A visit to Ugly Dog Distillery

This past Sunday, my husband Scott and I took a tour of Ugly Dog Distillery, located in Chelsea. I had bought a few tickets for the tour on the website Living Social, thinking it would be a fun way to spend an afternoon. The drive down to Chelsea was beautiful, as it was a gorgeous fall day, and we had a great time at the distillery itself (especially because we got to meet the "ugly dog" after whom the distillery was named).

That's Ruger, the "Ugly Dog," on this T-shirt.
He's really not ugly; he's a German wirehaired pointer,
and "ugly dog" is the breed's unofficial nickname.

Ugly Dog Distillery has been open about three years, and was built on a dare. One evening, founder Jon Dyer was sitting around a campfire with his friends, Ruger on his lap, when one of the group told Dyer that he should build a still and make whisky. Not one to back down from a challenge, Dyer got to work, and eventually created the business that is now Ugly Dog. The distillery is located in an unassuming storefront outside Chelsea, and produces an array of libations, including its signature product, Ugly Dog Vodka, which won a gold medal at the 2012 MicroLiquor Spirit Awards. The distillery also sells rum and gin, as well as flavored vodkas---black cherry, raspberry, whipped cream, and...bacon. Yes, you read that right. Bacon vodka. Scott and I bought a bottle to use in bloody marys, and though we haven't opened it yet, I'm pretty sure it's going to be awesome.

During our tour, director of manufacturing
Dewey Winkle described the process of making vodka.

Ugly Dog is truly a "made in Michigan" business. The company makes its vodka from Michigan grain, and Dyer himself built the stills that generate Ugly Dog's drinks. Ugly Dog staff members also fill each bottle and apply decals by hand. The results are sold in hundreds of locations around Michigan, including several Meijer and Kroger stores. Check the company's website to learn where you can find Ugly Dog, as well as for information about the spirits themselves.

And what about Ruger, the face of Ugly Dog? I LOVE dogs, so I couldn't wait to meet him. He was pretty excited about greeting all the new faces he saw in the distillery during our tour, so getting him to pose for a picture was a bit of a challenge, as evidenced by this photo:

"Let go of me, lady, I've got places to go,
people to see."

 

But later, during the tour, he stopped to admire my purse, so we got a better pic:

 

 

Apparently, Ruger likes Coach products---either that, or he's smelling my own dogs on it.



Ruger is a sweetheart, and everyone at the distillery was friendly and welcoming. Though the company doesn't regularly offer tours (as I mentioned, our tour was part of a Living Social deal), I highly recommend that, if you're ever in the area, you stop at Ugly Dog to purchase your poison of choice. And be sure to look for Ugly Dog products at your local store. Though I can't wait to try our bacon vodka, the whipped cream flavor was also calling my name, so I might need to hunt down that one.

Ugly Dog Distillery is located at 14495 N. Territorial Road in Chelsea. Its phone number is (734) 433-0433.

Michigan-made ship makes "Titanic" history

As of September 1, 1985, oceanographer Robert Ballard had spent about a decade of his life trying to discover where RMS Titanic---history's most famous sunken ship---had plunged to the bottom of the North Atlantic. The location of the vessel, which struck an iceberg and sank on the morning of April 15, 1912 during its maiden voyage from Southampton, U.K. to New York City, had confounded investigators for over seventy years. Ballard himself had made a previous attempt to locate the ship with no success, and was now nearing the end of another expedition that he hoped would reveal the Titanic's final resting place. Ballard had started working with a French ship, Le Suroit, in August of 1985, but that ship had been reassigned, so on that fateful September day, the scientist was aboard the Knorr, a research vessel owned by the United States Navy.

As the Knorr plied the North Atlantic's frigid waters, it dragged behind it a remote-controlled deep-sea vehicle known as "Argo," which was equipped with cameras and sonar technology. The ship traveled methodically over the ocean's surface until, suddenly, Argo's camera showed something strange---crater-like pockmarks that were likely formed by objects hitting the ocean floor. As scientists watched on screens aboard the Knorr, Argo next projected images of a boiler and, to everyone's elation, the hull of a huge ship that could only be the Titanic  Ballard and his crew had made history---and had done so on the Knorr, a ship built in Michigan.

