You’ll see it in most Michigan breweries. Brew lovers of all kind hovering over a glass of Michigan beer with their nose buried in their phone. Just what are they are doing? Well, their secret is out. They are tweeting about their new favorite beer on their Twitter account, which (if they are as good as they think they are), features one of our best beer twitter backgrounds.

Call it what you will, but Twitter and other social media sites have done the good deed of spreading the word about beers from many Michigan breweries. You can see some of our own rave reviews from fans by following us @FB1862 and searching for “Frankenmuth Brewery” on Twitter. If you’re one of the super intense craft beer faithful, then you will dig the beer Twitter backgrounds that we’ve collected below. Use them as the background to your Twitter account, show that you support craft beer, and may your tweets flow as plentiful as the beer in Michigan breweries.

Our Favorite Beer Twitter Backgrounds

Wall of Beer

While this wall of beer image isn’t limited to craft beer, almost all craft brew lovers have an affinity for anything that is vintage beer related. With classic brands like Harp, Black Label, Kronen and Carlsberg featured, anyone who wants their Twitter account to have a nostalgic feel should use this background.

Beer Lineup

Whether you’re a fan of the Frankenmuth Pilsner, American Blonde Ale or any other variety of beer from Frankenmuth Brewery, this awesome graphic has you covered. Showcasing four types of glasses beer can be served in, this beer Twitter background accentuates the differences between Michigan beers while showing love for all.

Up Close Beer

Nothing makes us more excited than a properly poured beer with a perfect head and a beautiful golden hue. This may be the most simple of beer Twitter backgrounds, but it also probably makes us want a beer the most.

Our Brewery

Want to bring the Frankenmuth Brewery with you everywhere your Twitter goes? Use this awesome shot of our Michigan Brewery, the oldest of all Michigan breweries, to accent your fabulous beer tweets on your profile page.









Show off your craft beer spirit with the best beer Twitter backgrounds that can be found on the net. Gaining Twitter followers all starts with having a good-looking profile page and then tweeting about some really fantastic beers. Trust us, we don’t mind if you start your account off with an inaugural post about Frankenmuth Brewery. You bring the Twitter, we’ll bring the inspiration.

After a hard day of working in the brewery, we enjoy a little mindless entertainment to give our brains a rest. While recently watching the popular inventor-meets-investor show, Shark Tank, we saw what was quite possibly one of the worst beer inventions we’ve seen in all of years of beer consuming: the Beer Buckle.

At Frankenmuth Brewery, we like our beer inventions as much as any other beer lover. Yet, the Beer Buckle left a lot to be desired. With that being said, we decided instead of trying to find the best beer inventions to show up the beer buckle, we would find products that are even worse. Read on to learn about some of the worst beer inventions ever created, not because their inventors didn’t try hard enough, but because somewhere along the way things didn’t just come out as planned. Better luck next time!

The Best Worst Beer Inventions

Beer Bottle/Food Holder

While the idea behind this beer invention is great in principle, what we struggle to comprehend is how most people don’t spill food all over themselves. After a Michigan beer or two, you might forget about the apparatus strapped to your beer and… well, it’s time to clean your Sunday’s best sweatpants.

The Beer Belly

If you’re like Frankenmuth Brewery, you might have a keg where some have a six-pack. Strap the Beer Belly to your stomach and prepare for the question, “How far along are you?” The only relief will be drinking beer from a Michigan brewery out of your pouch of sadness.

Beer Pager

What happens when you lose the remote control? Next.

Shoot a Brew Cooler

Mom always said don’t throw beers in the house, so while this may be our favorite of the worst beer inventions, it’s still pretty dumb. Too far to the right, that beer is going through the picture window, and too far to the left, there is a huge hole in the plasma. Maybe just get up and get the beer from the refrigerator yourself.






Not all beer inventions can be fermentation or refrigeration, but we salute these aforementioned products for their attempt at revolutionizing beer culture. Heck, we will probably even use our beer pager system again if we can ever find where we put the remote inside our Michigan brewery. If only there were a remote control finder for our remote control.

