Brewing Again

Gus is a 1 year old Samoyed that loves hanging out at Alebird. He gets plenty of pets from staff and customers that love a good fluffy boy. Just watch your napkin! Gus loves to steal them whenever he can.

SUMMER

Cicely loves being outside and active. She enjoys exploring different places and loves when she gets to join my wife and I at our favorite breweries. We have visited 353 Michigan breweries in the last couple years!!

Barks & Brews

We reached out to readers to show us how they are enjoying the Michigan brewery experience with their dogs this summer. Here are some of their submissions

Cicely

Owner, Bryan Reed | Lake Ann Brewing, Lake Ann

Sam is underage and therefore doesn’t have a favorite brewery yet. Sam is just shy of 3mos. Just rescued all the way from Nebraska to Michigan. As soon as she is legal (still needs vaccinations) then we will be going for a truck ride to get some brews with my mom.

Gus

Owner, Emily Engelbrecht Alebird Taphouse & Brewery, Byron Center

Enjoying a nice cold brew and some snacks on this hot summers day at our local towns brewery

In this instance, we were picking up our special order, which was a drive through only experience. However, the New Holland employees were happy to see Bandit when we opened the door, and he was happy to keep an eye on our Dragon’s Milk for the ride home.

Bandit

Owner, Molly Vineyard New Holland Brewing, Holland

Just hanging out, having a brew.

Sam

Owner, Stephanie Morris

Callie & Jake

Owner, Carly Simmons | Thumb Brewery, Caseville

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Timm Cappell | Rolling Oak Brewery, Grayling

MI Brew Trail | Summer 2021

Everyone at Fetch loves Dixon both customers and staff. We go there regularly and Dixon greets everyone with smiles, slobber and 115 lbs of loving!

Dixon

Owner, Deb Williams Fetch Brewery, Whitehall

Rory had an amazing time at Homegrown Brewery in Oxford, MI. She loved the homemade dog treats and water bowl as well as being greeted by all the staff members. Many of the customers were welcoming too! The beer and food was delicious and overall we all had a fabulous time. Rory loves going everywhere with her humans so luckily breweries are always welcoming and dog-friendly!

Rory

Owner, Becca Shaver Homegrown Brewery, Oxford

Jo was celebrating her 21st birthday in dog years on the dog friendly porch at Witches Hat in South Lyon. Her favorite part was the popcorn and all her friends that joined her to celebrate!

He loves hanging out in the yard at rolling oak brewing! His favorite beer is named Oh Fred Bearry after the original Fred Bear!

Fred Bear Moody

Owner, Sarah Parrish Rolling Oak Brewing Company, Grayling

Cooper goes everywhere with us. He loooves the outdoor patios and loves even more when people want to say hi to him.

Riley loves to meet the other pups and people enjoying Baffins Brewery in St Clair Shores, Mi.

Jo

Owner, Joy Choiniere | Witches Hat Brewery, South Lyon

We visited Traverse City Jolly Pumpkin with our Bernese Mountain Dog pup and enjoyed some stone baked pizza and brews. The outdoor area was so inviting and accommodating for us and our four legged family member! Juni enjoyed the pizza and the beautiful views. We named our rottweiler “Suds’ because we love beer. He has vitiligo so is turning white… he fits his name perfect now. He loves to travel to different breweries and especially loves to sit on patios and seek shade under tables while we enjoy our brews.

Riley

Owner, Jim Nicholson Baffin Brewing Company, St Clair Shores

Volume 3 | Summer 2021 Juni

Owner, Alyssa Utter The Jolly Pumpkin Restaurant & Brewery, Traverse City

Suds

Owner, Tracy Blandino Four Leaf Brewing, Clare

Cooper

Owner, Rachel Sprenger DeHop’s Brewery, Walker

Lucy loves visiting breweries, and the folks at Terra Firma always treat her great....even when she chases her mom into the brewery because she’s afraid of missing out on anything!

Lucy

Owner, Brian Paynter Brewery Terra Firma, Traverse City

Emmy was the biggest ham, posed for pictures and loved life. She was a Master “Draft” dog and always had a smile. I had to put her down due to old age and a huge tumor at 12 in 2020 but she is survived by her niece Lola which still hangs out at breweries but not as open to it.

