Brewery Tour Ideas

Coming Soon: Detailed Do-It-Yourself brewery tour information. Here we will talk about brewery tour ideas, and grouping breweries with similar locations for a themed road trip.

The Yooper Tour

Metro Detroit East Side Tour

Metro Detroit West Side Tour

Ann Arbor Tour

Grand Rapids Tour

Southwest Michigan Tour

Traverse City Tour

Mid-Michigan Tour

Up North Tour

CJ's Brewery

We were out on the "west side" for a special movie feature one weeknight so I talked The Husband into heading up into Commerce to check out CJ's Brewery which we hadn't been to yet. We don't get out to the Commerce area much together (I sorta work out that way) and it's a bit off the expressway.

For the atmosphere, we both gave it 8/10 - it had a neat industrial/modern feel to it.

Let's jump right into the beer we tried that day:

IPA
[T] - 7/10 - Good effort, insufficient hops

Cherry?/American? Wheat
[A] - 8/10 - Good thick banana-y wheat, didn't taste much cherry so maybe it was the american? so it was stellar, but no fruit (orange or lemon) garnish
[T] - 8/10 - Good banana flavor

Red
[T] - 6/10 - Good malt flavor, excessive caramel

Cherry Ale - light beer with cherry juice mixed in
[T] - 2/10
[A] - 5/10 - watery, higher score because I could drink a lot of it, but not a great beer

Cherry Wheat - we finally got a sample of this
[T] - 4/10
[A] - 5/10 - not as good as regular wheat, sour

We never got a beer list so that was a little weird. We felt the service was about a 6/10 - pleasant but a few mistakes. Beer glass empty for 10 minutes and we had to bring it up and we were out of napkins for a while when we got out pizza. Last but not least, we never got our dessert.. I said "apple crisp" but apparently she thought I was joking.

Menu
Sandwiches, pizza, varied entrees from Italian to Mexican and fish, more variety than you would expect and there was a Thursday happy hour but we never saw the sign

Chicken Nachos
[T] - 4/10 - didn't like the cheese or smokey chipotle salsa but liked the olives
[A] - 6/10 - cheese fine but not hot, had sat out and started to harden up - loved salsa which reminded me of Rio Bravo's and I liked the smokiness, chicken was only OK.. we ate them all so they couldn't have been that bad

Pizza6/10 - CJ's supreme.. apparently they made the wrong one originally so we had to wait another 10 minutes and we got a circle instead of square but overall it had a crisp bottom, soft inside crust and fresh toppings.

CJ's Brewery
http://www.cjsbrewingcompany.com/
8115 Richardson Rd
Commerce Township, Michigan

Michigan Brew Review Maps

Coming Soon: Here we will have a picture of a hand, with brewery locations pointed out. We'll color code them to show which ones we've been to and which ones we haven't. Might also have a few close-up maps for clusters of breweries around big cities, if needed.

Let us know if we've missed a brewery on our list!

Meet The Reviewers

Who the heck are we??


I'm Anne! My husband, Tim, and I declared one day that "We shall visit each and every brewery in Michigan" and by early 2008, we had begun our adventure. I was inspired by a webpage of another couple who had visited several Michigan breweries, which made me think - hey we can do that too, and BLOG about it. I have been taking pictures and collecting review notes for awhile before actually making them into blog posts so this has been a long-time coming. We love to visit these breweries with friends so you'll see a lot of guest reviewers, too. We're not professional beer tasters or anything like that, we just enjoy good beer and each have our favorite styles. Almost all of us have had extensive experience in home brewing, too. We love trying new places and traveling around Michigan, so this has been a really fun adventure.


A Little About Anne
I spent more time on my food blog, Kitchen Bliss, before starting this one, so a hobby of mine is trying new recipes, restaurants and also cake decorating, and then blogging about all of it. I'm an engineer, love the outdoors and traveling, and grew up in a rural town in Michigan.


Beer PreferencesMy favorite kind of beer is hands-down German hefeweizens, especially Whienstaphaner, Hacker Pschorr, and Paulaner. I'm always looking for a delicious unfiltered wheat beer with the clove and banana undertones that I remember from my trip to Germany, which is truly my favorite. I also don't really like IPAs or anything bitter or too hoppy, so when I rate those beer with a low score, it's just my opinion and it may actually be a great IPA.

A Little About Tim
...Coming Soon...


Beer Preferences
Tim's favorite beer style is India Pale Ale.




Like many breweries who have rotating taps, we also have seasonal Guest Reviewers!
Bios coming soon for Sean, Matt (The General), Ben, Andrea, and Jan!


Thanks for stopping in and maybe we'll see you out a great Michigan brewery sometime and you'll be the next guest reviewer! Get out there and enjoy some Michigan beer!