When thinking about the best way to drink beer, Frankenmuth Brewery realized there are quite a few different ways, both smart and stupid, to drink a Michigan beer. There are the smart options, like taking insightful beer notes, drinking with your friends and letting the day’s stress fade away. Then, there are the not-so-smart options: ice luges (what if your tongue freezes?), beer bongs (instant headache/drunk), and beer pong (too much effort to just drink a beer.)

In the end, we decided to compile a collection of the best ways to drink beer for our faithful beer lovers. Maybe you do some of these everyday and maybe you don’t, but what matters the most is that you drink Michigan beer in the way you love the most. Check out our list and maybe you will find a new way to enjoy our suds.

The Best Way to Drink Beer is…

The Best to Drink Beer is After a Long Day at Work

No one likes doing it, but to keep the lights on at home, you have to have a job. What better way to welcome the end of another workday than with a refreshing Michigan beer? After all, if Homer Simpson, Stephen King and Ben Franklin all say it’s a good idea, then we’ll have to agree.

The Best Way to Drink Beer is at a Sporting Event

While it’s not ideal to spill your Michigan beer all over yourself when the hometown hero jumps into your arms, the electricity in the stadium is sure to make up for the wet clothing and lost beer.

The Best Way to Drink Beer is in the Shower

We’ve talked about the Shakoolie before and we love this Michigan beer koozie gone shower accessory. After a long day, there is nothing more relaxing than drinking a great beer in a shower.

The Best Way to Drink Beer is Out of a Dumb Hat

Maybe drinking craft beer from a dumb hat isn’t formal enough for most beer snobs, but we say as long as you aren’t consuming the beer at a rapid speed, there is no taste lost with our Michigan beer. Plus, drinking beer from a hat allows you to go hands-free.

The Best Way to Drink Beer is to Drink it Properly

The alternative to drinking beer out of a dumb hat is taking the more proper route and enjoying a Michigan beer in the way any connoisseur would. Learn the basics of craft beer, drink slowly and takes notes on what you like about the brew you are drinking.

Beer, simply put, is one of the world’s most amazing creations. You can drink it, you can use it to flavor food and you can even use Michigan beer to kill slugs in your garden. “Did you say kill slugs in your garden?” Yes, we did. The hop-filled fare is perfect for ending the pest’s reign in your flowerbed and that is only one of the many amazing alternative uses for beer.

Whether sudsing up with beer soap or sleeping on a hop-scented pillow, as long as there has been a problem in the history of mankind, someone has tried to solve it by using beer. While searching for the best alternative uses for beer, we’ve stumbled upon some classic home remedies and picked up some new tricks that might blow your mind. If you’re like Frankenmuth Brewery, you’ll be more concerned with drinking Michigan beer, but these different uses for beer could become handy in a pinch.

Frankenmuth Brewery’s Top Five Alternative Uses For Beer

Suds and Bubbles

You’ve enjoyed the smell of beer while imbibing a bottle of brew before, so why deny yourself the pleasure of scenting your body with it? Aside from the fine smell of Frankenmuth Brewery Munich Dunkel emanating from your body, our Michigan beer acts as a fantastic skin conditioner.

Keeping Slugs Out of Your Garden

Pesky slugs can ruin any good green thumbs work in a short amount of time. To solve the problem, simply cut the inner top of a beer can, bury it in the ground next to your flowers and pour in a bottle of our Michigan beer. Sure, some might feel bad about killing poor little slugs. Yet, you have to admit that if you’re going to go, it might as well be drowning in a big vat of beer.

Beer Scented Pillows

We know that drinking a lot of Michigan beer can tire you out, but one of the most interesting uses for beer involves bathing your pillowcase in brew. The scent of hops has a calming effect and once your head hits the pillow the ZZZs will come.

Picking A Lock With Beer

We’ve all been in this situation before. Maybe you drank a few too many bottles of our Michigan beer, you can’t remember your bike lock combination and you’re left having to walking all the way home. What does Frankenmuth Brewery suggest? Pick your bike lock using a beer can! Create a shim (like in the video below), and pop that lock. Disclaimer: Don’t use the power of Michigan beer to steal someone else’s ride. We trust you to attempt these alternative uses for beer for the power of good.

