Good beer is an acquired taste. Go acquire some.

Our beers are available in 5, 7.75 and 15.5 gallon kegs, 16 ounce cans and growlers. Check out the Surly Bars page for places that serve our beer. You can find the liquor stores that sell our beer in cans by visiting our Cans page.

Growlers are only available for sale at the brewery. Check out the Growler page for details.

Bitter Brewer
One-time Release

We brewed this batch in April and dry-hopped it for about 14 days. This beer is brewed in the tradition of an English Style Bitter. Here is a definition of the style from www.beeradvocate.com:

English Bitter

Description:
The Bitter style came from brewers who wanted to differentiate these ales from other mild brews, enter pale malts and more hops. Most are gold to copper in colour and are light bodied. Low carbonation. Alcohol should be low and not perceived. Hop bitterness is moderate to assertive. Most have a fruitiness in the aroma and flavor, diacetyl can also be present. These are traditionally served cask conditioned, but many breweries have bottled versions.

Average alcohol by volume (abv) range: 3.0-5.0% [ ? ]

We only brewed 30 barrels of this beer, so it will go fast. We filled as many pins and firkins as we had. Look for this beer on cask, it should really shine.

CynicAle
Limited Release - This beer is coming back!

CynicAle is returning! We plan on brewing this beer from Memorial Day to Labor Day. You know summer in Minnesota is here when Cynic is around. We tweaked the recepie a little bit this year. We hope you enjoy this refreshing ale.
Brewed with Belgian malted barley, this copper hued ale is brewed in the Belgian Saison style. A unique Belgian yeast strain creates the spicy flavor and imported hops lend the apricot/peach aroma.

IBU 38
6.6% abv

Bender
Year-round availability.

This beer is an amalgamation of styles; brown/porter/apa. Five distinct malts, including two from Belgium, give this beer added complexity and depth. We also add oatmeal to this beer to give it a smooth texture not usually associated with this type of beer. We add large amounts of American finishing hops to give Bender a citrus hop aroma because... we like hops. This is a session beer weighing in around 5% alcohol and 25 IBUs. Grab one today, we think you will want another!

Furious
Year-round availability.

Like Hops? You'll like this fire-hued beer. This is the beer I have always dreamed of making. This is the beer that would come to mind while spending the last two years tearing down walls, hanging sheetrock, moving kegs, power washing the ceilings, arguing with various agencies, and cutting the water main.

Without Golden Promise malt, made by family-owned Simpsons Malt, Furious would just be pissed off-ed. From Scotland, this malt is still produced in the tradition of turning over the barley by hand, resulting in a malt that is unsurpassed in its quality. Golden Promise is also used extensively by premium whisky distilleries such as The Macallan. This malt provides the backbone for the intense hop character. Four American hop varieties are used at a rate of over three pounds per barrel. The result is a rich malt sweetness infused with bright hop flavor and aroma from beginning to end. Oh yeah, it's about 6% alcohol and around 100 IBUs.

one
One-time Release
Our first beer in our series of anniversary beers. Todd gets to brew something different every year. Look for a new one when we celebrate another year of keeping the doors open. This year's beer is a lager. Aged about 6 months and weighing in around 9% ABV. This one is almost gone.

Darkness
Limited Release
This Russian Imperial Stout is a sipper. Problem is that you want to sip it all night. Look for this one to be released when the leaves change color and Halloween is approaching. Brewed with a blend of 8 different malts, oats and candi sugar. This huge stout reflects Surly’s commitment to brewing intensely flavored beers in small batches. Only 25 barrels of this beer were brewed.
10.3% abv 80 IBU

SurlyFest
Limited Release

Our interpretation of a German Oktoberfest beer. This beer is a single hop lager, hopped exclusively with Summit hops. Being a Surly beer, we decided to dry-hop it. Is that a traditional German way to brew it? Nein, but we ain't in Germany. We aged this beer over 11 weeks to let the flavors mellow into an exceptional taste. We used German malts and Crystal Rye for a unique flavor. Only one batch of this beer was brewed, so go and drink it while you can!

Prosit!

Coffee Bender
Special Release

This beer is our regular Bender beer with a cold-press coffee-brewing process. We steep 20 gallons at a time, so this beer will pop up at Tours, beer fests and special tappings. The coffee is roasted locally at Coffee & Tea Limited in Linden Hills.

Imagine our surprise when we got a call from Edwin Martinez, 3rd generation coffee grower from Finca Vista Hermosa in Guatemala. Edwin informed us that his grandfather bought the land years ago and he now sells the beans around the world. Look for their coffee bags next time you are at the brewery.

Our Philosophy
The most commonly asked question about the brewery is "What kind of beers are you going to brew?" Good question. We plan to brew the best beer we possibly can.

Surly will begin by brewing two beers for the Twin Cities market. We're not gonna tell you what the beers will be like; you'll have to find out for yourself. We also plan to have a rotating seasonal beer.

Brewing the best beer we can means formulating beer recipes that are not devised with ingredient price in mind. It means we will use premium American grown barley and large amounts of imported British, German and Belgian malt. The American barley we use comes from home-grown Rahr Malting, a family owned malt-house based right here in Minnesota.

It also means we will formulate our recipes in a way that we think makes for the best beer -- we won't focus on conforming to someone else's style guidleines. It means that we will brew beers we love instead of brewing beers we think will be best-sellers. It means that we are not going to sacrifice flavor by filtering or pasturizing our product.

It means we'll have the freedom to take chances with our beer: We're going to cask-condition and bourbon-barrel some of our beers, and we'll brew small-batch specialty beers, including beers aged more than six months.

All of these decisions will create unique brews that leave an impression. Taste one today and see what we mean.