Great Lakes, Great Sandwiches

Greetings, Dear Readers!

This past holiday weekend I headed to Cleveland for a wedding on this beautiful holiday weekend, and I was able to make some time to be able to sample some of the delicious sandwiches there.

It’s been awhile since I’ve been to Cleveland (visiting Melt in 2010) and I had a list of a few places that I’d want to visit, most notable of which was Great Lakes Brewing Co.

Having increased my knowledge and love of homebrewing since Charlene gave me my first brewing kit two and a half years ago, I have always wanted to go on brewery tours to see how the bigger companies do it.

So prior to eating and drinking at Great Lakes Brewing, we were walked through the process, sampled their beers and smelled the scent of their Christmas Ale (which I’m told is amazing) as it cooked.

After learning their process, we sat down to dinner at the brewpub across the street. I quickly settled on the Pulled Pork Sandwich because the BBQ sauce in the sandwich was made with their Edmund Fitzgerald Porter, which easily turned out to be a favorite of mine.

The porter has a chocolate, coffee and smoky flavor that when cooked down into a BBQ sauce adds a little sweet and smoke flavor to the sauce.

Cooking the pulled pork in that BBQ sauce made the pork tender and juice as it fell apart in your mouth with a sweet and tangy flavor.

Topped off with a mound of cool and sweet cole slaw, which added a needed textural crunch, this may be one of the best pulled pork sandwiches I’ve ever had.

Great Lakes Brewing Co. will definitely be a place that I will be visiting in the future on my next trip to Cleveland.

Now if only I can get their beer sent out to Los Angeles…namely that mystical Christmas Ale.

Besides my trip to the Brewery I also was able to tour The Federal Reserve, and catch an Indians game at Progressive Field (Jacobs Field for those die-hards) which was enjoyable. Although Cleveland lost 12-7 against Oakland, it was great to see a game in another city. As a baseball fan, it’s also a lot less stressful to watch a game between two teams you’re not particular a fan of (though I did buy some Indians merchandise).

I had a sausage sandwich but was actually too hungry at that point and forgot to take a photo of it.

Ah, well.

These two stops were just the first day of my trip to Cleveland, so be sure to come back next week for the second of three stops in the 216.

Until next week…

Pulled Pork Sandwich
***** Stars
Great Lakes Brewing Co.
2516 Market Avenue
Cleveland, OH 44113
www.greatlakesbrewing.com