My wife's birthday is only nine days away from mine, so when one of our co-workers reached out to me this year asking if she could buy us tickets to Apps & Ales for our birthday's I said sure!

The co-worker has wanted to buy us tickets in the past, but usually our calendar doesn't work out with the night it happens. This year, we had nothing going on though.

Apps & Ales is a pretty cool event that takes place in the downtown section of a city near the one we live in. Basically you take your passport to each location and you give them a ticket. In turn, they give you two small beer samples and a appetizer that they have crafted to pair with the beer.

Time for a disclaimer... It was obvious that some places put a little more thought into the pairings than other places. Also, although I am sure all of the places put out great food on a regular basis, some of the appetizers seemed rushed or not as high quality because of the quantity they had to produce in such a small period of time.

There were about twenty establishments that participated in the evening and although we didn't make it to all of them, we still had a really good time and lucky for you, I got pictures!

The Apps and Ales:

The first place that we visited was called Tavern 101. They were serving a couple of beers from Short's Brewing Company in Bellaire, MI

I am a big fan of Short's, I have visited their tap room north of where I live and it is a really cool place.

The two beers that Tavern 101 featured were The Magician and Melt My Brain.

Melt My Brain is a golden ale

The Magician is a red ale

The pairing was with a chilled cucumber salad shown in the pictures as well as a steak skewer with a sriracha mayo type drizzle.

Although the beef was a little over done for my liking, it still had really good flavor and this was one of the better places we visited for appetizers.

My wife loved the cucumber salad and I have a feeling it is something that she will be trying to recreate this summer.

The photos for the first place take up a lot of space because I hadn't yet figured out the best way to capture everything.

You will see I got better at taking the pictures as we continued on our journey.

Most of the establishments were all in the same three or four block area.

There were some that we had to take a bit of a walk to get to, but we were still in the same downtown area.

Here is a picture of the Melt My Brain:

You can see the samples they give you aren't very big. Probably a smart idea on their part otherwise people would be stumbling around all night!

Our second stop was a place called Mulligans Pub. They were serving beers from Bell's Brewery.

Additionally, the appetizers here were chips and queso and some egg rolls that we didn't try.

The beers were:

Two Hearted Ale which is an IPA

They also had an Amber Cream Ale from Lansing Brewing Company.

I am not a big fan of IPA's, but Two Hearted is one of the few that I can tolerate.

The Amber Cream was pretty good but the chips and queso were not my favorite.

Mulligans is a nice place to visit though when things aren't so crazy downtown.

Next we worked our way down to one of our favorite spots. It is a pizzeria/restaurant called G's.

They were serving a variety of pizzas including a meat lovers, a veggie, and a Greek inspired pizza.

The brews were from a place called Ellison Brewery.

They served us the IPA and the Amber. As I said before, I am not a big fan of IPA's, but the Amber was pretty good.

We were mostly excited about the pizza. I might have mentioned this is one of our favorite places and although we were hoping the app would be some of their famous bread sticks, we were fine settling with their great pizza.

Surprisingly, this next place was one of the best we visited. Everything was absolutley on point at the Riverfront Grill in the Doubletree hotel.

They did the best job of pairing Tuco Style Freakout with the chicken street taco.

Additionally, Peanuts and Cracker Jack by The Mitten Brewing Company was a home run with the peanut butter ice cream coated in caramel corn.

The Princess Wenonah isn't a traditional bar like the other places we visited. It is actually a boat!

You can charter the boat to travel up and down the river for private parties etc.

They were serving beers from North Peak Brewing.

Siren is an Amber Ale that was pretty good.

Archangel was the other beer that they served and it was also pretty good.

My wife and I have visited the North Peak Brewery/Restaurant in Traverse City, MI and though I wasn't super impressed at the time (~7 years ago) I might have to give them another look.

They paired the beers with some meatballs which were actually pretty good and chips and queso.

Asian Noodle was another one of the places that I feel knocked it out of the park.

They were serving beers from Tri City Brewing which resides in the same town.

Hells Half Mile is a German style Helles Lager and Cherry Torchon is exactly what it sounds like.

They paired them with some wonderful egg rolls and the other thing you see on the plate here.

The only way I can describe it is a deep fried ball of rice and cheese and maybe some other stuff, but it was fantastic.

My wife and I have never been to this restaurant, but it is definitely a place we are going to check out next time we are in town!

We were starting to run out of time and knew we could only get to a couple more places. We stopped in to Gatsby's.

They were serving Leinenkugel's Creamy Dark and Rochester Mills Rochester Red.

They were both pretty good and I would probably try them again. Even though they are more commercial now, I have always been a fan of Leinenkugel's stuff.

The appetizers here were cheese and crackers, a shrimp dip that I didn't care to try and what looked to be bbq ribs.

It was hard to tell though because by the time we got to the food so many people had been through that it was really just a dish of bones and sauce. I didn't feel like fishing around to find some pork!

Jake's Corner Lounge was our second to last stop.

They were serving beers from Founder's Brewing.

The Green Zebra and Solid Gold paired well with the pulled chicken sliders and baked beans they were serving.

My friend tells me this small bar is quite the happening place and there tends to be a lot of buzz around it.

I wasn't super impressed. It seemed like a bit of a dive bar to me. While I love a great dive bar as much as the next person, this one just didn't do it for me.

The beer and food pairing was one of the better ones we tried though....

Finally, we stopped at The Prime Event Center. This place is actually just a place where you can have receptions and get-togethers, so they were just hosting another local brewery.

Lumber Barons was highlighting a couple of their own brews.

Cardinal Red was a run of the mill red ale, and Recreational Chemistry was the other one. I don't really know if I can describe the second beer and their site is under construction and doesn't do a great job of explaining it.

The beers were paired with hand-cut fries that you could get various toppings on.

I am sure the poutine would have been great if they had been fresh, but due to the nature of the event ours had been sitting out and were cold.

Thanks for taking this journey with my wife and I! If you want to check out the full list of places that participated check out the website for the event here

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