Crane Brewing Out on the Town!

If you've been living under a rock for the last two months (as I have been--I'm finally catching up from the time-eating trinity of holidays, job, and kid), then you missed Crane Brewing Co's launch! They launched in Kansas in mid-December, and this week is their Missouri launch. Central States Bev & Crane have hosted events all around town over the last week at places like Flying Saucer, Rock & Run, the Belfry, Happy Gillis and on and on. There is still one final launch event tonight up north at Conrad's in Liberty. The Crane folks will be there at 6pm to talk beer & brewing. They'll have their Saison & Orange Gose on tap as well.


Regardless of whether you missed out on the launch events, you can be certain that you're going to start seeing Crane beers all over the Missouri side of the state line now. You should start seeing Crane in liquor stores in bombers as well as on tap. I might be premature, but I predict a total takeover of the KC metro by Crane. Their beers are fantastic, they have great branding, and Central States is obviously putting all their efforts behind them. If you're not familiar with the brewery and their story, Sarah Gish at the Star published a great article about them just a few days ago.

Right now they've got four beers out around town. These are the Saison, Farmhouse IPA, Orange Gose, and Apricot Weiss. I've had the Saison before at festivals, which is a very solid and easy drinking classic saison, but I haven't yet had a chance to try the rest. I'm really looking forward to try the Gose, and mainly just thankful that a KC brewery has finally put a gose in their year-round lineup. It's one of my favorite styles (year-round!), and I highly recommend that you get out there and give it a try if you haven't ever had one before.

Check them out at Conrad's tonight at 6pm!

This year yet, Crane plans to release three more beers--the Grapefruit Gose, Tea Weiss, and Beet Weiss. I can attest that the beet beer is a very well brewed, and very weird beer. I can't quite say it's to my taste, but it's definitely an experience to drink it. Also, Michael Crane has been known in the past for a myriad of great, award winning, one-off sour beers. The new brewery's got a full fledged barrel aging program going (thanks to many of you for your crowdbrewed contributions), and I can only imagine what amazing creations are going to come out of it in the near future. Regardless, I'll be looking forward to anything and everything coming out of their brewhouse!

Congrats to the Crane team and cheers!