Emmy

Owner, Susan Wronski People’s Cider Company, Grand Rapids

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brewing again from 24

It’s much more like drinking white wine - the flavors don’t knock you over, but there’s a lot of stuff going on. For beer, we wanted malt flavors and we wanted spice flavors, but not stuff that you can smell from across the table like we do with so many IPAs these days. Which is great! But we wanted something you’d be able to get some flavors that maybe you weren’t used to, to make a little more interesting. MBT: Have you been brewing this whole time? Or is Vestland really your first true foray back into beermaking since leaving Goose Island? GH: I’ve done a couple of small-batch things with Goose Island, just kind of like little guest brews. But beyond that, it’s been all cider. Now, I still enjoy a beer on a pretty regular basis, and I like to keep up with what’s going on because it was part of my life, my identity for so long. But this is the first time in a while. MBT: When you came back to it, was there anything that you realized that you’d forgotten over the last 10 years? Was there anything that surprised you about making something with grain instead of with fruit? GH: That’s a good question. I think [it’s] the body thing. Typically, even the sweeter ciders have a pretty limited body. And beer is a little more mouth filling, which I welcome, but it’s a little bit of a different experience drinking a few ciders versus a few beers. Not just flavor-wise, but body wise. Again, it’s different - not better, not worse. MBT: Since Virtue doesn’t have a brewery yet, Vestland is being brewed at an Anheuser-Busch plant [Virtue Cider is owned by Goose Island, whose parent is A-B/InBev]. Since you left Goose before their beers were moved up to A-B breweries, was it hard to transition your recipe to such a larger scale? GH: Here’s my opportunity to really play up our team. The beer was developed not just with me but with Seth Boeve, who is our Director of Innovation. He did all the hard work: Getting the spices right and sourcing them. And then on the production side, our director of operations Mike Stoneburg - we call him Stoney - he’s got a great brewing background. He was a Marine first and then he worked for A-B for a while including in the malt house. From there he was

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a brewer at Goose Island and then he was the brewmaster at Blue Point Brewing in New York. We got him to come back and try something new with cider. So he’s really the guy who did all this setup with the brewing system - he’s an old pro at that. So we’ve got a really strong team in Fennville now who loves making cider, but loves the challenge of making a beer too. MBT: What is the brewing operation going to look like at Virtue Farm once you get it up and running? GH: We got our TTB permit, now we’re just waiting on the state of Michigan and we know that patience is a virtue. We’re waiting patiently - we’ll get it - and once we do, we’re going to focus on what I think is the fun part of brewing, and that’s not necessarily the brewhouse: it’s fermentation and aging and blending. You asked before what’s the difference between beer and cider: beer is very brewhouse dependent for a lot of breweries, and the cellar seems a little more secondary there - you just gotta ferment it and put the same yeast in for everything and off you go. But cider is so much different than that. There isn’t a brew house, you simply squeeze the juice. But then, that’s when the fun part starts: fermentation, aging, we do a lot of barrel aging. And then, you know, then we still have to blend it. Everything’s blended. So we’re going to apply a lot of those same principles to making beer. We’re going to have a coolship that we’ll be able to place outside and do some wild fermentation stuff. We’ll also be able to take some yeast from different fruits and grow that up; ferment with that. So it’s gonna be very,very, very much a farmhouse brewery. And then just about everything will probably be in a barrel. We’ve got some foeders on order, and once it’s been in there for a while, it’s going to be blended like we do with our ciders. And I think that’s just going to be really, really fun - being able to build layers of complexity. That’s something that Ron [Jeffries] has been doing at Jolly Pumpkin for a long time and their beers have always been so excellent and inspiring. We had some of that at Goose Island too, so we’ve got a good amount of experience on the team, including our newest team member, a guy named Bill Savage, who before he came to us was running the massive barrel warehouse at Goose Island. So he’s the guy who probably has as much barrel aging experience as anybody in the country, so having him on board is really exciting. So, yeah, we’ve got a few Goose Island “refugees,” or “graduates” if you will. But we think we’re gonna make some pretty interesting beers right from the get-go. MBT: Are you going to be back working on a tiny brewhouse or are you jumping into a bigger system at the start? 10 barrels, 30 barrels…? GH: Here’s the fun part: We’re going to start without a brew house. We’re just going to be fermenting and blending. So what we’re going to be doing is working with Goose Island and then hopefully some small breweries in Michigan to collab on producing wort, bringing the wort up to the farm and then fermenting there, doing the aging there. The world doesn’t need another brewhouse right now. Certainly at a small brewery you’ve got a lot of brew houses that are only working two shifts a week, 20 hours a week. There’s plenty of room there. And hopefully we’ll be able to do some really cool stuff with [collaborations] so as it comes out we’ll be doing stuff that might be probably a max of around 10 barrels. But a lot of stuff will be just a smaller blend - maybe a three barrel [batch] that we bottle off. MBT: Now that Vestland is in the world, how many people have asked you to put it in a bourbon barrel at this point? GH: [laughs] I...have heard that. And I shouldn’t have been, but I was surprised to hear that. Believe it or not, that had not even occurred to me. Our friends at Waypost Brewing, which is the closest brewery to Virtue Farm, they make a lot of great beers, and that’s a place where a lot of the Virtue staff end up on days off or after their shifts. One of the beers I’ve been most impressed with is their foeder lager. It’s just kind of a base lager, based in the foeder, and it’s so, so, so good. It’s one of my favorite beers - I’m certainly inspired by that. So we’ll be putting some Vestland into foeders for sure.

