Grand Traverse Resort and Spa, Traverse City, MI
This sounded like a unique event- a 5k run with beer stations on the course. This year was the second year for the event. Held in November so as to tie in the beard theme with no-shave November charity. With the course going through one of the on-site golf courses of Grand Traverse Resort, mid-November also ensures runners aren’t competing with golfers for green space.
I came up the night before and stayed in the resort so I wouldn’t have a 4 hour drive ahead of a 10:00 am race start time. I made a poorly thought-out choice of doing the breakfast buffet the morning of the race. Sometimes they’re just too good to pass up, even if you know you don’t need all that food. It was in the mid-30’s Saturday morning so it was going to be a fresh morning run. As I was walking around checking out the post-race party tent, I heard the greatest exchange between a couple of women who had just registered for the race-
Woman 1, “It’s a run that has beer stations ON the course. Of course it makes sense to have alcohol this morning before we start.”
Woman 2, “This is just the greatest event ever that we found.”
The race had about 300 – 350 people take part. As we lined up to start, they reminded us that this was an untimed race. Although there was a clock running, there was no chip timing keeping track of each individual runner as they crossed the start and finish time. This of course was fitting with the crowd and the event itself. They had people group themselves into 3 groups. Racers lined up in the front, Runners in the middle, and Beer Conniseur’s at the end. The group of racers only numbered about 20, so after we saw them off, the main group of us headed out next.
The run followed the golf cart path 
that wove around, up, and down through the hills of the golf course providing nice scenery. Just before the first mile marker we had our first beer station. As we got there, the table was covered with scores of small plastic tasting cups filled with the first beer, about 3 oz. size. People lined up orderly, got their beer and then stood around a bit while drinking their sampler. Once done people started up again down the path towards station #2.
The first beer was a saison of some sort by Beard’s Brewery, and I wasn’t a big fan. As I continued on to station #2/mile #2, I was starting to regret the breakfast buffet and the sausage gravy biscuits. It sloshed around in my stomach with that slightly sweet/sour saison beer making me wonder what I was thinking. Station #2 was a good pale ale from Right Brain Brewery. Right up my alley for beer style, I was starting to change my opinion of whether or not beer & running was OK to mix like this.
Approaching the 3rd/last beer station there was a giant hill. Pushing myself up the hill and telling myself I couldn’t walk, I got to the top feeling quite exerted but happy to be at the Short’s beer stop. My high hopes were crushed as I saw they had a pumpkin spice beer. I understand that was probably in season, but I’m not a pumpkin or spiced beer fan- especially at the 3 mile mark. But since I signed up to drink beer while running, I of course had to finish it. I noticed most of the conversation around me was how most people didn’t like the beer. But I didn’t notice a single person pour it out or toss a half-full cup in the garbage. Apparently everyone else was of the same mindset that this was part of what they paid for.
At the end of the race, they had a DJ going underneath an open-air tent/canopy top. You could get cookies, granola bars, bananas, bagels, water. Once adequately recovered, you could go over to the 
beer table and collect your 16 oz. pour of one of about 10 different beers from either Short’s, Beards, or Right Brain. I had an awesome pale ale by Beards, made with Galaxy hops. It was fresh, slightly fruity, and nice and cold. I thoroughly enjoyed it while sitting and soaking up some sun.
The question is- would I do it again? Yes. It was cool running on the golf course, and even though it was well into fall and the trees were all leaf-less, it was still nice outside. It was also fun running outside in the cold weather. I would probably follow the tip from some fellow runners we saw that instead of the small medicine cup-sized beer sample, somehow managed to have a full 12 oz. glass. The trick they said was to first get a glass of water (bigger cup), drink that down, and then fill it up with 3 sample cups. That would’ve been good for beer#2, but the small size was just fine for beer#1 and #3.
first visit there, so I pretty much knew what to expect. I was curious if their expansion had opened yet, but it was still in the works apparently with a floorplan taped to the window and some “coming
30-40 minutes over to Traverse City shortly after, I had to gauge myself. Since I couldn’t decide on just 1 more beer to try, I went for a flight and got 5 different ones. I saw on the chalkboard that they seemed to now be carrying a “mac n cheese of the day”. I ordered that, and the Cheddar and Bratwurst was amazing, and for only $3 it was a steal.
the whole “birthday beer tour” event. We got there a little before noon, and as luck would have it Tuesdays were $2 beers or something. You could opt for the 22 oz. for $3, which sounded fabulous to me– after all, it was my birthday! The place was pretty quiet for lunchtime on a Tuesday, but they had a great beer menu. It had a great exposed brick interior and giant bar in the middle. However, I was a bit disappointed that the beers had a slightly sour taste to them, I 
assume from draft lines that weren’t kept regularly clean. I had a New Holland Full Circle and an Odd Side Ales Citra Pale Ale. The food was OK, but not as great as a lot of other Detroit area BBQ joints. The service was good and our server was efficient and friendly. It’s too bad about the beer lines. With such a great line up of beers, I had higher expectations.
