I tasted a sample of Mr. Kleinschmidt’s barley wine, a sipping beer that he had brewed last winter and let sit for nine months. It delivered a warming afterglow with its 10.3 percent alcohol. Richly fig colored, it indeed resembled wine, with a raisiny, sweet start and a pleasantly dry, bitter exit. I bought a growler to take home and walked back to my car.

It was early afternoon, too soon to visit another brewery, so I drove up to the winter resort Spirit Mountain to hop on the southern leg of the Superior Hiking Trail. I strapped on snowshoes and ambled among pines and birches. Afterward, I stopped by the resort for a quick ride on the Timber Twister, an alpine roller coaster on which riders man the speed controls on their own individual coaster cars. “We run it down to 15 below,” said the attendant as I purchased a ticket. “Colder than that, and the danger of frostbite is just too high.” My cheeks were raw after a two-minute sprint down the mountain at 20 degrees, but the ride was a hoot — mildly thrilling, a scenic swoosh through the winter woods at 26 miles per hour.

Back in Duluth again, I checked into Fitger’s Inn, once the region’s pre-eminent brewery. Fitger’s beer was brewed here from 1885 until 1972. Another example of Duluth’s renaissance, the sprawling brownstone brewery was renovated into an entertainment complex in 1984. Guests can shop, eat, drink and sleep without ever leaving. But I had plans to dine on the other side of the port, so I asked the lobby clerk to call a cab to take me over to Superior, Wis.

Downtown Superior has none of the refurbished charm of Duluth, though it does have the Thirsty Pagan, a brewpub and pizza joint next door to a Salvation Army thrift store. Inside Thirsty Pagan, neon beer signs shone for Pabst Blue Ribbon and Hamm’s. But the head brewer Nate McAlpine’s creations are nothing like the watery beers my dad used to drink. “I brew aggressively,” said Mr. McAlpine, a 30-year-old with a cocked cap and cherub’s enthusiasm. That could mean a ragingly hoppy double IPA, or a spruce Scotch ale scented with real snippets of spruce. For winter, he served up a spiced ale, light bodied with a bit of gingerbread snap. It ably washed down the bready hand-tossed pizza, topped with Italian sausage that had been spiced with fennel, thyme, basil and a little cayenne, and smothered with mozzarella.

Back in Duluth, I stepped into Fitger’s Brewhouse, a gastropub that serves up today’s Fitger’s beers. Diners had claimed all the tables, but I found an empty easy chair in the loft above the dimly lighted, stone-walled bar from which I could sample the winter offerings of Dave Hoops, the head brewer. Mr. Hoops is a Duluth native who worked at the Pyramid Brewery in Berkeley, Calif., before coming back in 1999. He was happy to find a welcome home for his beers.

“It’s cold up here, a little bit isolated, kind of like lower Alaska. And everybody’s got a ‘we’re all in this together’ attitude,” Mr. Hoops said. “The more homegrown it is, the better. So for Duluthians, this beer is their thing. And they like me to be experimental, especially with local ingredients.”

Like the 600 pounds of Wisconsin blueberries Mr. Hoops dumped into his blueberry porter. And yet, he avoided the gimmicky, cloying, fruit-juicy taste that dooms so many berry beers. This was foremost a solid porter, properly roasty with a creamy head. Next I tried the bourbon barrel stout, aged for seven months in an oak whiskey barrel from Kentucky. The stout was like sipping liquid licorice, with a heart-warming echo ( and 10.5 percent alcohol).