Research Vessel (R/V) Knorr

R/V Knorr was the product of Bay City-based Defoe Shipbuilding Company, which from 1905 to 1976 created watercraft for a variety of purposes. When Harry Defoe started the business, it built boats primarily for business and pleasure use. As World War II approached, the company won a number of Navy contracts, and also built a few Great Lakes freighters. (Ed. note: The Escanaba, which I've written about in a previous post, "Grand Haven's Fallen Ship, the Escanaba," was built by the Defoe Shipbuilding Company.) Eventually, the Navy contracts stopped coming, and the company went out of business. Its former location is now a scrapyard.

The Knorr was launched in 1968 and, though owned by the Navy, eventually went to the Massachusetts-based Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), which operates vessels for research purposes. It traveled the Atlantic, assisting in various scientific explorations, until 1985, when Ballard stepped aboard to search for---and ultimately find---the Titanic.

The search team aboard the Knorr, after locating the Titanic

The Knorr's post-Titanic career has been an active one. From 1989 through 1991, the ship underwent a complete overhaul. Then, from 2005 to 2006, the Knorr was fitted with a long coring system that lets it extract sediment from deep below the ocean's surface. The ship maintains an active schedule of research projects on both sides of the Atlantic. As of this writing, the ship is assisting with research on Greenland's southwest coast. Not bad for a little ship from Bay City, Michigan.


More information:

The Knorr was named after Ernest R. Knorr, who in 1860 was the chief engineer cartographer in the U.S. Navy Hydrographic Office. (Try saying that three times, fast.)


In addition to the Knorr and the Escanaba, the Defoe Shipbuilding Company created a number of notable vessels. These include:
*The Knorr's sister ship, the Melville, which was featured in the 1976 film, "King Kong"
*The USS Rich, which was sunk by mines on June 8, 1944 while assisting in the invasion of Normandy
*The USS PC-1129, which was sunk by a Japanese suicide boat in the China Sea on January 31, 1945
*The Lenore, a yacht built for retail magnate Montgomery Ward in 1931; the boat was later pulled into military use during World War II, and in 1956 became a Presidential yacht


The WHOI offers real-time information regarding the Knorr's current location. Check out this link to learn where the Knorr is currently assisting with scientific research: Where is Knorr now?


Here's a video taken at the exact moment the Titanic was discovered on September 1, 1985 (to find the link, scroll to the bottom of the page, then look on the right side): Titanic: The Moment of Discovery


Want to see what life on the Knorr is like? Check out this YouTube clip:

Michigan in Radio History, Part II: The Lone Ranger was born in Detroit

The movie "The Lone Ranger" may have been a flop this summer, but the fact that Hollywood shelled out $375 million to make it is a testament to the character's longevity and popularity among audiences. Many Michiganders don't know that the fictional gun-slinging, crime-fighting Texas Ranger and his trusty Native American sidekick, Tonto, began their lives on a radio show that premiered on Detroit station WXYZ in January 1933.

Screenshot from "The Lone Ranger" TV series, which spun off from the radio show,
and starred Clayton Moore as the Lone Ranger, and Jay Silverheels as Tonto.

Debate continues over who should receive credit for creating the Lone Ranger: George Trendle, owner of WXYZ, who developed the idea of a radio program featuring a Zorro-like character whose heroism and moral code would be appropriate for an audience of children; or Fran Striker, a writer who fleshed out the characters and wrote the program's scripts. (Striker was eventually forced to relinquish his rights to the character so that Trendle could assume them, further muddying the dispute.) Regardless of their origin, when the Lone Ranger and Tonto hit the airwaves, along with their horses Silver and Scout, WXYZ had an immediate hit, attracting nearly as many adult listeners as children. The show gained a national audience when the Mutual Broadcasting System and NBC's Blue Network began carrying it, and aired nearly 3,000 episodes before ending its run in 1954.

Brace Beemer, who played the Lone Ranger on radio from 1941 through 1954.

