Keeping up with yesterday’s motif, we are going to go just a couple of blocks away in Grand Rapids to yet another brewery that has made my top 25 breweries in Michigan list, and visit Brass Ring Brewing Company. Opening in 2018, Brass Ring is located in the Alger Heights neighborhood which is a couple miles Southeast of Downtown Grand Rapids. Brass Ring has become the go-to brewery in Grand Rapids for English Style Pub Ales, Stouts and Porters.
When you visit Brass Ring Brewing, it is a very long but narrow building once you are on the inside. There are smaller, more intimate tables against the walls on both sides of the building throughout the place. Then there are also bigger tables right in the middle through the entire brewery, sometimes these tables in the middle are combined to make one long communal table for big parties to sit at. The bar area is a smaller bar area with somewhat limited seating at it, you might be able to fit 10 or so people at the bar. Another seating option that they have here is an outdoor seating area complete with fire pits in case you want to sit outside on a chillier night and still keep warm.
At Brass Ring Brewing Company they do offer a kitchen with a full menu. Food options include appetizers, burgers, sandwiches. Keeping up with the English Pub theme, they also offer things like Scotch Eggs, Deviled Eggs, Bangers and Mash, and Fish and Chips. On Sundays their menu changes to include a special brunch menu, with both American and English style brunch favorites. Steak and Eggs, Breakfast Burgers and Beans and Toast are some of the brunch options available.
Wednesdays is neighbor night at Brass Ring, invitations are handed out to a couple of blocks throughout the neighborhood and they pack the brewery full of their neighbors. So the locals all get their invitations and come and drink and eat side by side. Events like this give a real sense of pride in the community to this brewery.
Before we get to the beer, just in case you come with someone who doesn’t necessarily care for British Style Pub Ales. Brass Ring offers Wine (by the glass or the bottle), Craft Cocktails and rotating Cider options on the menu. For the non-alcohol drinker, or for the little ones, they also offer various flavors of Detroit City Sodas.
Now onto the beer, Brass Ring Specialized in small batch, style specific, fresh beers. Their beers are all natural with no chemicals, or preservatives added. The beer is also unfiltered. Brass Ring only uses four ingredients in their beer: Water, grain, yeast and hops. These are the same four ingredients that follow the German Beer Purity Law, or Reinheitsgebot (More on that at a later date).
Another thing that they specialize in is rotating cask conditioned ales served on their Anagram Beer Engines. They were actually Michigan’s first cask marque accredited establishment. Most of their beers also use grains exclusively grown in the U.K. from England, Scotland and Ireland. Beer on cask is absolutely delicious, if you have never had it, I highly recommend trying a beer poured from a cask in your near future.
On the flight that I consumed on this visit, I enjoyed their Danny Whizbang- Bitter- Extra Special/Strong (ESB), Wilde Irish- Red Ale, Liquid Spirit- American Porter, Golden Ticket- Golden Ale, and Eight Pound Hammer- Dry Irish Stout. These were all equally delicious beers, and I highly recommend anything that they have on tap. I would normally write up about my favorite beer at this point but I can’t pick one, they are all fantastic. Crystal disagrees with me, but she also doesn’t like her beer served in the English Pub Style. I feel sorry for her taste buds, these are beers and styles that have been appreciated long before the invention of refrigeration and temperature controlled beers.
On your next brewery trip through Grand Rapids, if you are looking for an ordinary beer experience pass on by Brass Ring. But if you are looking for an extraordinary out of this world beer experience, pull up a seat and enjoy a couple of pints at Brass Ring Brewing Company. I know that I will anytime I visit the area. Cheers!
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