Upland Brewery Visit!

Rather than hit Dark Lord Day for the third consecutive year in a row (we attended 08 & 09), I reached out to Upland Brewing Co. to find out what events were lined up for May. See, I've had their lambics and their pale ale at beer festivals in the past and really enjoyed them. Add to the fact that only a handful of American brewers make Belgian-inspired sours - I figured it was time to pay tribute to a relatively "local" brewer.

In the planning of this road trip, I came to learn that May 1st is their annual Maifest celebration, so the date was picked! In addition, I made some arrangements with the staff at Upland to hold and reserve some of their lambics for me.

So, my friends Dave, newtonty and I left the Queen City yesterday and drove 3 hours west to visit the Upland Brewery located in the fine city of Bloomington, Indiana. Without doing any research on Bloomington prior to leaving, we were quite surprised when pulling in. I was expecting your typical, run-of-the-mill midwest-style town (you know, the boring, but pleasant type). Instead, we came upon a beautiful college town (IU) with rolling hills, gorgeous old homes with bright green lawns, and a beautifully forested campus.

Here's what the had on tap when we arrived:

We started out with their "Ard Ri", a beer that explained by the bar tender as an Imperial Red Ale. It was quite tasty, indeed! By the end of the afternoon, we tried every beer on draft,( including tastings in sample-sized pours) and really enjoyed them all. Their flagship beer is their wheat beer and it was very light, session-able and enjoyable.

Their menu was special for the event, including a great assortment of traditional German fares, including "Hasenpfeffer", or roasted rabbit with a red wine sauce, accompanied with red cabbage and boiled potatoes. Dave was bold enough to order it and he really enjoyed it. Newtonty had their sausage sampled severed on a bed of sauerkraut and two slices of toasted, multi-grain bread - delicious!

After eating, we were lucky enough to get introduced to one of the co-owners of the Brewery, Doug Dayhoff.  We talked with him for a bit and he offered to give the three of us a personalized tour of the brewery! Our favorite part of the tour was seeing the barreled lambics (a couple still in the barrel from 2008!) and their bourbon barreled porter, aging away gracefully in a "Buffalo Trace" Bourbon barrel. YUM! I need to keep an eye on their website event's page, to be certain I don't miss that!

 After leaving the brewery, we made a couple stops at local bottle shops, including Big Red Liquors and Bloomington Liquors. In hindsight, we really should have stopped at Sahara Mart because we heard they have about 1,500 bottles to drool over, but time was running out (and our money!), so we opted to just drive back to Cincy. We were able to land a couple Upland Bourbon Barrel Warmer's which were just delivered on the same day and I found a Three Floyd's Lord Admiral Nelson - a beer I've been wanted to try for some time.

All in all, it was a great day. I definitely plan to make a trip back again before the year's out.