Minneapolis Beer and Baseball

minneapolis

We looked at the Cardinals 2024 schedule and one weekend in particular jumped out. In August, the Cardinals visited the Minneapolis Twins. Miranda’s sister had moved to the twin cities a couple of years back and we’d been looking for a good opportunity to head up. The flight is easy from St. Louis with Delta and Southwest offering multiple non-stop one hour and fifteen-minute flights. Minneapolis-St. Paul International is very close to both cities, the Mall of America, the ever-expanding southern suburbs. We stayed in Lakeville and did most of our wandering in the southern part of the area. A rental car was a must for as spread out as the area is, although if we were just in town for the game and a handful of breweries, we probably could have made do with a hotel downtown and taken advantage of the light rail.

Our day at the ballpark

After putting some work time in on a Friday, we set out for the Mall of America. The mall is not only one of the area’s most recognizable landmarks, but also the end of the light rail network that leads all the way to Target Field downtown. You can easily spend 4+ hours wandering the Mall of America, especially if you go into the stores. We only had two hours, so we walked the first two levels and visited three stores. We caught the light rail at the station in the parking garage and headed north. Along the way, we got to experience one of the more unique airport scenes, travelers leveraging the city light rail to go from one terminal to another. This feels like it would be a great experience going from Laguardia to JFK in New York City, but this was just getting from terminal 2 to terminal 1 at MSP. The light rail itself actually travels under one of the runways of the airport. After nearly 40 minutes, we arrived at Target Field and did a short walk around. We would have spent more time exploring but we wanted to get into the ballpark and enjoy our all-inclusive seats…. or so we thought. It turns out that the Twins renamed the seating behind home plate. Instead, that section was now out in center field and we just paid for seats with a really good view. We got to experience a great game, the Cards won and the Twins even had a firework display to celebrate!

Saturday beer day

We started our brewery day at an excellent brunch spot called Inver Grove Brewing Co. where we enjoyed a flight of beers with their French Toast nuggets and pancake wrapped sausage and bacon. The coffee red ale was excellent but the winner of the best beer name went to C’s Gid Dugrees-Murica IPA. We took a break and headed for an unlikely place, a JV soccer game. When you’re in town visiting family, sometimes that family’s got stuff going on, and this time it was a soccer game during a beautiful Saturday morning. The sun is no joke in Minnesota. An 84-degree day with no cloud cover calls for a heat advisory from the national weather service. I thought this had to be a mistake, but the sun just hits a little different up there. After we stayed for most of the game, we continued on to 3rd Act Brewing, named because this is the couple who owns the places third act in their career. The beers weren’t as good, but they did have a nice shaded patio.

Our final brewery of the day was Ineffable Brewing Co. This one was a bit of a drive away, but they had several good hazy IPAs, an outdoor patio that was a little too in the sun for us, and some excellent cheese curds to hold us over until dinner. For dinner, we went to the Crooked Pint Ale House, this is where we got our one and only Jucy Lucy burgers on this trip. The cheese is stuffed inside the cheeseburger, making it a burn hazard if you just bite into it, and a spill hazard if you cut it open without paying attention.

We hit up two more breweries before heading back to the airport. Falling Knife Brewing Company was the first one in a building that looks like it used to be a union hall or machine shop. It’s got that old 1950’s school look to it but it’s not anywhere near where a school would be. The beers were good, they had a number of hazy IPAs and some creative names and shirts, unfortunately there wasn’t much in our size to take home. The second stop was right down the street from Target Field, and we got there in the 8th inning of the ballgame, not a great plan. We did our flight and hit the road to beat traffic. The beers were ok, but nothing noteworthy. Flying home ended up being a bit of a challenge, as our flight was delayed multiple times. Thanks to construction at the STL airport, we ended up getting home about 4 hours later than expected.