Spring Break
Great Lakes brews simple Fall stout
Mike Partel
Issue date: 11/6/09 Section: Ed-Op
While perusing my favorite beer emporium this past weekend, I stopped to look into the East Coast refrigerator. Found in this cooler are many local treats and exotic brews from favorites such as Dogfish Head and Dock Street. This week, however, I'm trying for the first time an offering from the Great Lakes Brewing Co., which features a beer dedicated to one of the last major shipwrecks on the Lakes-the sinking of S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald, later to be immortalized in pop music by Gordon Lightfoot. This article, like the song, is in honor of those souls lost to the "Third Coast."
The Conway brothers, Patrick and Daniel, founded Great Lakes Brewing in Cleveland, Ohio, and began producing beer in the late '80s. Patrick went off after graduate school to tour the breweries of Europe while Daniel tried to break into entrepreneurship, despite the toils of a regular day job.
Famed for being an integral part of the local culture and identity, Great Lakes Brewing was the first brewery to return to the barren waste that was left of Ohio's beer scene, and started as a simple brewpub and microbrewery. It is so essential to Cleveland now, that St. Ignatius High School had the Jesuits bless the brewing vats.
Edmund Fitzgerald Porter is dedicated to the memory of the 29 crewmembers lost when the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald of the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company suddenly went down on Lake Superior Nov. 10, 1975. Strong gale winds are thought to have generated overpowering waves that damaged several hatch covers. The last radio message ever received by the crew mentioned a few slight problems, but nothing serious.
Porter is the name given to beer brewed with dark malts that feature intense roasty-and-bitter flavors. In theory, the style also encompasses Stouts (called Stout Porter).
It is commonly believed that its 18th century popularity with dockworkers is the reasoning for its current name. When porters were originally brewed, most of the grain used was of brown malt, which was cheaper but less fermentable than the lighter pale malts.
The Conway brothers, Patrick and Daniel, founded Great Lakes Brewing in Cleveland, Ohio, and began producing beer in the late '80s. Patrick went off after graduate school to tour the breweries of Europe while Daniel tried to break into entrepreneurship, despite the toils of a regular day job.
Famed for being an integral part of the local culture and identity, Great Lakes Brewing was the first brewery to return to the barren waste that was left of Ohio's beer scene, and started as a simple brewpub and microbrewery. It is so essential to Cleveland now, that St. Ignatius High School had the Jesuits bless the brewing vats.
Edmund Fitzgerald Porter is dedicated to the memory of the 29 crewmembers lost when the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald of the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company suddenly went down on Lake Superior Nov. 10, 1975. Strong gale winds are thought to have generated overpowering waves that damaged several hatch covers. The last radio message ever received by the crew mentioned a few slight problems, but nothing serious.
Porter is the name given to beer brewed with dark malts that feature intense roasty-and-bitter flavors. In theory, the style also encompasses Stouts (called Stout Porter).
It is commonly believed that its 18th century popularity with dockworkers is the reasoning for its current name. When porters were originally brewed, most of the grain used was of brown malt, which was cheaper but less fermentable than the lighter pale malts.
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