I’ve been a Michigan beer enthusiast for more than a minute but, for some ungodly reason, have never been to an enthusiast tour before. You see, one of the perks of being an enthusiast is that you get to attend free tours at Michigan breweries. Jeff & I went to our first tour this past Saturday, at our second home which you may know as a place called the Corner Brewery.

The turnout was stellar and we got to see many, many members of our “beer family”. The brewery was open for us to peruse and there was a guided tour or two. The brewpub provided taps of their Trippel, Ryeclops, Hoptown Brown and Serpentarius (sp?) and tasting glasses. That’s all I needed to see…might’ve had a sample or 12. Matt brought out the bottled Flamboyant Red and started pouring. It was like reverse pied piper watching everyone rush up to him to get a sample. Truly great fun!

The week after was the tour at Arbor Brewing Company. Brewer Bill brought us downstairs and we saw the cooler room, where I hung out for many cold minutes (totally worth it). I also saw a huge fermenter of CRye Baby chilling upstairs…that made me happy. For our drinking pleasure, we had pitchers of the Trippel, Hoptown Brown and Porter in the Rye, which was a new beer I’d never had before. Sour beer also made an appearance, so that was nice. And somehow our friend KevWeiser was walking around with a pitcher of trippel after “last call”, having successfully argued that we recognized Central time.

At any rate, I can’t wait for the next round of tours. I hear Beer Todd over at Copper Canyon puts on a helluva show. Until then, I will count the days to the Winter Beer Fest!