A great group of guests, a stellar variety of tour stops, and a blustery day that made you question your life choices.
Saturday's "The Best of Detroit" Shuttle Tour was a very fun, very chilly tour. You'd figure Old Man Winter might give us a break around mid-March, but this IS Michigan, so I try not to complain about the cold too much. It'll be too damn hot soon enough. I think our tour guests were just thankful that this wasn't a walking tour. VERY thankful.
In spite of the cold, our first stop, Eastern Market Brewing Company, was HOPPING. Busy and crowded as they were, the crew at EMBC hooked us up with an area for guests to sign in and for us to serve them some always-delicious pizza pie from Eastern Market staple, Supino's. Yum. Many thanks to EMBC for their hospitality.
Once everyone got their fill of pizza and had a chance to sample some of EMBC's awesome beers, we braved the whipping winds, got back to the van, and headed to Lagerhaus No. 5. Once there, we talked beer terminology, the brewing process, and - of course - sampled some outstanding beers. (Or is it biers?) Owner/brewer Jamie gave us the VIP tour of the brewing facility, showing our guests every step of the Lagerhaus brewing operation. Who knew there was this much work involved in making beer???
Next up: Batch Brewing Company in Corktown. The frighteningly cold weather (did I mention if was cold?) caused all those folks normally enjoying the outdoor seating in Batch's Fauci Fieldhouse to seek shelter inside at Batch. So, yeah - it was packed. But, as always, the staff at Batch stepped up and accommodated us as best they could. Any time spent standing INside was tempered by the OUTstanding beer. (See what I did there?) While at Batch, guests had a chance to experience just how vital aroma is to flavor (jelly bean, anyone?), and to sample some raw beer ingredients.
(NOTE: when you're on the third tour stop of a four stop tour and you explicitly warn guests not to eat the hop pellets, some will take that as a challenge and chow down. They were warned. See pic at right.)
Our fourth and final stop was Brew Detroit. Love this place. Huge space with fantastic beer, shuffleboard, billiards, darts, foosball, fantastic beer...what's not to love? So, our guests tasted some more amazing beer while chilling out, chatting about life and beer, and soaking in the Brew Detroit taproom in all its glory.
We hope all our guests had as much fun as we did. It was a great tour group and they were all a lot of fun. Thanks very much for choosing Michigan Brew Tours. And thanks as always to our wonderful brewery hosts and their hard-working staffs; without you, we'd probably be conducting tours of dollar stores and yoga studios. So, thank you SO MUCH.
Cheers!