“This summer,” I told my friend, “is going to be my summer of beer.”

He got a puzzled look on his face and said nothing for a few seconds. Then he replied: “But … isn’t every summer your summer of beer?”

I had to admit that he was right. Every summer since I’ve been of legal drinking age (and even before), I’ve enjoyed drinking beer — in the back yard of my parent’s home (when they weren’t around), on our back veranda in Toronto, on the front stoop with our Kalamazoo, Michigan, neighbors, and, for over three decades, on the dock at the edge of the Upper Peninsula — the UP (Michigan) lake where we spend the sunny afternoons.

In the early days of my summer dock sitting, I wasn’t that fussy about what kind of beer I sipped. There used to be a “riddle” that went this way: What’s the favorite beer in the UP? Answer: whatever’s on sale this week. Over the years, I consumed a fair number of favorites.

But things have changed over the last decade or so. First, the local supermarkets started carrying Bell’s Oberon, then Sierra Nevada. Now you can buy bottles or cans that come from breweries only two or three hours away — real Yooper beer. There are even four brewpubs, where you can get growlers, within a half hour drive of my dock.

Last fall, when I closed up the cabin, there were 20 breweries or brewpubs in the UP. By the time I leave this fall, there’ll be seven more. When I told my publisher (who this summer is bringing out BEER 101 NORTH — an account of my travels along the Oregon and Washington coasts ) about this beer boom, he suggested I do a book on it. And so, for my summer of beer, I’ll be visiting and writing about these 27 breweries; and next summer I’ll be covering breweries bordering Lake Superior in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Ontario. It’s going to be called SUPERIOR PINTS.

I’ll be making regular posts over the next few months reporting on my travelling and sipping.

One of my stops will be a souvenir shop in Marquette, where I’ll by a T-shirt that says “True Yoopers Drink Local.” I’m not a true Yooper, just a summer interloper. But I can pretend AND I certainly will drink local during my summer of beer.

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