Fitger's Brewhouse

Seems like every beer festival I go to, Fitger's Brewhouse in Duluth has one of my favorites.  At Great Taste of the Midwest, they poured a Peace Coffee Porter that was awesome.  At ABR, they had a very nice Belgian.  So on my trip to the North Shore last weekend, I made sure we stopped there for lunch. We ordered up a sampler and dove in. 

On the lighter end, the Apricot Wheat was surprisingly good and one of the better fruit beers I've had, with just the right balance of apricot and wheat tang.  Their Starfire Pale Ale is a very good APA, with a hoppy but drinkable bitterness level. Their Amsterdam Ale was interesting, a Belgian Pale Ale they call a lager/ale hybrid that had a nice, dry finish but thin lager-like body. The Backcheck Brown was a nice combination of the dryness of an English Brown with the sweet malty backbone and thicker mouthfeel of an American. Bonspiel Bock was a tasty dark bock that rounded out a very solid base of beers aimed at the everyday beer drinker.

But I was there for the big boys.  The first of their growler worthy offerings was the El Nino Double Hopped IPA, which has a dense hop flavor and enough hop bitterness for even the biggest hophead.  With 6 different hops, it has a big aroma, bigger hop flavor and just enough maltiness to keep it from approaching SN Torpedo-like hop overload.  They must use a ton of hops to get such a copious amount of grapefruit, citrus peel, pine and resinous hop goodness. The bitterness really lingers on your tongue. I grabbed a growler of this, which was unfortunately almost totally flat. I know that making beer can be a batch-to-batch science lesson in dealing with fickle yeasts and bottling can be even more of an adventure, and I'm sure it was just that growler. Luckily, I was still in the area so when I returned I mentioned it to the person working in the brewstore, who just happened to be the brewstore manager, Angela, and she insisted that I take another to replace it.  There's nothing better than a business that stands behind their product with great customer service.  Give her a raise. (Wait...I do that...give me a raise, too)

Next up was Big Boat Oatmeal Stout, which has to be one of the better Oatmeal Stouts I've had.  Big roast on this one, with dark chocolate malts and a spectucular creamy mouthfeel. This is a must try if you're there, as the nitrogen and oats makes it insanely smooth. I really wanted to get a growler of this one, but I know it might not be the same without nitro, so I opted instead to bring back one of their awesome 11.5%ABV Edmunds Bourbon-Barrel Imperial Stout.  Now this is what I'm taking about, with huge bourbon flavor from 8 months in Jim Beam barrels, but none of the cloying sweetness of Goose Island BCS. As it warmed, the boozy heat settled into the vanilla roastiness to make a massive brew. It also has a nice underlying coffee flavor that mixes well with the oak, but the bourbon is the star here.

Our food was above average for brewpub fare and I'd highly recommend a trip here if you're within driving distance.