Every day is like waking up in a new place when you're a beer fan. The craft beer scene continues to hit higher plateaus. Brewers and beer artisans no longer seem content to simply produce a great beer in a recognizable style, they're reaching out into the realms of winemaking, distillation and cooking just to see what they can offer, what they can contribute to zymurgy. I've mentioned the experimental barrel-aging going on with B. United's Zymatore Project, but every stumbling step seems to put me mouth to mouth with a pint of inspired brewing. It's like the Seattle music scene in 1990, or Parisian cafes in 1870: artists are communicating with artists, experiencing each others' product, and reconsidering what they can produce. 

Yesterday I had a Rogue Chipotle ale. Yes, yes, I know: chipotle has been done, done to death, buried, reanimated in a unholy ceremony using two parts voodoo and one part Guy Fieri's wrist band, and been put down and buried again, but there I was, having to recalibrate what I thought about beer.

Your average lemur makes a terrible manservant. Don't ever waste a summer trying. It takes them forever to drag a beer from one room to the next, and you'd think they have dexterous little hands, but I found their laundry folding skills to be incredibly sub-par. Exotic animal friends can be both time consuming and delicious, but a Cornish game hen provides the latter with no need of training or a wee tuxedo. Unless well-dressed poultry is your thing, you monster. But let's put aside whatever predilections you have for Capon in chapeau and return to our subject, shall we? 

In the upper midwest (where the men are men and the women are frozen to something) sits Grand Rapids, Michigan. It has an area of 45.3 sq. mi., is home to the Frederick Meijer Gardens, the DeVos Place Convention Center and many other places you've read about both here and on Wikipedia if you've never been to the place and need something to write about it in your beer column. TRANSITION It is also home to Founders Brewing Company, one of the more significant craft breweries in the United States, at the northeast side of which you can spy Connecticut, where Founders beers can now be, um... found.