NOTE: Beer Quest has been in hibernation for too long. Family illnesses and then the pandemic have kept me close to home since 2018, when I finished the research for “Island Craft,” which was published in 2019 by Touchwood Editions of Victoria, B.C.

This summer, I at last returned to travelling “ale trails” — visiting the 29 operating breweries of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The results of my visits, interviews, and tastings will be published in the spring of 2023 as “Yooper Ale Trails.” In the meantime, I’ll be frequently posting about some of my experiences and observations.

One of the most interesting breweries I visited was Cognition, in Ishpeming. Their tap room is in an historic building; their beers are not only just very good, but they are very interesting. And they have fun, both with the beers they create and the names they give them.

A couple of weeks ago, as I was checking their Facebook page, I saw announcements for Halloween themed beers. The names were creative and the beers were unusual. They all sprang from head brewer Kris Thompson’s imagination and memories of the popular breakfast cereals of his childhood.

Pure Camp: A Chocolate Vampire Cereal Stout with Peanut Butter; Prosthetic Bolts: a Strawberry Frankenstein Cereal Sour; and Phasmosis: a Blueberry Ghost Cereal Gose.

The names are Kris’s own inventions, but if you read the descriptions and think hard about those breakfast cereals of your youth, I’m sure you’ll come up with their names. And if you’re lucky enough to be at Cognition’s taproom over the next week or so and order one of the beers, you’ll even be able to taste the cereals. Each of the beers includes some of the appropriate cereal in its recipe.

In my next post, I’ll talk about what some people refer to as “The National Beer of the UP.”