Had my Michigan drinking shoes on last weekend!  It was a good thing, too, since several salesfolks from my company and I went on a whirlwind tour of four breweries in Michigan.  We left at about 10:00 am on Friday.  Several of my colleagues brought beverages for the busride.  In about three hours (we ran into some traffic), we arrived at our first stop, ARCADIA BREWING COMPANY.

Rick Suarez was nice enough to arrange a brewery tour and lunch for us.   Many of us were surprised that Arcadia was such a small brewery.  We also sampled some barrel-aged B-Craft Black.  Nice.

We bought some beer for the road, too, which was a good thing as it was about an hour's drive to Grand Rapids!  Got checked into the hotel and walked to Founders.
We felt pretty damn VIP-ish as we got a brewery tour from none other than Dave Engbers, one of the founders of Founders.  Pretty cool.  We then had a question-and-answer session with Dave in their super-sexy conference room.  The rest of the night is a bit of a blur, but it involved sandwiches at the Founders Tap Room and a visit to Hopcat, a great beer bar just a few blocks away.
I must confess, even though I am a professional, if I start drinking at 10:00 am, I really can't reasonably still be drinking at 7:00 pm.  I just don't have the stamina anymore.  But, got back to the hotel safe and sound and ready to begin again on Saturday!

Saturday morning began with lunch at BREWERY VIVANT!  I loved this little brewery.  We are hoping to bring them to Chicago.  Jason, the owner, gave us a tour of what we discovered was an old funeral home that they converted.  The bar is in what was the chapel, and the brewery itself is in the area where the hearses were kept.  The beers are adapted from Belgian styles, and all really awesome.  The food was great, too.  And they had a beer garden, where our team played bags most of the afternoon -- until it was time to head over to Founders fest.

Founders Fest was lovely!  Very chill, for a beer fest.  Lines were not crazy long.  Really enjoyed it.  I actually bailed out and returned to the hotel after the fantastic dinner that Glunz bought for us.  I figured I would quit while I was ahead.  And I had plenty of beer in me, no worries.
It was a wise choice!  On Sunday morning, everyone else was quite a mess, and I felt juuuuussst fine, thank you.  I was raring to go to New Holland.

I may have been the only member of our little group to still be enjoying beer on Sunday morning.
So you see, children, the moral of the story is, brewery weekends are a marathon, not a sprint.  Maybe I didn't party late into the night on Friday or Saturday, but I lived to drink beer another day.
We go to Great Lakes Burning River Fest in Cleveland next month!  I can't wait!