Summit Brewing Company

Summit Brewing Company

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Location	St. Paul, Minnesota United States
Opened	1986
Annual production volume	240,000 US beer barrels (280,000 hL)
Active beers
Name Type Summit Extra Pale Ale English Pale Ale Summit Pilsener Pilsener Summit True Brit IPA English IPA Summit Great Northern Porter American Porter Summit Horizon Red IPA Red Ale IPA Hybrid Summit Saga IPA American IPA Summit Oatmeal Stout Oatmeal stout
Seasonal beers
Name Type Summit Maibock (Spring) Maibock / helles bock Summit Summer Ale (Summer) Kölsh Style Summit Oktoberfest (Fall) Märzen Summit Winter Ale (Winter) Winter warmer
Other beers
Name Type Summit Unchained Series (New style released three times a year) varied Summit Union Series varied

Summit Brewing Company is a regional craft brewery in Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States, that brews a wide selection of popular beers. It is sometimes mistakenly believed to be a microbrewery, even though Summit's output is in the top 50 of breweries in the United States, approximately 240,000 barrels of beer per year. Their flagship beer, an English Pale Ale (branded Summit Extra Pale Ale) is especially popular in the Twin Cities area.

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The Summit Brewery in St. Paul, Minnesota

The brewery was founded in 1986 by local brewer Mark Stutrud and a group of his friends in an old auto parts warehouse on St. Paul's University Avenue. Their beers quickly became local favorites, and the company began to grow rapidly. In 1987, the Great Northern Porter won a gold medal at the Great American Beer Festival and was featured on the cover of Michael Jackson's New World Guide to Beer (1988). By 1998 the company's beer production had exceeded the capacity of the original University Avenue brewery, and a new brewery designed by architect Peter O'Brien, was built on the west end of St. Paul, overlooking the Mississippi River. Having outgrown it, Summit sold its 1938-vintage brewing equipment to Mt. Shasta Brewing Company in Northern California. They then purchased a set of brewing equipment built in 1971 from the Hürnerbräu Brewery in Ansbach Germany.

In 2009 Summit launched the Unchained Series. The brewery asks their brewers to brew any beer of their choice - which they then bottle, keg and sell. Styles have included Kölsch, Belgian Golden Ale, Black Ale, Gold Sovereign Ale, Honeymoon Saison, Imperial Pumpkin Porter, Dunkle Weizen & India Rye Ale. Unchained Batch 14, a Bière de Garde, was released in October 2013

As of 2007, Summit beers were available from distributors in 18 U.S. states (CO, FL, IA, IL, IN, KY, MI, MN, MO, MT, ND, NE, NJ, OH, PA, SD, TX, and WI). The brewery currently brews six year-round styles, a variety of seasonal, and a limited release beers. As of 2010, it was the second-largest brewery in Minnesota (31st largest in the United States), after August Schell Brewing Company.

External links

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• Summit Brewing Company