This month we're offering 2 beer and Girl Scout cookie paring events. The first pairing will be held on Thursday, June 18th  at REO Town Pub and will be featuring beers from Rockford Brewing Company  with Trefoils, Do Se Does, Samoas,Tagalongs, and Thin Mint Girl Scout cookies.

The Cranker’s transformation from Coney Island diners to full scale restaurant/breweries is now complete with the installation of bar and brew system at the Mount Pleasant location, the third and final of the three Cranker’s locations to receive the upgrades. Big Rapids was the first location for transformation with full bottling and production facilities also serving as headquarters providing the lion’s share of the beer for the Cutlerville and Mount Pleasant pubs. Lead brewmaster Adam Mills lends his award-winning recipes and oversees big batch brews at Cranker’s HQ as well as very limited small batch releases for the auxiliary pubs.

Cranker’s started as a family-owned chain of Coney Island themed restaurants in Mount Pleasant, Big Rapids, and Grand Rapids. The Big Rapids location expanded two years ago to include a separate brewery and production facility connected to the 24/7 dining location. After seeing sales at this location increase many times over, the Grand Rapids location was next to expand in May 2013 by adding a nano-sized brewing system also allowing them to serve and sell beer from the larger facility in Big Rapids. Plans are now in the works for the Mount Pleasant location to soon be able to offer the award-winning Cranker’s beers as well.

Cranker's Brewery claimed two medals at the prestigious US Beer Tasting Championships (USBTC) competition. The USBTC is a multi-stage competition where a series of field trials take place from six different regions of the country: Northeast, Mid-Atlantic/Southeast, Midwest, Rocky Mountain/Southwest, Northwest/Pacific, and California. The field trials first determine regional winners in each category. The top beers are then pitted against each other in order to name a National Grand Champion.

This year’s Winter Beer Festival at Fifth Third Ballpark in Comstock Park was another one for the record books. A record number of breweries, a record number of beers, and of course, once again selling out in a record time of just a few hours. For an epic drinking excursion of this magnitude, a degree of pre-fest sustenance is desirable, and I found mine to be had at Brewery Vivant’s Brewer’s Big Breakfast. Menu items ranging from Chicken & Waffles, PB&J Crepe Cake, or signature Duck Nachos were paired up with Monk-Mosa’s (OJ & Farmhand,) plus all of Vivant’s speciality beer fest beers including the Love Shadow barrel-aged Russian Imperial Stout made for a great head start for the big event.

While the Big Rapids Cranker’s location celebrated it’s one-year anniversary earlier this year, the Grand Rapids location quietly installed it’s own nano-brewery and began selling and serving it’s own beers along with the award-winning signature brews from the Big Rapids brewing headquarters.

October is here, and the beer community is gearing up for the Michigan Brewer's Guild's fourth and final festival of the year at Eastern Market in Detroit. The Guild is welcoming 60 breweries to the grounds this year, representing over 400 Michigan Brews.

17 Grand Rapids area breweries participated in the latest “Beer City” collaboration effort and this time around the emphasis was all on the trees. Every brewery involved contributed at least one tree-inspired beer recipe ranging from smoked beers, barrel-aged beers and even fruit beers. I spent the launch week visiting breweries to sample as many of the tree beers as possible, and visited a personal record of over 2 dozen breweries in one week’s time!

Our next beer pairing event  at the REO Town Pub is set for Thursday, Sepetember 5th at 7:00 PM. This time we will feature beer from the newly opened Cranker's Brewery in Big Rapids paired with five mini cupcakes made by Jennifer Quin's Creative Cakes.