Feather bowling at Minneapolis brewery offers mix of bocce, curling and beer

On any given Tuesday or Wednesday evening, you can find the Nolos Locos team sipping beers, sharing mini donuts and debating the proper weight of cheese wheels at Pryes Brewing Co. in Minneapolis.

The wooden balls shaped like cheese wheels are the point-scoring projectiles of the game they've gathered to play — feather bowling.

The goal of the game is simple. Roll the aforementioned cheese wheel down a roughly 50-foot, concave, artificial turf lane and land it as close as you can to the feather poking out of the ground at the other end. Roll it too far and you'll end up in the gutter, a place of disappointment and wasted point potential.

"You've got to get your touch right," said Suf Hayes, a Nolos Locos member from the North Loop.

Jeremy Pryes, owner of the brewery, discovered feather bowling at the Cadieux Cafe in Detroit about 12 years ago. He hadn't yet opened his own brewery and was checking out the cafe's Belgian beer and mussel soup when he happened upon the game that became a minor obsession.

"[Feather bowling's] kind of like how beer is. It's a very social vehicle," Pryes said.

In the back of that Detroit bar, some old men made a racket while they rolled their cheese wheels across a floor of crushed clay and sawdust.

Pryes said the people of the Cadieux Cafe weren't keen on sharing the game, so he re-created most of it through pictures he took of their setup and help from a friend to craft the wheels and the lane. Pryes Brewing Co. opened in 2017, and the Pryes Feather Bowling League was established soon afterward.

"It's cool when a space you've been working on gets noticed," said Pryes, who's proud to have the only feather bowling lane in the Twin Cities.

And what's a good bar game without a bit of mythology? The game was invented by bored Belgians rolling old cheese wheels through the gutters of their streets, Pryes said. They would pluck a feather from a bird or find one lying around and see how close they could land their wheel.

Feather bowling is kind of like a mix of bocce ball and curling, Nolos Locos member Susan Roe explained.

It isn't just about getting your cheese wheel closest to the feather, it is about how many wheels you can land between the feather and your opponent's closest wheel. Put all of your wheels closer to the feather than your opponent's best effort? Take a point for each wheel.

Games are played to 10, and in league play on Tuesdays and Wednesdays at Pryes, teams of four stash two players on either end of the lane to compete with their counterparts, alternating shots. A referee with a protractor is present during league play to tell with certainty who is closest to the feather.

Not playing league? Then, eyeball it.

While league play is only in the spring and fall, you can stop by Pryes at any time during operating hours, walk up and play — except for Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 6-9 p.m., which is reserved for league play.

You might not be able to use the best wheels when playing a pickup game, as those balls are reserved for the league, but Pryes said he wants to make sure that everyone who wants to give feather bowling a shot has an opportunity to play.

"Great excuse to walk here, have some beer and eat some food," Hayes said. "If you can roll something, you can do this."