Earlier this week, the burger joint giant Red Robin announced that it would be selling a beer milkshake made with American craft beer. Our reaction? We love it! With visions of a beer milkshake now dancing through our heads, we had no choice but to to do some experimenting of our own.

When deciding on the flavor base of our Frankenmuth Brewery beer milkshake, the new batch of 2012 Oktoberfest seemed to be the logical choice for a tasty beverage. Built on the back of German Noble hops and four unique malts, the robust Marzen-style lager will provide the milkshake with an impactful taste. Additionally, Oktoberfest celebrations around the world are set to begin taking place in the next week or so.

The ingredients that seemed to best fit a Michigan beer milkshake are simple and may be things you already have hidden in your cupboard or freezer. The first step? Nab a six pack of 2012 Octoberfest from our Michigan Brewery. Then, scoop four to five spoonfuls of softened vanilla ice cream into blender, mix slowly while carefully adding the Michigan beer and a little bit of cocoa powder to the mix. Perfecting a recipe is all about personal taste. We added a dash of chocolate and caramel to our Michigan beer milkshake, but you may feel free to add more or less depending on your preferences.

The fall chill might be starting to set in, but a beer milkshake could never be a bad idea. For that matter, Michigan beer paired with anything could never be a bad idea. Head to our Michigan brewery today and pick up Oktoberfest brew today. Whether you’re buying just to drink a classic Michigan beer or because you’d like to try a beer milkshake, there is no way you can go wrong.

The world of beer is constantly evolving and as more breweries become interested in smaller brewing batches, there is an endless stream of knowledge to gain on the subject. One of the most frequent questions that we are asked at Frankenmuth Brewery is “What is the difference between craft beer vs. microbrew?” While there is an answer for that question, it’s not so simple. Read on to learn on how a craft beer can be a microbrew, the traditional rules that must be followed to be considered a certain kind of beer and the limits on brew production.

According to the national Brewers’ Association, a microbrewery is any “brewery that produces less than 15,00 barrels (17,600 hectoliters) of beer per year with 75% or more of its beer sold off-site.” While there are no restrictions on what kind of beer can be brewed or what ingredients must be used at a microbrewery, many brewmasters are already focused on making their beer as different as possible from other breweries. At the end of 2011, the number of microbreweries in the United States has increased to 789 (which includes Frankenmuth Brewery), from 615 in 2010.

Here is where the craft beer vs. microbrew debate gets a little murky. Our Michigan brewery falls under the number limit set by industry standards for a microbrewery, but Frankenmuth Brewery is also considered a craft brewery by the definition of the Brewers’ Association. The requirements for a craft brewery as stated by the Brewers’ Association are a production rate of less than 6 million barrels of beer a year, that the majority of our Michigan brewery is independent from any beer industry corporations and that there is a malt based flagship beer.

What does this all mean? Essentially having our Michigan brewery deemed a craft brewery means that we create small batches of malt-based beer and that we are independent from any of the American big box breweries. There are over 1900 craft breweries currently in operation in the United States and we are proud to count ourselves as one of the oldest breweries in the country.

In the grand scheme of the craft beer vs. microbrew conversation, the fact is, it’s important to drink what you love and not worry about the numbers. At Frankenmuth Brewery, we like to keep an independent spirit and brew all kinds of beers, but it doesn’t mean anything if people don’t buy and enjoy it. We’re proud to be both a craft brewery and microbrewery, but at the end of the day, we just want our customers to enjoy our beer.

Detroit beer is legendary in the minds of many Michigan beer lovers. From Stroh’s to Schlitz to Goebel and beyond, the history of beer in the Motor City is nearly as important as the history of the automobile (we think, anyway). Frankenmuth Brewery is proud to come from the long line of brewers who create Michigan beer, and in September we will be hitting the pavement hard in the D to show off our stuff.

