonna call myself a regular there because I do feel very distinctly when you walk in, the bar's in front of you. I feel like the regulars sit on the left side of the bar.

Timothy Larsen (26:20.985)
Okay.

Yeah, right.

Timothy Larsen (26:29.863)
People with the big mugs, they all have big mugs over there. Yeah Okay, okay

Courtney (26:31.638)
Yeah, they all know each other there all the time. It doesn't matter who's sitting over there. Like the left side of the bar is for regulars and then the right side of the bar is for other people.

Timothy Larsen (26:42.726)
And the tables are for everyone. Yeah, of course. So as I mentioned before earlier in the episode, I will be traveling with Joshua, the geocaching vlogger who you've heard on this podcast. We are attending a large Munzee and geocaching set of events in Morgantown, West Virginia this next week. I leave on Tuesday. I think Josh is coming from Florida because he's working in Florida before that.

Courtney (26:45.102)
Tables are for everyone.

Timothy Larsen (27:13.156)
but he will be coming from there and we'll be meeting at the airport.

Courtney (27:15.992)
Do you have brewery plans already? Have you scouted this out?

Timothy Larsen (27:17.974)
We don't have any, don't, briefly, very briefly, I don't have any firm brewery plans, because this is going to be a hectic, hectic number of days. I'm going to be there from Tuesday till Sunday, and we've got things to do all the time. There's multiple geocaching events and multiple Munzee events to attend. And so we are going to be trying to jam a lot of stuff in, besides both Josh and myself trying to do some filming for YouTube and...

Craig, I don't know what Craig will be doing if he'll be filming as well or just helping Josh. But we will be doing a lot of things and so but we are going to visit the breweries. I know that for sure.

Courtney (27:57.912)
How many days are you there?

Timothy Larsen (27:59.654)
I won't arrive in Morgantown until Wednesday because they're going to be in Pittsburgh on Tuesday. But so I'm there Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and then fly home on Sunday.

Courtney (28:12.76)
So I'm expecting three breweries.

Timothy Larsen (28:16.344)
I think there are basically three breweries in Morgantown. I think there are other places that probably call themselves ale houses or taprooms, but they're really restaurants, you know, that kind of thing. But I think there's basically three breweries there, and so we will try to visit them all. The other guys that I'm traveling with besides Josh and Craig is Rob, who's the president of Munzee, the game of Munzee that we play.

Courtney (28:20.344)
nice.

Timothy Larsen (28:43.126)
And so he's really big into beer as well. He has a channel on YouTube where he talks about beer. And so you could look him up as Rob Bartiman on YouTube. And so we have multiple people that are into beers. And like you said before, Josh is kind of in training. He's getting there. So we will definitely visit the breweries. But we'll I will talk about that trip a little bit on our next episode, along with. Whatever.

Courtney (29:01.976)
He's getting there.

Courtney (29:12.234)
Magic Mystery Brewery in Minnesota.

Timothy Larsen (29:13.738)
another another magic mystery surprise brewery from around the Twin Cities or greater Minnesota and we don't know which one we're going to do quite yet. We have visited a couple of other breweries recently so maybe one of those will slide in. Don't know.

Courtney (29:30.072)
We could also take recommendations.

Timothy Larsen (29:32.516)
We could also take recommendations and how would someone do that Courtney?

Courtney (29:36.834)
Well, you could email us, tim at thebreweryadventure.com or Courtney at thebreweryadventure.com. You can reach out to us on Instagram, The Brewery Adventure or YouTube, The Brewery Adventure.

Timothy Larsen (29:49.412)
Yes, you can do all of those things and please do. We really enjoy getting some feedback from our listeners.

Courtney (29:57.686)
Absolutely. And if you happen to see our stickers somewhere.

Timothy Larsen (30:00.868)
Yes, take a photo with our stickers if you see them in breweries. We have placed a number of stickers in breweries around town, not just at Steeltoe. So you should be able to find them. Not all breweries have a place where you can put a sticker without seeming out of place or ruining their brewery. So it's not all of it. Anyway, anyway, I think we're just about at the end of this episode.

Courtney (30:26.722)
Yeah, I'm ready to, I've been doing a lot of talking. I'm ready to drink the rest of my beer.

Timothy Larsen (30:29.966)
I know I need to drink some more of this beer too. So thanks for coming along on this brewery adventure and we will see you next time when we'll be talking about Morgantown breweries from West Virginia and also whatever brewery we are onto next. So until then, cheers. Cheers.

Courtney (30:44.6)
Cheers!