For this edition of Revue’s occasional beer road trip series, we headed south out of Grand Rapids with just a skeleton of a plan to explore five breweries. Little did we know the 150-mile journey would lead us to discover some new favorites along the way, including recently launched small-town pubs, a young brewery that’s on the forefront of reviving classic German-style beers, and humble but growing producers making some high-quality liquid.

Revue wanted to know what the go-to beers are for people in the brewing industry. Ten brewery owners let us open their refrigerators and take a peek. 

A new brewery is breathing life into a long-vacant former furniture showroom on Plainfield Avenue in Grand Rapids’ burgeoning Creston neighborhood. Launched last month by two couples — Vince Lambert and Cailin Kelly, and Scott Schultz and Molly Bouwsma-Schultz — Creston Brewery aims to bring an inclusive environment to the local craft beer scene with something for people of all backgrounds and tastes, including non-beer lovers.

Although craft brewers once maligned mass-produced American lagers as “fizzy, yellow beer,” many have started to embrace the traditional German styles as consumers seek out sessionable options.

Let’s face it: Sometimes you just want a flavorful, crushable beer. Lagers are the so-called lawnmower beers, but that doesn’t mean they have to forego nuance and flavor, as this sampling proved.