Ore Dock Brewing, Marquette MI

I walked here from my hotel on a whim after seeing that it was only 7 minutes away. There was also a large outdoor (on the sidewalk) area that you can’t see in this shot.

I was full, so skipped the food truck (hamburgers) and just had a flight of their beers:

It’s probably a bit difficult to read my scribbles on the flight manifest, so from left to right, the beers are:

Queen City Kolsch – not bad, probably my favorite of the lot, but not good enough to repeat even if I’d wanted more of something.

Blond – Definitely a Belgian-style ale, and not at all what I was in the mood for today. I’d have ordered something else in its place if I’d been paying more attention to what was in front of me <facepalm/>.

Six Pointer – Yeah, it’s a dunkel. Very middle of the road, in my opinion.

Berserker – Again, very middle of the road for a hazy IPA – nothing that stood out from the crowd.

Little Wrangler – Surprisingly, this pale ale was my favorite of the lot! It wasn’t good enough to try to stuff a pint into my already-full stomach, but I did rather like this one.

It may be that my opinions of these beers were colored by the fact that I was full before I started, but I’m very happy that I chose the Lake Superior Smokehouse Brewpub as my main stop in Marquette 🙂

[Edit]

It turns out that the brewery is named for this imposing structure just down the hill:

This is an Ore Dock and was used to load ore into ships for transport across the Great Lakes. The upper level would have been connected to land by a rail bridge, and trains would dump ore into bins holding 250 tons each on the top of the dock, then a ship would pull alongside and be loaded from the hinged chutes that can seen along the side of the Ore Dock. This one is no longer in use, but there’s another one further north in Marquette that is still active.