A guide to your favorite U.P. breweries coming to print

If there are two things that Jesse Land and Josh Marenger are extremely qualified to write about, it is beer and the Upper Peninsula.

Thankfully, the duo combined their talents to do just that, writing a book called Upper Peninsula Breweries. The book is the perfect mix of what Land and Marenger excel at.

Land, who operates the very popular website Things to Do in the U.P., knows his way around just about any neck of the woods across the peninsula.

"I had the idea for the U.P. breweries book around the time I started Things to do in the U.P.," Land says. "At the time there wasn't so much as a blog post that listed all the U.P. breweries in one place and I thought a book about the topic could be a really useful resource."

But Land had a bit of a dilemma--all he knew about the 12 breweries in the region was that he absolutely loved their beers. He had enough to write a beer-lover's guide to the U.P., but nothing that would be in-depth about the brews themselves.

Enter Marenger.

Marenger has been a homebrewer since 2007 and is a former officer of the Bay de Noc Brewers, the U.P.'s largest homebrew club. Additionally, he's on the planning committee for Uptoberfest and is the co-founder of U.P. Craft Beer Week.

Needless to say, he's qualified.

The book the two are busy putting the finishing touches on is expected to be available by the time U.P. Craft Beer Week rolls around in the first week of September. Lands says it will be available in both paperback and Amazon Kindle versions.

"We want to reach craft beer lovers who are interested in exploring the breweries of the Upper Peninsula," says Land of his target audience. "We're going to include sections on things to do around each brewery as well as places to stay nearby the breweries, so the book will be a good U.P. travel resource in addition to providing great information about the breweries."

For more information about the U.P. Breweries book, you can visit the website or you can keep track of updates via the tome's Facebook page.

"Our goal is to have the U.P. Breweries website be the go-to place for up to date info about all the U.P. breweries, and then we'll probably publish a new edition of the book every few years as new breweries open and the existing businesses continue to evolve," said Land.

Sam Eggleston is the managing editor for U.P. Second Wave and a fan of craft brews. His favorites are currently at the Keweenaw Brewing Company (Houghton), Red Jacket (Calumet), Soo Brewing Company (Sault Ste. Marie) and Ore Dock (Marquette). He can be reached via email.