usually the best/freshest, I ordered one. Jackpot. It was delicious.
barrel system, so they made just enough for their store here and could change it up about every week. We eyed up some bacon, beef sticks, and pastrami to take home, then I got a beer (Vienna IPA) to enjoy at one of the picnic tables out front. It had the visual appeal of a kind of roadside rest stop you might find up North somewhere. But the tables were a bit too close to the road and the constant flow of Ann Arbor traffic didn’t really help the atmosphere, it kind of distracted from it. But I enjoyed the beer and the sun. I then used their port-a-potty which was the fanciest one I’ve ever seen. It had a little sink in there, had flowers hanging, doilies, different scented soaps, etc. Truly amazing.
campus– bookstore, late night cookie delivery store, some fast food, and a bar. But World of Beer is definitely more sophisticated than any bar I ever went to in college. Rather than $0.50 drafts on some
beer from 2 Fort Collins, CO breweries (New Belgium and Odell). It was the only place I went to that gave me a birthday beer for free, which was cool. But your free beer was a tasting size glass of a beer. Which you could get free anyway, just saying you wanted to try a beer because you couldn’t decide what you wanted. Either way, it was a nice gesture. With the big windows facing the street corner, and the high ceilings, it made for a nice and open feel for hanging out and wandering through the beer menu. I 
don’t know if on a more popular timeframe this would overrun with college kids or if it’s geared more towards professors and graduate students. Either way, I finally made it here, and it’s a nice clean place to explore a variety of beers.
got their prices for theater rental. I started a spreadsheet with various costs. The next key was figuring out how many people we expected to come so we could figure out expected revenue to offset the costs we had come up with. To get these estimates, I took the Detroit Fillmore showing of MI Beer Film attendance, as well as attendance numbers at the Craft Beer tasting night of the Farmington Harvest Moon festival, and then walked in & out various factors that would make our event turn-out either higher or lower. Armed with predicted attendance numbers and costs, it showed on paper we could make it work. Then we had to go convince others.
I started out talking with the pub, Cowley’s where we planned to hold the beer end of things to convince them it was a good thing. In the process, I also talked to Rex Halfpenny who has a monthly craft beer tasting at Cowley’s. Together, we fleshed out more details of how the event would work and brought some more legitimacy to the effort. Rex suggested bringing in Paw Paw Brewing and said he’d called the brewer out there to see if he could get them on board. Lora & I talked to Rhino Media and told them about the plan, who was involved, and got them involved. Tim Cowley then got on board as well, and we had an official event.
Farmington area (Meadows Fine Wine on Farmington Rd, and Royal Liquor on 8 Mile Rd) sign on to be event supporters and get their name added to the posters/postcards in exchange for financial support. I also arranged with the Paw Paw distributor to make arrangements with these 2 stores to get some Paw Paw beer in bottles delivered to them since Paw Paw didn’t have existing bottle distribution contract set up with anyone in Oakland County yet. And lastly, at Rex’s January tasting at Cowley’s, he & I both said a few words about the event, passed out post cards to everyone there, and sold a few tickets that night.
The night of the event, Lora & I sat at a table by the door and checked people off a list that had bought their tickets in advance. We gave them wristbands so they could get into the theater when we walked over there, tickets for their 3 beers (full 16 oz. pints), a beer menu of the 4 Paw Paw beers we had on tap, and coupons the 2 supporting liquor stores had made up for $$ off craft beer purchases at their stores. On the back of the menu, I had maps to both locations and made mention that these 2 stores had special arrangements to carry a limited amount of bottled Paw Paw. Talking with these locations afterwards, they’ve had a small amount of people cash in on the coupons (surprisingly), and the beer has been selling, but it hasn’t flown off the shelves or anything. Both stores were pleased with the advertising they got out of it and the additional traffic they got, so that’s good.
While we were checking people in, up on stage Rex Halfpenny, Kevin Romeo (Director of MI Beer Film), and Trevor Klimek (brewer at Paw Paw Brewing) were talking about beer and the movie to the massive crowd. Later, some people mentioned that in the back they had a hard time hearing them because of all the noise and just the speaker up front by the stage. But that was just one or two people.
At the after-event at Cowley’s the same 3 speakers were up there, and people asked assorted random questions about the film or about the MI beer industry. I had held back on my personal sampling of the beer until the after-event, other than one very delicious KUA (Kalamazoo Urban Assault) Pale Ale that I enjoyed while checking people in at the start. Unfortunately, it was gone by the time the after-event came around. I tried the Vanilla Bean Porter, but wasn’t a big fan of that one. I did have a St. James English Mild, which I had tried before, and knew that one was good. Satisfied, I walked home, pleased with the success of the event.
finding a brewery that looked interesting but didn’t have too long of a line. Everything we had was generally pretty good (ratings below). We had planned that we would take one of the earlier buses back into town to avoid being over-alcohol’d and thus waste the Grand Rapids downtown nightlife. So we took the bus back and got into our room and changed to slightly less wintery garb- but still warm enough for our walking tour.
