Kansas City isn’t exactly our target market (btw, anyone who tells you that Boulevard’s pale ale is better than Summit’s is high), but one of our local enterprises, Granite City, has just opened a new restaurant/microbrewery in Kansas City.

Not to be outdone by the “Black Friday” craziness and underpriced POS DVD players at your local chain store, Norther Brewer will be holding a special SALE on Friday, November 25th. The store will be open from 8am to 7pm. They’ll be serving up coffee and donuts in the morning and have food made with beer available later in the day. And of course in the shop (not online, fools), they’ll be having the following specials:

Early Bird Special
8-9AM Get 15% Off*!!!
9-10AM Get 10% Off!!!
10-8PM Get 5% Off!!!

*Certain listed items will not be on sale > 10%

So if you’re around Friday and not sure what to buy the proprietors of your favorite Minnesota Beer website, head on down to Northern Brewer. In fact, send your wives, husbands, girlfriends, boyfriends, mothers, fathers and everyone else out to NB for some great holiday deals. Screw the mall, NB has donuts!

Oh, and while you’re there, be sure to pick up their brand-spanking-new catalog.

Thanks to “a little bird” who dropped into O’Gara’s last night, I have a few tap updates. They’re listed at right, but for those of you too lazy to click, here’s what’s on tap right now:

O’Gara’s ESB, Sligo Red, Cork Brown Ale, Light Amber Ale, Sassy Sandy’s Belgian Wheat and a Raspberry Lambic. Not sure if it’s a true lambic using brettanomyces or not, but it might be worth checking out. If anyone knows, contact us.

Has anyone had a chance to check out McCoy’s Public House at Excelsior on Grand in St. Louis Park? I stopped in and tasted their English-style brown but didn’t have a chance to try some of their other beers. I believe they had an unfiltered wheat, a raspberry wheat, an IPA and a dry stout on tap as well as a Summit seasonal beer, Boulevard’s wheat and a few macros. McCoy’s brews their beers at their flagship location in Kansas City and ships a few varieties up to Minnesota. More on their other beers later… the brown was sweet, light-bodied and nutty. Not the best brown I’ve ever had, but certainly not the worst.

This has been making all of the lists, but in case you missed it, tune into the History Channel on Wednesday night for two booze-related shows:

Distilleries (Wednesday, November 16 at 8:00 Central)

From water and grain…to mash…still…vat…barrel and bottle–the distilling of alcoholic spirits is a big business and near-sacred religion. Its acolytes eye the color, swirl the glass, inhale the bouquet, sip, then ponder their ambrosia. What’s your pleasure? Bourbon, Scotch, Rum, Gin, Vodka, or Tequila? We trace the history of distilling from the one-man/one-still tradition to the Voldstead Act of 1920 that devastated American distilleries to the mega-sales and high-volume distillery of today.

Brewing (Wednesday, November 16 at 9:00pm Central)

It’s one of the world’s oldest and most beloved beverages–revered by Pharaohs and brewed by America’s Founding Fathers. Today, brewing the bitter elixir is a multi-billion-dollar global industry. Join us for an invigorating look at brewing’s history from prehistoric times to today’s cutting-edge craft breweries, focusing on its gradually evolving technologies and breakthroughs. We’ll find the earliest known traces of brewing, which sprang up independently in such far-flung places as ancient Sumeria, China, and Finland; examine the surprising importance that beer held in the daily and ceremonial life of ancient Egypt; and at Delaware’s Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, an adventurous anthropologist and a cutting-edge brewer show us the beer they’ve concocted based on 2,700-year-old DNA found in drinking vessels from the funerary of the legendary King Midas.