Searching for the line between "hobby" and "obsession"

Tour of Summit Brewing Company

I had been wanting to catch a Summit tour for many months and finally was able to do so on a Saturday in early October. I believe the seasonal on tap at the time was their Horizon Red ale. I recall it was pretty good, though not as good as their unchained series batch #3, the RyePA, an India Pale Ale made with rye. I think they had found one keg of that sitting around and had it on tap as well. That one far out-shined their seasonal offering.

The Tour
Summit has a very nice facility and a lot of fermentation capacity for what is (or what recently was?) a small midwest craft brewery (yes I believe they are too large to fit into the”microbrewery” category now).  They have two HUGE copper mash tuns well situated out front by the tasting room. I believe these are their only functional mash tuns but I could be wrong. The only problem I had with the tour was a pretty big one: the tour guide, himself.

Summit Brewing in St. Paul, MN

It was a pretty large group on a Saturday morning and this guy was not projecting his voice. I asked him a few semi-technical questions both in front of the group and just man-to-man in between tour stops. His answers were pretty curt each time, making me think he didn’t really know much beyond his tour guide script. This got me thinking that I should be a tour guide at a local brewery, as I’m outgoing enough and I know a decent amount about the process. I’m still considering this months later now, by the way…

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