This week saw the release of Surly Nein, a new limited-run brew to commemorate the brewing company’s ninth anniversary. Nine years seems like such a short amount of time for Surly’s huge accomplishments in the craft beer world, and I’ll definitely be raising a glass to celebrate one of Minnesota’s finest.

Surly Brewing started in 2006 when owner Omar Ansari hired on brewer Todd Haug to craft and sell beer out of what was once an industrial abrasives warehouse. Some bars and liquor stores were reluctant to embrace their new-school, aggressive styles, but once the public caught on there was no stopping Surly. Their beers, particularly Furious and Darkness, were hot commodities on online beer trading forums, and despite the limited local distribution Surly was being sent from beer fan to beer fan across the country. The buzz was on, and in 2007 Surly was named the Best Brewery in America by Beer Advocate Magazine, no small feat for being less than two years old. Thanks in large part to the brewery, in 2011 the “Surly Bill’ was passed in MN. This bill allowed breweries of a certain size to sell their beer on site, and viola, Minnesota taprooms were born. In 2014 Surly opened their state of the art destination brewery in Minneapolis, which has drawn huge amounts of tourists into the Twin Cities craft beer scene.

Their ninth anniversary brew, “Nein”, is a rich, delicious beer that is built to savor. It’s a play on the German Dunkelweizen style brewed with dark wheat and fermented with a hefeweizen yeast strain, with a portion of the malt oak-smoked. It’s then aged on charred oak and packaged in 750ml wax-dipped bottles with gorgeous artwork by Erica Williams. Nein features notes of caramelized, lightly smoky-sweet malt accentuated by whiffs of charred oak and banana. It’s fantastic. There’s a limited supply in stock now, do yourself a favor and check this one out! Cheers!