Look, I get it. We aren’t supposed to like Minnesota. The Gophers are the worst, the Vikings are terrible, they have fewer lakes than Wisconsin and the northern part of the state is basically Canada. Gross!

BUT!

I’m here, as an official Minnesota resident to tell you this: it is ok here. In fact, I’d go so far as to note ... it’s pretty good. Minnesotans are exactly like Wisconsinites in every way except which colors to wear during fall weekends.

You like to go fishing? Shit, that’s basically all anyone does here in the summer.

Want to bitch about the weather? An inalienable right here.

Cracking a couple of cold ones with the boys after a day of yard work? Hell, it’s raining out right now and I’m STILL probably gonna have a beer tonight to reward myself for how my yard looks.

Now I don’t know if I can say that Minnesota has better beer than Wisconsin, because, well ... that would be crazy. However, Minnesota does have myriad excellent breweries and you should take a trip west and check them out! Let’s talk about some of my favorites and then get into an argument in the comments about them.

Oh, before we get into this it should be noted that there are a trio of beer-centric areas in the state. These are:

The Twin Cities
Duluth
Basically, uh, the rest of the state.

I know spot three isn’t really fair to, like, Rochester, St. Cloud or Fargo/Moorhead—but I had to draw the arbitrary line somewhere, and so here we are.

OMNI Brewing Company

The first two breweries listed here are right in Minneapolis. OMNI is in the northwest suburb of Maple Grove and the place is consistently packed, especially for the three nice weeks a year we get.

Maple Grove also happens to be my wife’s hometown, so we have taken a special interest in OMNI and their successes. To be perfectly honest, the first time we went ... we were disappointed. However, much like it takes a new restaurant a few weeks to work out kinks in service, a brewery needs time to find its groove as well.

And, as someone who was literally at this brewery on Tuesday afternoon, OMNI has found their groove. They have fine tuned their flagships like Lake Day Pale Ale, Omnipotent Scotch Ale and Muddy Runner Porter while delving into some specialty and one-off style stuff that is some of the best the Twin Cities has to offer.

All of their Malt Shop releases have been bangers, and I really enjoy their Oktoberfest every fall. Whenever we have our First Annual B5Q Retreat Weekend in my backyard, we’ll be taking a field trip to OMNI for sure.

See the full Bucky's 5th Quarter article here.