Hello everyone! Who all got their special pint glass for today’s Minnesota Beer Day? I got mine, and am very impressed. Enjoy your Beer Day! Cheers!!

I’ve heard there was a sign at their trivia tonight that they are closing at the end of the year, but I can’t find anything on their website or Instagram. Does anyone know if this is true?

I sat down with Insight Brewing's Co-Founder Eric Schmidt to reflect on the what it means to celebrate 10 years of pouring beers. Give a listen and tell your friends!

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The former head brewer of Fair State Brewing has launched Double Elbow, a 'side project' with a purpose.

As breweries grapple with the end of the craft beer boom, it has become increasingly hard for beers to stand out on crowded liquor store shelves. Yet, Double Elbow, only launched in August, has captured lightning in a bottle, er, can, to stand out as something unique.

Available in very limited quantities, Double Elbow feels like a love letter to the act of brewing, the brewing industry’s version of a record label imprint. It’s the brainchild of Niko Tonks, who, after taking a breather from brewing, has returned to the boil kettle with a mission.

Tonks left his job as head brewer at Fair State Brewing Co-op, a brewery he co-founded, two years ago. He’d moved to Northfield with his wife and was commuting to the Northeast Minneapolis brewery through the pandemic and beyond. Fair State’s growth, exhaustion, and the commute combined to make it time for a change.

Tonks took a job selling hops for Yakima Chief, but the brewing itch needed to be scratched. “It’s kind of like a frog in hot water situation,” he tells Bring Me The News. “You start out brewing, make a lot of sacrifices, do a lot of things to really get yourself in a position to make beer. That’s really what I like doing.”

As Fair State grew, his job involved less and less brewing and more managing its many moving parts. “Once I was out of it altogether, it was sort of a moment for me to gather myself and realize that, oh, actually physically making beer is something I like. I made a lot of choices and sacrifices to do that, and it became clear to me that it was important to do it again,” he says.

He started kicking around the idea of starting a small-batch contract brewery. “A thing where, you know, it wasn’t really for the money,” he says. But even when money isn’t the focus, it exists. He’d come up with the name and logo for Double Elbow, but couldn’t find a way to make it work.

So, he shelved the idea.

At least, he shelved it until a conversation with Steve Finnie, co-owner of Little Thistle Brewing in Rochester. Tonks already knew Steve and Dawn Finnie and liked that they were focused on the taproom and being a community-oriented company.

In the intervening time, Tonks had been home brewing again. Many brewers start there but once they’re brewing at work, the home brewing gets set aside. “Steve just texted me because he had seen me posting a bunch of stuff on the internet about getting back into home brewing,” Tonks says. “He was like, ‘Hey, if you wanna come down here and make a beer sometime, just let me know.’ Then they had a brewer leave and I said, ‘Well, you know, are you offering me a job?’”

Tonks laughs. “He said, ‘I didn’t think I was.’ And I said, ‘Well, maybe you should.’”

Their ongoing conversation led to Tonks becoming Little Thistle’s head brewer in June. In the process, Tonks told Finnie he wanted to do a “lager side project thing” that could be his own. “They were really into it,” he says.

And so Double Elbow was born.

It’s a unique set-up. Tonks is the head brewer at Little Thistle, but Double Elbow is “very much my project and I kinda get to do what I want with it,” he says.

“This is a way for me to get back into making beer and work for people that I like and respect and also, you know, try out this small volume thing in as low a stakes way as I could conceive of.”

While he characterizes it as low stakes, that doesn’t mean there aren’t big ideas inside the can.

“The goal of Double Elbow, in as much as it has a mission statement, is to make continental style lagers with 100% American or North American-grown ingredients,” he says. It was partly inspired by coming through the pandemic and experiencing the frailty of the supply chain, including seeing how a ship stuck in the Suez Canal could topple dominoes that would be felt in Minnesota.

Thinking about the supply chain and ingredient sourcing had Tonks reconsidering some of the rigidity around how different styles of beer are made. He cites that he believed if you wanted to make a German-style beer, it should be made with German ingredients because “there are no analogues” available in North America.

“I began to think during that pandemic that that was kind of wrong-headed,” he says. “There are a lot of people in the craft malt space and in the hop world… dedicated to really trying to get to where those ingredients you need to make world-class European-style lager beers [are available from American suppliers].”

But the mission goes beyond the availability of ingredients. “It also felt like a stewardship thing,” he says. “It began to feel more and more irresponsible to be importing mass quantities of malt from the other side of the world.”

With Double Elbow’s smaller footprint, he’s able to troubleshoot supply issues and work with smaller companies that wouldn’t be feasible when making larger-scale beers.

“Part of this is really trying to find the solution to those things,” he says. “One of the fun things about being so small is that although I’m pretty firmly of the opinion that if you’re making Pilsner beer, it probably should have Pilsner malt in it, there’s nothing stopping us from blending 234 different malts and just really getting out there and trying some stuff and also having a focus on process.”