the area a bit, confronted my multiple places overflowing with people until we came to The Back Forty Saloon. It looked decent enough inside, but in contrast to everywhere else, was pretty much empty. The menu looked decent enough, and although the tap selection was far from inspiring, it of course had Founders on tap so we stayed. The
course was crowded, as it was also on other people’s list. Luckily, we were dressed for walking around outside in the winter, and the recently added massive outdoor beer garden/deck had the propane heaters fired up and blazing. So we enjoyed some outdoor fire/heat while sipping on our fresh Founders outside. It worked out quite nice.
paralleling it with places to order food. It had a kind of 50’s rock & roll bar feel to it with its colors of black, white, and red, and an interesting collection of 80’s era video game machines. It was packed and there were people standing, apparently waiting for tables. We saw a table at the end with no one sitting at it, but a giant stack of menus piled on the table. We looked around, and there was no seating hostess, and it seemed to be first-come, first-served. So we decided a giant stack of menus wouldn’t 
store probably didn’t have a giant bar, but it seemed to go with the rest of it, that I just embraced it. By this time, the multiple rounds were starting to weigh on me, so I opted for a lighter beer. I found Sliver Foam, a 4.5% light lager. It was amazingly delicious. Tasty malt flavor, but very clean finishing, it went down so easily. It was just what I needed at that point. It was so good, it made me want to explore other beers on their menu, but I couldn’t bring myself to divert from something that was already proven to be a home run, and that was this light at this point of the night.
nearby. Nothing too exciting going on, other than listen to the bartender cut off the very drunk guy sitting at the bar next to us. We know he must have been in bad shape for them to cut him off, yet still serve us. Deciding we should bow out before receiving the same treatment, went back to the hotel and crashed. At 12:00, it was probably one of the latest nights post-Winter Beer Festival, and it seemed to be a good balance of festival sampling and touring of the excellent Grand Rapids downtown nightlife.
night, a dance Friday night, and then a kids family fun event Saturday afternoon. We decided to go with the Thursday night tasting event. It ran from 6 – 11 pm. We got there around 8:00, and there were a lot of people there. It wasn’t crowded or anything, but definitely a lot of people. This year they had expanded to take over the full Riley park square in downtown. Last year, they had the pavilion and the area south of it. This year, they took over the grassy area north of it as well.
I was amazed that the wood was freely acceptable, and that there wasn’t like some kind of official “fire tender” person who’s job it was to put wood on the fire. I’ve been too long exposed to the “nanny state” of things, where to protect everyone from even the remotest possibility of doing something that might injure yourself, you’re prevented from doing it in public. Of course to protect themselves from all of the maniacs out there that sue someone because they can, and they can get a ton of money for it in the process. I can be as crazy, stupid, and reckless as I want to be in my back yard, but once I go in public, I guess I’m just used to turning off my brain and not having to think about making decisions about something that might hurt me. Anyway, realizing we were being treated freely like responsible adults, it was great. Almost thrilling even. We picked firewood ourselves, decided when to put it on, when to adjust it, etc. It was almost the highlight of the evening.
on tap. Maybe 1/3 of them were Michigan beers, 1/3 were craft beers from out of state, and the last 1/3 was some from the bigger brewers- domestic and international. It was a fun mix. We enjoyed reading the “craft-beer-like” descriptions of Molson Canadian and Pilsner Urquell. We got to try a Sam Adams specialty brew that we heard is only available on draft. Unfortunately(?) it was delicious. This of course is unfortunate because that means I can’t go buy it at the store in a 6-pack and enjoy it at home. But I did enjoy it at the festival. I also got to talk to the local Michigan sales rep of Epic Brewing (based in Utah), so I heard a bit of the back story to their new beer they brew in Colorado. Apparently Utah beer laws don’t allow brewers to have a taproom with their own beer in Utah. So they built a taproom in Denver, CO so they can serve their beer on draft to their followers. Interesting. They gave you a little 3 oz. plastic taster mug that you could fill for 1 
ticket ($1). Or if you paid 5 tickets ($5) you could get a 12 oz. clear plastic cup filled with your favorite. That option obviously isn’t the budget-wise option, but as fun as it is, you do eventually get tired of drinking your beer out of oversized thimbles. However, I stuck to the ticket-at-a-time game with my miniature beer mug. That way I got to try more beers. Below is what I tried, and my ratings for each:
The coasters on the tables served as top-hats to keep the bees out, rather than as preventers of water-rings on the tables.
somewhat. Instead of the people in front of us talking about how slow the line was moving, we had people coming up to their friends and saying how they needed another beer, but no one wanted to stand in line again for 30 minutes, so they were heading somewhere else in town to drink beer. By the time we made it to the bar, I ordered my full allotment of 3 beers I had planned to spread throughout the afternoon and we carried them to the table. We’d spent 30-35 minutes, and the line wasn’t getting any shorter. It was actually getting longer. Although people were leaving that had their first round there because they couldn’t take the line for a second time, there was also a steady stream of new people coming in, so the line never shrank. It just kept filling up with new people.
