Grain Belt beer is returning to its northeast Minneapolis roots next month.
The August Schell Brewery, which has owned the venerable beer brand since 2002, has announced it will release "Grain Belt Nordeast" April 7 -- and on its first day it will be available only in the neighborhood where the brand got its start in 1893.
Although "Nordeast" is sometimes considered a pejorative by residents of the neighborhood, it's a widely used bit of shorthand used to describe the part of the city settled by European immigrants.
The original brewery still looms over the Mississippi River, as does the neon Grain Belt sign, anchored on Nicollet Island for more than 60 years.
The sign has been dark for a generation and the Grain Belt brand passed through other brewers' hands before the New Ulm-based Schell family bought it.
Nearly 150 years old, the Schell brewery -- Minnesota's largest -- is the second-oldest family-owned brewery in the nation.
The company described the Nordeast variety as an amber lager with "a light maltiness and hop aroma with a mild bitterness."
After being sold only at bars and liquor stores in northeast Minneapolis for a day, it will be sold everywhere Schell is distributed starting April 8.
BOB VON STERNBERG
