“It was just curiosity that got me into homebrewing in the first place,” said David Duma of Gideon’s Brewing Company. “One day my buddy back where I used to live in Virginia said ‘Hey, let’s try this,’ so we did. We had our fair share of setbacks, just getting into it, like any other rookies would. We learned the hard way that a conventional plastic tube will melt if you try to drain mash with it. But when the reward for homebrewing is your very own beer, you keep wanting to press forward.
Black Coffee and Waffle Bar
Black Coffee and Waffle Bar started out in Minneapolis in 2014, when it was cofounded by the owner of a now defunct coffee shop called Muddsuckers. (It is worth noting that at some point he did a complete 180 when it came to naming his businesses.) Black Coffee and Waffle Bar has done very well owing primarily to two factors — you might guess what they are. They have done their namesakes so well, in fact, that they’ve since opened up a second location in St. Paul, and another in the faraway land of North Dakota.
Borough
I take my girlfriend to her work a couple days a week. It’s not just because I’m a great guy. I get to enjoy a pretty drive along Cedar Lake. I get to cycle the radio between NPR and KTLK, and imagine the cataclysm that would ensue if Terry Gross and Glenn Beck were to enter the same room as each other. But best of all, I get to walk past Borough in the North Loop and smell whatever’s wafting out of it.
Blarney Stone Irish Pub
“Many people die of thirst but the Irish are born with one.”
-Spike Milligan
There are great drinking establishments all across the world, but none is so welcoming as the Irish pub. Local entrepreneurs Matt Geiger and Jim Poolman noticed this during their jetset lifestyles, as no matter where they landed they always found themselves in one. That’s why they decided to open up Blarney Stone in Bismarck ten years ago. It’s not the most Irish city, Bismarck, not so much as Dublin or Boston at least, but as a jewel in the Midwest’s landscape it too deserved a fine Irish pub.
Wild Terra Cider
When most Americans think of cider, they think of sweet autumnal juice. It is good, but cider can be far better than that. The problem with inert cider, you see, is that it wasn’t allowed to ferment, to fulfill a fruit juice’s highest calling, which is to become booze.
Hawktree Golf Club
The creation of the picturesque Hawktree Golf Club was a collaborative effort. Burnt Creek first molded the course’s hills and valleys over the span of millennia, and then in the year 2000 master landscape architect Jim Engh designed its 18 unique holes. Hawktree’s 80 acres sprawl across lush fairways, crystal clear lakes, and striking black sand bunkers. But it is not simply the course’s natural beauty that has made it one of the Golf Range Association of America’s top 50 public ranges.