MI Brew Trail | Summer 2021

Twin Brothers Open Mackinac Island’s First Tasting Room

Jon Becker MiBrew Trail

Twins Michael and Adam Kazanowski may be natives of Birmingham, but their hearts have long belonged to a special place they regard as unique to Michigan: Mackinac Island. That’s why the brothers are tickled to have recently opened a new business there, Mackinac Island Rum Company, the first and only tasting room on the iconic island. Located near Shepler’s Ferry Dock in the Horse Corral Mall, the business began pouring on May 28. The opening culminated an arduous COVID-19-marred journey for the Kazanowskis whose fascination for the state’s most famous island began with childhood trips there. If the pandemic-related delays weren’t enough, please keep in mind that the island, of course, doesn’t allow vehicles, posing immense logistical challenges when it comes to getting supplies to your business. Nobody said dream-making is for the faint of heart, and the Kazanowskis are not the type to easily wither. “Opening a new business is never easy and doing it on an island with no cars makes it that much more difficult,” said Michael Kazanowski. “We spent months and months bringing materials over by boat in the middle of winter and used horse-drawn drays to deliver the material to our build site. If we didn’t have guidance from many of the locals I don’t know if we ever would have figured it out.” It took the entrepreneurs nearly two years to get the necessary approvals to open Mackinac Island Rum Company, an offshoot of their Petoskey-based distillery, High Five Spirits. “We are very thankful to the locals and City Council for giving us the opportunity to be the first and only licensed tasting room on the island,” Kazanowski said. “It’s something we do not take for granted and we want to make sure we do everything the right way and give back to the island. It’s had such a positive impact on our lives.” It started early as kids venturing up there on family vacations to later when the two would attempt to sell their spirits to island merchants. “The island has always been one of our favorite places,” Kazanowski said. “When we opened our distillery in Petoskey we would make it a routine to head to the island to try and get our spirits on the shelf, sometimes successfully and sometimes not so successfully.” No matter the outcome of their sales pitch, “It didn’t stop us from enjoying all the island has to offer. The spirit of the island and its beauty and history is what led us to distill Mackinac Island Rum which we finished with chocolate fudge from Murdicks.” That was the third spirit they released from High Spirits, fueling a labor of love. “We knew if we could make fantastic rum and stayed persistent that one day we might have the opportunity to open our own tasting room on Mackinac Island.” The Kazanowskis respect Mackinac Island’s storied history, but they decided to go in a different direction décor-wise with their tasting room--from which you have a view of the Straits of Mackinac. “In going with our brand we wanted to take a more tropical approach with our tiki-themed tasting room,” explained Kazanowski. Imbibers can sample their Gypsy Vodka, Petoskey Stone Gin and three varieties of rum that are bourbon barrel aged in old white oak barrels. “We also offer a delicious craft cocktail menu that has drinks like a Mackinac Island Sunrise, Rum Runners, Lilac Martini, Pina Colada, and many more,” offered Kazanowski. Summer is the big tourist season on the island, but Kazanowski said, “We like to consider ourselves a year-round business. We live in Petoskey and that gives us the opportunity to be open in the winter during the holidays. And whenever an ice bridge forms, we cannot wait to spend the winter on the island.” So, visitors to Mackinac Island can now enjoy the best of worlds: a tropical paradise ambience at the new Mackinac Island Rum Company and the myriad activities and must-see sights of this historic Northern Michigan gem. “We hope to see everyone on the island. We look forward to sharing our journey with those who have the opportunity to visit one of the coolest islands on the planet,” Kazanowski said. “Opening is a dream come true and we are thankful every day for having the opportunity to do what we love.”

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Michael Kazanowski, co-owner and founder, Michael Kolkmeyer, director of operations, and Adam Kazanowski, co-owner and founder, of Mackinac Island Rum Company. The new business, part of the Kazanowski’s Petoskey-based distillery High Five Spirits brand, features its signature Gypsy Vodka, Petoskey Stone Gin and bourbon barrel aged rum drinks served in their tiki-themed tasting room.