Craft Beer in the Most Unlikely Place

[hops99]

What's the most unusual/unlikely place that you've discovered, and enjoyed, craft beer?

For me, there are several places, but my top pick would have to be a local greenhouse/outdoor farm market. Literally in the middle of a vast expanse of corn and soybean fields, this place (only open from April through October) has a small single-door cooler that's 90% devoted to apple cider and Stewart's soda, but one shelf actually has a row or two each of single bottles of Bud Light and Miller Lite, and completely out of left field....a row of Anchor Liberty Ale. Strange, but cool.

[steveh]

Back in the Summer of '93 or '94 a couple friends and I were planning a hiking trip to Isle Royale on Lake Superior. Since I had family in Michigan's U.P., and was always making weekend trips, I volunteered to do a little recon work by visiting the I.R. info office in Houghton, MI.

After securing all of the info needed, I decided to wander Houghton a little, since I hadn't been there in a few years. I ventured into a little tavern-looking, pizza joint called The Library (college town, think about it - "No mom, I wasn't home 'cause I was at the "Library" all night!").

Dark, cool, a 4 stool bar snugged into the far corner of the little tavern - my kinda' joint. As I settled onto a stool at the bar and let my eyes wander over the tap handles I was shocked and delighted to see that Bell's Ale was on tap! I skeptically asked the bar-tender if it was, indeed, Bell's beer - and it was.

As I told the 'tender, it was great to find good beer in the wilderness. In 30 or so years of traveling to the small town my family is from, in the heart of the U.P. (eh), all you ever saw was Miller, Bud, Old Style, or Stroh's - if the bar had an "exotic" feel.

My first Bell's draft beer was in an unlikely pizza bar that has since burned down - yet has been resurrected as a very nice brew-pub with some great beer, the same good pizza, and Bell's beers still on draft as the permanent guest beer!

S.