Also: Summit Beer

Look, we know: there are “better” local beers. The entire Surly lineup, for example, is probably more to a beer connoisseur’s taste, and could beat up any Summit beer in an alley fight. But Summit Extra Pale Ale goes down easier, and tastes better while you’re sitting outdoors, than most beers. It is tasty.

And there’s this: when we moved here, we knew next to nothing about Minneapolis. As Craig Finn says in the Hold Steady song “Stevie Nix”, “When we hit the Twin Cities, I didn’t know that much about it/I knew Mary Tyler Moore, and I knew Profane Existence.” Same with us, except we didn’t know Profane Existence. When we swallowed our first sips of Summit EPA, we gave each other looks that said, “Oh wow. This city might be okay after all.”

We started making a mental list of things that make Minneapolis great – some of which are on The List that inspired this blog - and there, nestled between The Hopefuls and the St. Paul Saints, was Summit. We don’t have much experience with its many varieties, though someday we’ll tell you the story about the time we had way too much Mai Bock and somehow stumbled home from the C.C. Club, only to wake up the next morning with the worst hangovers either of us has ever experienced. We are no longer very fond of the Mai Bock.

There are some things about Minneapolis we can experience remotely: the media, the music. But unless Summit gets distributed nationally, we won’t drink it again for a long, long time. You can bet we’ll be drinking it, and drinking to this city, the night before we leave.