Great Baraboo Brewing Company - Visit #1

At first glance, we thought that this was one of those places with "brewery" in the name and no house beer. It was recommended to us so we made the trek out to the east side to check this place out but as Tim noted, it was a mix between a sports bar and white trash and gave it 1/10 for ambiance. I said it was missing the brewery focus and the sports bar idea was front and center.

The menu was extensive, pasta, ribs, sandwiches, fish, appetizers.. oh and don't forget the Bud Light specials. After insisting we really wanted to try the brewery beers, we had five options to choose from:

King's Peak Caribou Wheat [A] - 2/10 - Bad after/during taste, creamy, wrong yeast, lukewarm, chlorine taste (bad east side water??), reminiscent of dirty dish water

[T] - 4/10 - crap flavored cloudy wheat

[B] - 3/10 - wouldn't want to drink a pint of this

Hoppy Heartland Pale Ale

[T] - 5/10 - Good bitterness, just OK

[B] - 7.5/10 - Enjoy bitterness, pretty tasty

Ass Castle, Honey Brown... seasonal, monthly special

[A] - 4/10 - Can't do darks like this...

[T] - 2/10 - Generally sucks

Shark Tooth Bay Golden Ale - East Side Busch Light

[A] - 3/10 - Better than wheat, tastes like nothing

[T] - 1/10

[B] - 1/10

We also tried the Boston Black Stone Porter but apparently didn't even bother using the rating scale, all my notes say are "ick..."

Food

We ordered crab stuffed portobella mushrooms and chicken nachos. Ben thought the mushrooms were OK but I thought they tasted like fishy alfredo sauce on a mushroom. Tim liked the nachos better than CJ's but I liked CJ's better.

Great Baraboo Brewing Company
http://www.greatbaraboo.com/

35905 Utica Rd
Clinton Township, MI

Sherwood Brewing Company, visit #1

Our first visit to Sherwood was with Ben, Tim and myself. It was recommended to us while we were visiting the Kuhnhenn a while before, and the three of us were doing an unofficial metro Detroit little brewery crawl, we decided to make the trek up to Shelby Township and hit up the Sherwood Brewing Company. It was a great time, hardly anyone was there and we sat right at the bar and had a chat with the bartender who was extremely knowledgable and one of the owners. This is a family owned establishment and it was opened up by a brother, sister and brother -in-law and if I remember correctly, one or two of them used to be teachers. Anyway they decided opening up a brewery would be more fun and here they are! I agree, that does sound like more fun.

Don't be fooled by the strip mall location, the ambiance inside is cool with an assortment of tables, booths, couches, a nice bar, etc. Without further ado, here are the beers we tried this night:

Plush Raspberry Wheat -

[A] -7/10 - Tart, good light fruity taste. Not the creamy banana wheat I like but good for what yeast they used.

Procrastination Scottish Export

[B] - 9/10 - Very good

Manacing Red Ale -

[A] - 8/10 - It has a perfect banana scent, taste, and just happens to be dark but has all the great features I love in a typical hefeweizen
[T] - 9/10 - Got all the right malty flavors without excessive caramel overtones

Birch Beer (non alcoholic)

 [A] & [T] - 10/10 - Awesome!

Sherwood Brewing Company

http://www.sherwoodbrewing.com/

45689 Hayes Rd

Shelby Township, MI 48315