Brew for the River, Part 1 of 5:
Wolverine Brewing’s Honey Creek and the Brew Passport
Last year’s Brew for the River outings were such a wonderful success we’ve decided to have another go! Over the next five weeks, our five local breweries will be showcasing how good, clean, Huron River watershed water helps make award winning beer – bringing water and conservation into people’s everyday lives in a fun and thought-provoking way, with prizes! If you attend all five events (cue our Brew Passport, which you can pick up this Thursday only) you’ll have the chance to win ten free growlers of beer!
This week: Join us at Wolverine State Brewing on Thursday, August 9, starting at 5pm. Wolverine is located at 2019 West Stadium, behind Great Lakes Cycling and Fitness (Next to Big George’s). Oliver Roberts, Head Brewer has cooked up a Honey Creek Lager. Lagers are brewed at a lower temperature than ales, so they take quite a bit longer to brew. Lagers are what we think of as traditional American beer – often on the lighter side, crisp, and quite ‘drinkable’. My grandfather would have loved this place! Oliver prides himself that not all of Wolverine’s lagers are light, “we brew craft lagers, some that are traditional styles and others that fall into a category of their own.” The Honey Creek Lager is made with 9 pounds of honey from Sandhill Apiaries (hives located at Sunseed Farms). 100% of the wheat is from Michigan, and is malted in Michigan. Sunseed Farms also picks up much of Wolverine’s spent grain. Oliver certainly is a model of local sourcing!
Oliver, a Michigan native, grew up playing in Honey Creek “hunting” for crawfish along Pratt Road. After years of homebrewing and taking classes at Oregon State in their fermentation sciences department, Oliver returned to Michigan and was an Assistant Brewer at Grizzly Peak (if you read all six brew blogs, you’ll note a theme for local brewers starting off at GP.) While at GP, Oliver was hired to do the contract brewing of Wolverine Beer (Wolverine Premium Lager’s former name) at Michigan Brewing Company. He also developed the production facility and tap room of Wolverine. Oliver is excited about the brewery’s current expansion. Plans are for a 3-4 times increase in production capacity (from 1300 barrels per year up to 3500, maybe 5000 with some minor tweaks). They will have a new grain room, with the ability to mill their own grain, which will save money and give Oliver more control over their process! And they’ll have a private event room for catered events! Maybe if we’re lucky, Oliver will give us a tour on Thursday!
Hope to see you then,
~Jason
To see our Brew Honey Creek “factsheet” check out this pdf.