Surly Brewing’s new mural at their Brooklyn Center brewery.

via Facebook

Very cool. Harriet Brewing added signs of all their beers on the outside of their building on Minnehaha Ave. (via Harriet Brewing on Twitpic)

Surlyfest!

Surly Turns Five: An Interview with Omar Ansari and Todd Haug

Beer nerds, read this excellent interview with Surly’s Todd and Omar, where they talk about Surly 5 and plans for the new Surly Brewery.

When the new facility does open that will probably be immediately in charge of the flagship beers and probably all the canning operations. And the current brewery we’re hoping will become a bottling facility only. That’s kind of what we’re thinking now.

I think it will be a great training ground for new guys or for a place for guys who want a break from the bigger brewery and want to get hands on. We could do a lot of sour stuff here. We could do a lot of different things, which is pretty exciting because we could go into it with the ball rolling. That will be a nice luxury. As this brewery fades out of the regular beer production and the new one takes over we’ll be able to immediately start making different cool beers here.

Oh, and the site could be announced as early as September, which is great news for those of us that really want to know!

Whoa cool. Omar from Surly Brewing on the cover of the most recent Beer Advocate Magazine. Will have to pick this one up.

New flagship at 6021 Lyndale will become the template for all our future retail stores and will serve as a blueprint for bringing the Northern Brewer experience in person to more communities in the years to come (via Northern Brewer coming to Minneapolis Fall 2011 | MNBeer)

Not much has been reported on this yet, but last week, Shawn from the Beer Genome Project tweeted that Pracna was pulling all of their Surly beers because of the recently passed MN Pint Law, which will allow breweries like Surly to open up brewpubs and sell pints at their breweries.

The Beer Advocate Forums picked up on it (must be a member to read the comments), including a few notes from Megan, one of the Bar Managers at Pracna (and huge Surly fangirl). She couldn’t officially say why Pracna decided to pull Surly, but no one has discounted the rumor that it’s due to the pint law.

All of this seems really short sighted and a poor business decision to pull the biggest Craft beer in town. Pracna is still a good place to get a beer, but once a place tries takes a hard stand against something that a majority of beer lovers in this state supported, you have to question their (the owners) dedication to the beer scene.

Also, MN Beer Activist posted about this last week.

Professional quality beer in 7 days, just like a modern Brewery. Cold, clear and perfectly cabonated. (The WilliamsWarn Personal Brewery)