Insight Brewing invades Beer Club!

The first Tuesday of the month means Beer Club night at Ed’s (no name) Bar. They’ve been knocking it out of the park lately, with fun-filled, informative tastings. We’ve been treated to tastings centered around different styles, and events centered around a single brewery. This latest Beer Club catered to the latter, focusing on one of the newer breweries in the Twin Cities, Insight Brewing.

Insight is currently draft only in the metro area, serving are bars and restaurants, as well as pints and growlers in their taproom, but one of Insight’s founders (And Winona native) Ilan Klages-Mundt was gracious enough to bless Ed’s with 5 kegs of their beer, otherwise unavailable in our area at the current time. Plans were revealed for a brewery expansion (from 6-8,000 barrels) and a canning line, so hopefully their brews will make its way downriver to us.

This Beer Club was packed to the gills with new and familiar faces, including what I figured were some of Ilan’s enthusiastic friends and family. After an introduction and telling of his journey to starting his own brewery and world travels, we had the first of five beers that evening. Lamb & Flag is a 4.1%ABV English Bitter; dry, light, and easy drinking. Not an overly aromatic beer, it had a bright carbonation and approachable mouthfeel. This would be a good summer sipper.

The second beer was Chiswick Porter. This is an English style brown porter with a wonderful chocolaty, graham cracker-esque aroma with a decent body, flavor and finish. Perfect for a chilly, rainy early spring evening. Next we were treated to the Yuzu Pale ale, which gets its name from the Yuzu fruit, an Asian citrus that resembles the look of a mandarin with the tartness of a grapefruit. This was a very interesting take on the conventional pale ale, and I’ll admit it was hard to pick out the fruit notes from the hops. This was a pleasant beer that I’d drink again.

The fourth beer of the night was the Curiosity IPA, which had a powerful hop nose to it that drew this hophead in. A dry IPA with a not-so-telling 7%ABV, it finished clean, although a bit unbalanced (by design, apparently). Very bright and aromatic, just what I like in an American IPA. The last beer of the night was the mighty 11%ABV Gravity Well Russian Imperial Stout. This is a huge beer with tons of flavors with lots of notes of dark chocolate, vanilla, and sherry. Ilan mentioned that it’s only about 3 ½ months old, and I couldn’t help but thinking another six months would have really mellowed this big boy out and made it a bit less hot. Still, it was a fitting close to a nice range of styles and flavors.

If you’re looking to check out Insight on their home turf, they are located at 2821 E Hennepin in Minneapolis. They are open 7 days a week and special events and food truck schedules are available on their site. Thanks so much to Ilan for taking the time to come down and share his creations with us, and as always, thanks to the wonderful staff at Ed’s for another rewarding beer club. Cheers!

Header photo credit: Danya Espinosa