On Thursday, September 20, Frankenmuth Brewery will be the lone Detroit beer representative at the Wine & Dine in the D charity event at Orchestra Hall. This fundraising dinner will benefit the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation and will offer Detroiters the chance to experience some delicious food and amazing adult beverages. We will have our Frankenmuth Pilsener, the 2012 Oktoberfest, Batch American IPA and the Munich Dunkel all on hand and ready for you to try. Join us in downtown Detroit for this amazing opportunity that will not only allow to taste the best of Detroit, but also give you a chance to help fight a dangerous disease.

Located less than a few miles away from Orchestra Hall, the Motor City Casino and MGM Grand Casino shine like beacons in the sky that scream out, “Come get your Detroit beer here!” OK, well maybe their predominant message is more like “Hey, you should come gamble there!” but it certainly doesn’t hurt that both will be featuring our Michigan beer on tap. Look for Frankenmuth taps that will be popping up in the U Me Drink lounge in the heart of the MGM Casino and special Frankenmuth Friday Events.

Over at Motor City, Detroit beer lovers will be able to celebrate fall in style, as the casino will be featuring Frankenmuth Brewery’s latest batch of Oktoberfest. All throughout September and October, Frankenmuth Brewery will have 14 tap handles of our Marzen style Lager on hand at Motor City Casino. Our Michigan beer is the perfect companion for a night of gambling and, hopefully, some big time winning.

No matter where you drink your Detroit beer, Frankenmuth Brewery has started our invasion of downtown and we want to put our beer in your hand. Check out our Michigan beer at MGM Grand Casino and Motor City Casino, try to win some of the house’s money and then head over to the Wine & Dine in the D charity event. Not only can you win at the blackjack table and by drinking some of our great craft beer, but you can also win at life by giving to a great cause.

Frankenmuth Brewery has been fortunate enough to develop relationships with some fantastic restaurants and bars in the last several years. One such restaurant is Lockhart’s BBQ in Royal Oak. There isn’t a better combination than BBQ and beer, thus Lockhart’s BBQ and Frankenmuth Brewery make a pretty hard team to beat. To celebrate our “beeromance,” we’ve planned a few special events, including a tap takeover, which will excite fans of both, brews and brisket.

Tomorrow, September 12, Frankenmuth Brewery will launch a tap takeover that will see six different kinds of our Michigan beer available at Lockhart’s BBQ. From 7 P.M. to 11 P.M., brew fans will get to try a number of our beers for a special price of only $2.50 per pint. In between bites of succulent sausage, ribs and pork, let the beer from our Michigan brewery compliment the delicious BBQ fare and provide relief from any spice that Lockhart’s might deliver to your tastebuds. For the tap takeover, Frankenmuth Brewery will be bringing our Oktoberfest Lager, American Blond Ale, Munich Dunkel, Pilsner, JB McGinnis Dry Irish Stout and Batch 69 Pale Ale to the restaurant tasting event.

A few weeks later on October 2, Lockhart’s will be hosting the Wild Game Pitmaster dinner, which will offer up exotic meats and some of the other Frankenmuth Brewery not featured in the tap takeover. The restaurant’s famous Pitmaster Bubba will be creating dishes to pair with our Michigan beer that will feature items not traditionally found on the Lockhart’s menu.

In addition to the food not on the menu, Frankenmuth Brewery will be bringing some beers that we don’t usually let outside of our Michigan brewery. Joining our illustrious year ‘round beers, including Frankenmuth Pilsener and Munich Dunkel Lager, will be none other than the Twisted Helles Lager and our New Year’s Stout. If you weren’t quick enough to nab these brews the first time around, don’t miss your chance to do so now.

We hope that all of our Frankenmuth Brewery friends and family will be in attendance for our tap takeover and Wild Game Pitmaster dinner at Lockhart’s BBQ. Mark September 12 and October 2 in your datebook and prepare for a BBQ and beer experience unlike any other. In fact, maybe don’t eat for a couple days before. You’re going to have to make a lot of room for all of the brews and meat you’ll be throwing back with Frankenmuth Brewery and Lockhart’s BBQ.

As long as Michigan beer has been around, and even before that, the world has been developing beer traditions to drink by with every new brew opened. At our own Michigan brewery, we have even honed a few of our beer traditions including our favorite, which involves dunking Oreos into our Munich Dunkel Lager at the completion of every meal. Whether you love or hate them, the people of the world have some funny ways of showing just how much they like to drink beer.

