Oktoberfest Dinner & Brew Cruise on MI Princess

For the third year in a row, nearly twenty Grand Rapids area breweries are once again collaborating with Friends of Grand Rapids Parks to raise money for their Urban Forest Project, an initiative to maximize the tree canopy within the city.

Beginning February 22nd, breweries from Michigan and beyond will begin taking over tap-handles in brewpubs and breweries throughout the city of Grand Rapids, Michigan, also known as Beer City, USA for a weeklong celebration of craft-beer. Bar stools will be overflowing as Grand Rapids is captivated by unique craft-beer offerings, several selections created specifically for GR Beer Week.

It was a banner year for attendance at the Grand Rapids International Wine, Beer & Food Festival which was held November 20-22 at DeVos Place. According to Festival organizers, attendance was up nearly 10% meaning more than 18,500 individuals gathered at the largest wine and food festival in the Midwest.

New Holland Brewing Co., Michigan’s third largest brewery and first craft whiskey distiller, has just signed a lease with Rockford Construction and plans to launch a new brewpub, micro-distillery and restaurant slated to open in early 2016 in Grand Rapids, Michigan’s west side. The new endeavor supports the company’s goals to reach the growing craft consumer in New Holland’s home market of West Michigan and beyond.

The Mitten Brewing Co.’s new outdoor beer patio is just the first of many new exciting expansions in the works at the popular Leonard St. brewery on west-side of Grand Rapids. Recently I had an opportunity to check out the new deck as well as take a sneak peek at some of the improvements in the works for this year. In addition to the patio, a new upper level bar and seating area is currently under construction which all taken together will nearly triple the capacity of the location. The upper level will focus more on the building’s fire station history as opposed to the baseball themed lower level.

Grand Rapids might be “Beer City” and home to many great breweries, but other fermented beverages are now making a name for themselves here as well. The People’s Cider Co. for instance has been producing some great hard cider for over a year now, while Long Road Distillers hope to put G.R. on the map for craft spirits this fall. Another new player is Arktos Meadery which has plans to soon add mead to the mix. The name “Arktos” comes from the greek word for bear, which is appropriate because bears love honey, and mead is a fermented honey beverage often associated with ancient Greek mythology as being the nectar of the gods.

New Belgium Brewing is bringing its beer-toting, film-traveling, nonprofit-benefiting show to your backyard. The nationwide tour is coming to Grand Rapids on Friday, June 27 at Ah-Nab-Awen Park.

With a foundation firmly rooted in homebrewing, Bell’s Brewery is proud to be a part of the 2014 American Homebrewers Association National Homebrewers Conference next month, June 12-14, at the De Vos Center in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

A cool and blustery day descended upon dozens of homebrewing teams as they huddled around steaming mash tuns while concocting the ‘Beer City Brown’ at Calder Plaza Saturday, May 3rd. The event is called Big Brew Day and was started by the American Homebrewers Association (AHA) after May 7th was announced before congress as being National Homebrew day in 1988.The AHA then took it upon themselves to start an annual Big Brew Day on every first Saturday of May. For the sec ond year in a row, Grand Rapids participated in this event.Just as they did the previous year, Siciliano’s stepped up to sponsor the Grand Rapids Big Brew Day. Siciliano’s donated the ingredients and provided the recipe needed to create 48 all grain batches, as well as offered bottled water for brewing, a wort chilling station that cooled up to six kettles at a time, and platform carts so brewers could move their equipment across the plaza safely and quickly. 

A mere few years ago when Hudsonville was still a dry community, who would have ever imagined that the City could be home in the near future to a successful beer festival drawing breweries from all over West Michigan and beyond? However, those few short years included the whirlwind of activity in Grand Rapids and surrounding areas culminating in the region’s two year climb to ascension leading to the now undisputed national recognition as Beer City USA. Hudsonville was not left out of this frenzy, with two of it’s own breweries being established during these years: White Flame Brewing Co. and Pike 51 Brewing Co. in conjunction with the Hudsonville winery.