Beer & Wine

Three friends created a website highlighting local happy hours across Grand Rapids, Michigan in real-time. Kalamazoo residents would love to be included.

It's funny how real estate and areas change. Twenty-five years ago, Food Dance at Michigan and Pitcher Streets in Kalamazoo was a fairly new restaurant on the cusp of what would become a thriving downtown restaurant and bar/beer scene in Kalamazoo.

The World Beer Cup gold medal winner in the group is from The Mitten Brewing in Grand Rapids. Its a brown ale, Triple Crown Brown.

If there was any question about whether beer is a big deal in this part of Michigan, consider this: Warner Wines in Paw Paw has opened a Brew Haus.

Owner Brad Wilcox says his Brewsters Smokehouse location in Otsego, MI was targeted by robbers just months after his Portage, MI location was broken into.

It would be easy to dismiss three people discussing the beer history of Kalamazoo as simply another "talking heads" show, but given it's beer and beer's prominence in both terms of a local industry and how much of the product people consume now in both Kalamazoo and Michigan, it's a fascinating look at how we got to "here".

Northern Michigan breweries Short's and Stormcloud have resorted to purchasing their own housing complexes for employees in preparation for summer.

Wine and walking. What could go wrong? These two wineries in SW Michigan are uniquely connected by a hiking trail.

The Trap Door has a unique set up in a century old building, that was a former shoe store. When the building was refurbished as a speakeasy, old shoes from the turn of the century were actually found stuffed in the cracks of the stone walls

Parents are very upset to find out liquor was given to students at snack time. The person who brought the adult beverage to school shocked everyone.