Das Boot

Deeply seeded in the German festival of Oktoberfest lies Das Boot, a glass shaped like none other than a boot. Frankenmuth Brewery has drank Michigan beer out of Das Boot more than a couple of times including at this years Michigan Bier Celebration when we gave some away to attendees. While it certainly achieves the feat of drinkability more than most beer traditions, it almost guarantees some beer spilled down your shirt.

Green Beer

While neither the Irish nor Frankenmuth Brewery really cares for the idea of green beer, there are copious amounts of the sewer-like suds being slung every St. Patrick’s Day. Our recommendation for St. Patrick’s Day beer? Our very own Red Sky Irish Ale. However, if you must imbibe in the green stuff from the weirdest of all beer traditions, we suggest using our Frankenmuth Pilsener Michigan beer and following the easy guide in this accompanying video.

Lime in Mexican Beers

We don’t know who thought to put a lime in a Mexican beer first, but it has become one of the most universally followed beer traditions all over the world. Ask for a Mexican beer in a bar and the server won’t even bother asking whether you want a lime slice or not. One company has even begun to market a lime holder for the perfect lime-infused beer taste.

Cheers

No matter what country you’re in, there is an adaptable word for “cheers” in every single language. Be in tune with the beer traditions from countries all over the world by taking five minutes to learn some new words for “cheers” via this great YouTube video. You might be a Michigan beer snob, but that doesn’t mean you have to be rude to fellow beer drinkers when travelling abroad. Simply clink your beers and repeat the new addition to your vocabulary.

Whether you enjoy drinking green Michigan beer or love guzzling it from Das Boot, the point of beer traditions is to bring together friends and loved ones in the moment of imbibing brew. If you aren’t already committed to any of these beer traditions, Frankenmuth Brewery hopes that you’ll come to our Michigan brewery and make some of your own that will stand the test of time.

As our brewery continues on with the celebration of our 150-year anniversary, we’ve delved far into the history of the oldest American breweries. While there are a few breweries that stood the test of time, Frankenmuth Brewery is truly in the elite company of a few family owned breweries that date back to 1862, and a few that even predate our brewery.

Frankenmuth Brewery

We will toot our own horn, especially during our 150-year anniversary, and say that Frankenmuth Brewery is most certainly one of the oldest American breweries. Our Michigan brewery has been open since 1862 and despite all of the years, the ever-changing landscape of Frankenmuth and a tornado that tried to bring us down, we are still pumping out craft beer to this very day.

D.G. Yuengling & Son

Amongst all of the oldest American breweries, there can only be one that stakes the claim of being the original American brewery. The Yuengling family has been in operation since 1829 and has one of the biggest breweries by volume in the country, despite only selling in certain portions of the country. The company’s flagship beer is a traditional lager that remains one of the country’s oldest original brew recipes.

Schell Brewing Company

Our fellow microbrewers at Schell Brewing Company also come from a traditional German background and have been brewing since opening their doors in 1860. Outside of our Michigan brewery, Schell is not only one of the oldest American breweries, but one of the first to open their business in the Midwest. Known for their popular Schell’s Deer Brand, the beer is made from a unique mix of barley malt, corn and a yeast mix created in the brewery.

Anchor Brewing

Just like the gold rush, there have been many brewers that have run to the golden coast of California to brew beer, but there can only be one original, Anchor Brewery. As one of the oldest American breweries, Anchor Brewery became known for its pioneering techniques and being one of the few remaining brewhouses to make steam beer. Created using lager yeast that hasn’t been refrigerated (normally they are kept cold at 37 degrees Fahrenheit), steam beer tastes different from regular lagers.

Frankenmuth Brewery is proud to be one of the oldest American breweries, and excited to be celebrating our 150-year anniversary with all of favorite craft beer fans. Thank you for keeping our brewery in business and for continuing to buy our Michigan beer. We hope that in another 150 years when some new crazy form of blogging (maybe extraterrestrial?) is documenting the oldest American breweries that we will still be serving up fine craft beer.