Minnesota Breweries One By One #36: Steel Toe Brewery, St. Louis Park

On of the many amenities of the Steel Toe taproom includes
an enormous Steel Toe logo mural. Also, not much else.

Dear readers, you may remember my quest of 2016 to visit all of Minnesota's brewery taprooms and write about them. I made it to 113, skipping any breweries that did not have a place to drink a pint, and I believe I got to them all. But I didn't write them all up, and the project has been on a hiatus for the past seven months, for no good reason. Among those no-good reasons are: the time it takes to write these, the time I have available to me, and the pressure of that huge pile of unwritten brewery visits. Where to start, how to proceed, what? How?

I won't let it get me down, but at the same time there's a mounting stockpile of beers to review that I'm working on knocking down. As I try to make progress, I slip and it grows. It grows without me slipping, they just accumulate. And so in the middle of a night off, with about 3 reviews down and no end in sight, I decide to heck with it, let's finish off a brewery. I'm going to put a Steel Toe beer in the fridge and when it's cold enough to drink, I'll be halfway through my report. Let's do it!

Why is Steel Toe #36? Because it was the 36th brewery I visited that year, and the first of the day that Sunday, the first of May. Jason and I had a plan to do Steel Toe, then LTD in Hopkins, and finally Modist in Minneapolis, all by bike. (This was the second time we'd done this path. The first time, the year before, or was it two?, we finished our triple brewery visit with Fulton.) While at ST, I picked up 2 bottles of barrel-aged Wee Heavy, and I took notes on it for use in my MN Breweries report, which never got written (until now) for this reason: I lost the pictures. Got to have the pictures. Pics or it didn't happen, dude. Later on, I utilized those notes when I opened bottle #2. You can read those here.

As I've said in previous Steel Toe reviews, my eyes were lifted once I realized how close I was to their brewery by bike. Since I've moved to the Uptown area, I'm only about 12 minutes away. I tested this out in May, when I brought home a growler of Almost Special Bitter. A month later, I took that trip on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. June 25, to be exact. I jumped on the Greenway, about six blocks away from my place, and took that path all the way to St. Louis Park, where it crosses Beltway Boulevard. Not far from there, we can see a "Brewery is open" sign on the street and follow that road until we can see the building off in the distance. 4848 W. 35 St. The patio is full, and so is the bar. Because of this, I found a table in the larger beer hall, took my notes on the 2 beers I'd never had before.

 First off, HopTread #1, the first in a series of experimental IPAs. Here's the notes: HopTread #1: Lightly hazed, bright golden color, slim ivory head.

HopTread 1

Aroma burst with tropical notes, pineapple, mango, guava, low bitterness, plenty of fruit.

In the mouth: powerful bitterness at the start, then nothing but pleasure. Juicy, fruity, with a lingering bitter smack through the finish. Very dry, despite the frequent fruitiness. Medium body. Terrifically tasty. I’m going to have to look up the hops for this one, I’m liking this combo, whatever it is.

Next up, Sissel, the Raspberry Wheat Ale. These are the notes:

Slim white head, hazy, near-orange coloring.

Sissel Raspberry Wheat

Raspberry all up in that nose. Tart and sweet and wheat. Lovely.

In the mouth: Bracing tart at first grab on the palate, lightly bitter, utterly smooth and delightful. I like a good raspberry wheat, I won’t lie. I really like a really good one. Really. And this is one. Fresh, delicious, tart, and damn it, you can drink it.

So, new to me beers down, notes done and I wandered back to the bar once some seats opened up. I like sitting at the bar. There were some real goodies on tap, Before the Dawn, the barrel-aged black barleywine, and then 2016 Lunker, the rye barrel-aged English-style barleywine.

Four beers in, and my fifth is a Dissent, while I recapture
my youth with some old Kirby Klassics.

As you can see by the illustration at left, those amazing barley-wines weren't quite enough, and I capped off the visit with a Dissent dark ale. Go ahead, call it a stout. The only thing wrong with this visit was a complete lack of Frank Goldman. It's just not a visit to Steel Toe without a little bit of Frank.

But the brewery staff is friendly, the atmosphere is comfortable, and while the place is really as no-frills as they go, it's all about the beer. Steel Toe has been successfully following their motto of having "big dreams of staying small." I like that plan a lot. They don't do a lot of different brews, but what they do, they do well.

That last visit was over 3 months ago, and it makes no sense to me. There were plenty of opportunities to return. As I look at the website today, I notice for the first time that they're open Tuesday now, too. I had all day off today, and didn't go. Also, there are 2 more new-to-me beers, including the second HopTread. Put that to the top of my to-do list.

I feel a certain obligation to stay on top of the beers of my home city of Minneapolis, and now that there are 30 breweries in the City of Lakes, and 12 and counting in our neighboring St. Paul, it's easy to forget about our neighbor to the southwest. Only 12 minutes away. The more I say that, the more it sounds stupid that I don't stop there more often.

The theme of this taproom: industrial.

Maybe I didn't see Frank on that trip, but on my
previous visit, I did bump into JD.

A peek at the patio.