‘Rails & Ales’ Partner Spotlight

Leading up to our 6th Annual Rails & Ales: Light Rail Brewery Crawl, your local gurus at GetKnit will be doing a bi-weekly partner spotlight with the goal of helping you get to know our featured brewery partners that much better.  Whether they are your favorite taproom in the Twin Cities or still on your “must hit” list, we hope you find this new article to be informative and entertaining!  For this installment of our partner spotlight we chatted with our comrades at Urban Growler Brewing Company.  Enjoy…

When did you open to the public?

July 2014! 5 years ago!

Tell us a little bit about your brewery name.

“Urban” because we are – “Growler” because we sell growlers and we have a kitchen so growling stomachs and we love dogs!

Describe your brewery in 3 words.

All.  Are.  Welcome.

How do you get inspiration for your beer names?

Anywhere and Everywhere! Our team is often the inspiration.

Whats the vision and/or passion behind your “Plow to Pint” series?

We want to feature local farmers and urban growers cuz it’s all about the relationship.

What’s your brewery anthem or motto?

We’re beer for you.

What’s on the horizon for your brewery?

We want to be in every liquor store in the state of MN.

Not only do you have amazing beer…but delicious food.  What’s your favorite dish your chef’s have created and why?

We love our carnitas. They marinate the pork with our De-Lovely Porter and the meat is tender and delicious.

What is the beer that you’ve brewed that you’re the most proud and why?

Cowbell Cream Ale for many reasons. Deb made it for friends that didn’t like craft beer – so it’s a light beer with great flavor. Brewers measure the quality of a brewery by their cream ale because you can’t hide any off-flavors with hops. Lastly, we love SNL so it’s a shout out to the “WE NEED MORE COWBELL” skit.

If your brewery was a celebrity, who would they be?

Laverne and Shirley.

You recently hosted an Ingrid Michelson concert in your event space at your brewery.  Dish!

What can we say? Women love us 😉

How many years have you participated in Rails and Ales?

6!

Weirdest flavor beer you’ve ever created?

Christmas tree beer – it was awful.

Does your brewery have a mascot?  If so, tell us more.

Frankie the chiweenie from second hand hounds. She is our HR director. She sniffs out good team members. However, she was recently written up for sleeping on the job, never in uniform, and personal boundary issues.

Fill in the blank: We decided to open this brewery because _________________ .

We want to bring people together through beer. We were tired of all the divisive politics and wanted to do our small part to make this community a better place.

What is the weirdest or funniest thing you’ve ever seen happen on your patio?

We’ve had a lizard and a pet pig on our beer garden.

What special events do you have at your brewery throughout the week? Or anything really exciting coming up you want to share?

5 year anniversary celebration Aug 10th. Date night deal every Tuesday- we call it Taste of Twosday – 2 flagship pints and a featured app for $15. A heck of a deal!

What else do you want to share?

We are open for lunch Tuesday through Sunday. We have event space. We are the first women-owned and brewed in the state of MN. All are welcome no matter who you love, how you vote, married or solo! JOIN US! YOU MATTER!

Visit Urban Growler Brewing Co. along with 18 other taprooms on our 6th Annual Rails & Ales: Light Rail Brewery Crawl on Saturday, September 14!  Hope to see you there.