The Beer That Started It All

I call Leinenkugel’s Honey Weiss the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup of beers. It is perfect, anything done in the hopes of improving it actually diminishes it. There is no situation where I would turn down a Honey Weiss. If you think I wouldn’t turn down any beer, try drinking a coffee stout on a humid 90+ Minnesota summer day, lessons were learned.

I discovered Honey Weiss accidentally at Rock Night at Pickle Park in 2008, if that doesn’t age me, I don’t know what will. (Translation: I was 22 and ordered a bottle of beer at random while at a divey bar that hosted the local rock radio station for a rock-themed dance night, on a Tuesday no less) Skip a couple years ahead just after graduating from ISU, I found like-minded beer enthusiasts and started an annual trip to Leinie Lodge complete with brewery-hopping en route. Keep in mind, this was prior to craft brewing taking off so these were tiny breweries with maybe 4-6 beers on tap and only sold kegs or pints to locals because distribution was too expensive. A flight consists of all their beers on tap and costs $6-8 and we all ordered our own individual flights to consume. We asked each brewery for a personal tour and learned more about the art of brewing than any fancy tour at the big guys.

A bro’s 21st birthday, celebrated with the traditional brewery roadtrip

Leinie Lodge hosted a free tour with samples for free (they didn’t want to pay for a license and therefore couldn’t charge since they were “samples”). Times change, my friends. Craft brewing became fashionable, for better or worse. The market flooded, someone decided to sour a perfectly good product, and another dumbass decided to add fruit to beer.

The annual mecca trips continued, the flights increased in cost, Leinie’s started to charge, but the sweet nectar of Honey Weiss always reminded me why I fell in love with beer in the first place. And then some dude I met at a bar (of all places, shocking, I know) invited me to Colorado and to tour the Coors facility because according to him, “It’s great beer.”

I pulled on my Leinie shirt in preparation for the tour, to show my solidarity for the small guys only to find out on the Coors’ Family Wall (shows all the breweries they own) was the new acquisition of Leinenkugels. A decent chunk of my heart died that day. But I am nothing if not a trooper, and troop on, I did. Breweries are learning from their early mistakes, beer can be shockingly expensive and Honey Weiss remains the sweet nectar of the gods.