The premise of "The Lone Ranger" is well-known, but in case anyone needs a refresher, here it is. The Lone Ranger (real name John Reid) is a Texas Ranger who, along with his fellow lawmen, was ambushed by outlaws, and became the only man in his group to survive the attack (which is how he got the nickname, "The Lone Ranger"). Tonto, a Native American whose life John Reid had saved when Tonto was a boy, happened upon the wounded Ranger, and nursed him back to health. From that point on, Reid, clad in a black mask to conceal his true identity, devoted himself to avenging society's wrongs, adhering to a strict moral code and using weapons only when necessary.

The Lone Ranger eventually became the hero in a series of books, comics, and movies, as well as a TV show that ran from 1949 to 1957. When Armie Hammer and Johnny Depp took over the characters of the Lone Ranger and Tonto, respectively, in this summer's failed blockbuster, they were simply two in a series of men to assume the iconic roles that resonate with Americans to this day--roles that found their genesis not among the craggy cliffs and dusty canyons that were the settings of their adventures, but in a station that made radio history in Detroit, Michigan.

For more information:

Here's the first broadcast of the Lone Ranger, which premiered on WXYZ in late January 1933. The show used a selection from "The William Tell Overture," which was royalty-free, as its theme music.

Why is Vernors the best ginger ale ever? Here's why

It goes without saying that Vernors, which began in Detroit, is the best ginger ale in existence. I'm not even going to argue that point. I've had Schweppes, I've had Canada Dry, and...well, I guess those are the only other ginger ales I've had, but I stand by my original statement. Look at a Vernors can and right away you know what to expect: "bold taste." Other ginger ales taste like tonic water. Vernors charges into your mouth with a gingery sweetness and demands that your taste buds take notice.

And if you don't notice the taste, you WILL notice Woody the gnome winking at you from every can.

Okay, I'm not THAT obsessed with Vernors, but I do like it, so I decided to find out what makes it so much better than other ginger ales. Part of it is a function of where I live. As I mentioned, Vernors began in Detroit, so Michiganders have essentially grown up with the stuff. The story is that, in 1862, a Detroit drug store clerk named James Vernor started experimenting with a new ginger ale. He combined ingredients in an oaken cask, but left to serve in the Civil War before he could taste the results. Vernor returned four years later, remembered his cask, opened it, took a sip, and voila, Vernors ginger ale was born.

Years later, Vernor's son admitted that the Vernors formula was developed after the Civil War, so the story of Vernor's "eureka moment" should probably be taken with a grain of salt. However, from the 1880s on, Vernors became popular throughout Michigan and surrounding states, requiring a succession of bottling plants in Detroit to keep up with consumers' thirsts. (The Vernor family sold the company to outside interests in 1966, and the plants were ultimately abandoned or demolished.) Vernors' market eventually expanded to 33 states by the late 1990s, though 80 percent of its sales occur in Michigan. Vernors also remains popular among residents of other Midwestern states, and has become a sought-after drink in Florida, presumably because retired Michiganders can't bear to be without their hometown ginger ale.

So, that's the story on Vernors. Now here's what makes it different from other ginger ales.

Vernors is a golden ginger ale. It's darker in color, sweeter, and spicier than dry ginger ale, which has a "neutral" flavor. Golden ginger ale was popular before Prohibition, but once alcohol-starved Americans realized the attractiveness of using dry ginger ale as a mixer for drinks, the latter's popularity overtook that of golden ginger ale. Since then, dry ginger ales like Canada Dry and Schweppes have become the standard on supermarket shelves, with only a few golden ginger ales prominent in regional markets.

Luckily for Michiganders, one of those markets is their home state, and one of those ginger ales is Vernors. Although Vernors is no longer made in Detroit, it's a flavor we've all grown up with...and one that doesn't need to be diluted with alcohol to make it a great-tasting drink.

Try This:
Vernors is perfect all by itself, but the Boston Cooler is a variation that began in Detroit sometime around the 1880s. (No one seems to know why it's called a "Boston" cooler.) Here's the recipe. It sounds like a glorified ice cream float to me, but I'm sure it's tasty.
Boston Cooler recipe

Additional Reading:

The Vernor's Story: From Gnomes to Now, by Lawrence L. Rouch