Little Thistle is available in the Twin Cities but is more broadly distributed through southern Minnesota. While it's served in the Little Thistle taproom, Double Elbow is, by contrast, primarily available in the Twin Cities in small quantities.

There’s no flagship for Double Elbow, it’s the beers Tonks wants to make in the moment, brewed in 10-barrel batches. The first beer, a Pilsner called Tonks Tuesday, was released in August. The second batch, a Czech-style Pilsner called Inputs & Outputs, is only now rolling out to the Little Thistle taproom with plans for cans to arrive in the Twin Cities the week of Oct. 21.

“In the end, it’s a side project,” Tonks says. It comes second to his other work at Little Thistle, but it’s a side project with palpable passion.

He insists that Double Elbow isn’t ground-breaking and isn’t intended to be world-changing, particularly at this low volume, but that there’s still something important about sticking to the project's goals.

“It’s something that I can do that I find fulfilling that I think will make connections in small but meaningful ways,” he says. “That’s what I’m hoping to do, you know, make connections in terms of the idea behind North American sourcing on a communal level… I think taking a beer like that and putting intentions into it and trying to live out some little tiny bits of truth and human experience feels like a thing worth doing.”

I'm thinking of breweries that have only 1 good beer and the rest average Black stack with local IPA Dangerous Man with the Peanut Butter Porter

Any others come to mind?

Gold Eisbock Northbound Smokehouse Brewpub Minneapolis German-Style Doppelbock or Eisbock

Gold Haha Pils Arbeiter Brewing Co. Minneapolis German-Style Pilsener

Bronze Equanimity Ursa Minor Brewing Duluth Irish-Style Red Ale 2024

And why?

I’m excising some of the heavier and boozier beers from my life, and have been falling back in love with pilsners. Interested in your top picks.

Does anyone know of any place that stocks any Augustiner in the northwest metro, or anywhere in the Twin Cities really? I’ve heard tales of it floating around, but I have yet to actually find it here.

I’ve been trying to see if I can’t find their Oktoberfest, but I’d settle for just any of their beers lol

I (live in Rochester) am going to be in the cities this weekend with my brother from Chicago and his friend from LA for the Gophers-Trojans game, staying in the Phillips/Seward area.

Normally, my brother and I would hit up a few breweries, but his friend is a recovering alcoholic. He claims he still likes the vibe at breweries and isn’t tempted at all, though, and is encouraging us to go to a few. We also want to watch some day games Saturday as kickoff isn’t until 6:30.

Any recommendations on good beer places that aren’t just beer places, within a few miles of the stadium?

Edit: Clarifying: not just the menu but the vibe. Who has the best lawn games/plays football on TV/is in the coolest space?

I'm looking for brewery recommendations in the metro area that have a party room that I could rent. Something similar to what 56 or Bladman have. I'm looking for a place for a low key wedding reception.

I'm a big fan of Oktoberfest beers and would love to try more local ones. The last few years, the Utepils one has been solid, I just tried Blackstack's and liked it, the Pryes one was decent enough, and Schell's was good too. Any other MN brewed favorites to try? Preference to ones that come in 4 (or 6) packs and can be purchased at local liquor stores (Ale Jail is close to home).

Three Minnesotan craft beer friends traveled to Louisville, Kentucky, and had a great time. If you have ever wondered whether or not Louisville would be a good place to travel, we have all your answers. Cheers!

Why are there not bins in every liq and every brewery for recycling these stupid things. Id like them to get reused as that is part of the point of them but oddly there is really no place that takes them close to where i am at. The beer store wont take them back......and the breweries that are close to me that i frequent just throws them away when i bring them in. I have 100s of them stacking up.

With Northern Brewer closing their retail location in St Paul, I don't know where to find 2.5# CO2 exchanges anymore. Does anyone here know of somewhere? I've called all my local Airgas and welding places (south metro) and all they do are 5# exchanges.

A place that does CO2 tank fills would be ok as well, but I am pretty sure no one will fill customer owned tanks.

Thanks!

Just found cans of a couple of their beers, with an Ely address, at my local store. Have they been back long? Anybody know what's been released so far? I picked up the Laurentian smoked porter and a smoked IPA I don't have in front of me, so I don't recall the name. Anybody know if there's anything else out that I should be looking for?

Any MN breweries doing fresh hop in a big way? Any releases this weekend? I'm visiting from Seattle and missing out on the first weekend of fresh hop season there. I can't find much information online about MN fresh hop :(

Looking for a place with the best selection of sours. Minneapolis/St Paul and surrounding burbs

My partner and I are leaving Minnesota and want to have a farewell gathering with friends at a local brewery or distillery. We're hoping to find a place that meets these criteria:

1. Has a semi-private space, a side room we can reserve, or is even a space that is generally okay with a larger group taking up a corner
2. Offers food options (either in-house or food truck). My partner does not imbibe.
3. Little to no additional charge for reserving the space.
4. Located in the Twin Cities area

We're not looking to break the bank, just find a cool spot where we can gather with 20-30 people without taking over the whole taproom.

Any recommendations for places that fit the bill?

Thanks in advance, and cheers! 🍻