Homebrew Beer Blog

Our Club took a bus trip down to the Detroit area to check out some breweries, beer, and food.

First stop was Sherwood Brewing Company near Sterling Heights, Michigan. Head brewer Ray Sherwood was a great host, serving up good food and beer, and taking a few minutes to give a tour and answer questions on his 7bbl system. This is the first I’ve met Ray, but I was told he spent some time at local Michigan Brewing Company and Harpers.

I only had one of his beers, the Evil IPA. I read the description and jumped right in. We were board the bus before I could line up some samples of the other beers. The Evil IPA features Summit hops, and used darker Carafa malt. It was a darker brown color and had a little roast to it. With the roasted and chocolate tones, it could probably also be called an Imperial American Brown. Our table also had some of their soda, and it too was great. They had an awesome lunch special, a pint and a sandwich wrap for $4.99. A buck more got you a burger, essentially making the beer $0.97 or something like that on the receipt.

The brewery is impressively compact, showing you don’t need much space to make great beer. It’s right in a shopping complex, with a small area carved out by a wall for the brew system. The system has a small foot print, that frankly doesn’t take up much more space than my homebrew system. He also had I think four fermenters, and a walk-in cooler where the serving tanks live. He also had an assortment of wine going along with the soda.

So, anyway… here are some pix from the trip…