HOMES Brewpub
Nick Panchame came off the brewhouse at Right Brain in Traverse City and set this place up on kettle sours and hops, with an Asian street food menu where the burgers usually go.1
Why go
Tommy Kennedy ran a home health care company with his brother before he built a brewery.1 He named it for the mnemonic every Michigan kid learns for the five Great Lakes, then connected with Panchame through a brewing industry website, and Panchame moved to the area to brew for him.1 Panchame went to culinary school first, interned at a New Jersey brewery, worked as assistant brewer at a Manhattan brewpub and ran the brewhouse at Right Brain in Traverse City.1 He is direct about what is pourable and what is not: The barrel-aged sours take one to two years to be ready, so we have nothing like that on tap right now, but kettle sour beers are a much faster process.
1 The building was a Culligan water depot and then a skate shop. HOMES opened in it at 4pm on 19 April 2017 as the city's ninth brewery.1
Order this / avoid
- Order: a kettle sour. Panchame's description is
tart, easy-drinking beers.
1 - Order: off the Asian street food menu, built with Noe Hang, head chef of No Thai!.1
- Avoid: the beer garden crowd if you want the brewpub. The garden is HOMES Campus, 1.5 miles up the road at 112 Jackson Plaza.2
What locals & experts say
- Nick Panchame, head brewer, to Concentrate:
Most breweries feature burgers, pub food, or pizza, but we'll have an Asian street food menu.
1 - Panchame, on what the room is for:
We wanted to build this business to be a meeting place for people, where they can plan small charity events or start a dart league night.
1
Good to know
- Hours: Monday to Thursday 4pm to 10pm, Friday and Saturday 11am to 11pm, Sunday 11am to 9pm.2
- Two doors: this is the flagship brewpub on Jackson Ave. HOMES Campus is the shipping-container beer garden with Campo Pizza and Dozer Coffee.2
Jeff's take (his words)
- Note: "Recently rated the best new brewery in Ann Arbor." No awarding body, category or year could be pinned to that rating, so it stays his line and not ours.
Verdict
should-visit — Panchame chose kettle sours and hops as the house style and said so out loud before the doors opened, and he came to it from a culinary school kitchen and a stint running Right Brain's brewhouse. The food follows the same refusal to do the obvious, an Asian street food menu built with No Thai!'s head chef in a room that had been a Culligan depot and a skate shop. Nobody has published on the beer since 2017, which is what keeps it short of the top. Go for the sours and check what is barrel-aged by now.