I love Chicago Craft Beer Week. The fact that we all get to revel in American Craft Beer Week each year is already cool enough, but when you throw in all the incredible beer events of Chicago Craft Beer Week at the same time, it’s a true embarrassment of riches. In the last two years, I’ve made it to at least one awesome CCBW event during each celebration, like last year’s closing party at Revolution Brewing (it’s at the end of that post, scroll down), and as more and more breweries get on board and the event organization gets better, each year has more and more reasons to get excited.
Reason the first for this year’s third rendition of CCBW: It’s a “week” lasting 11 days. Now that’s my kind of week! You know that when they’ve got so many cool events to cram into a beer festival that 7 days isn’t enough, you’re probably looking at a surplus of opportunities to drink good beer.
As such, with more events being added to the master list daily, you need someone to wade through the big ‘ole list and cherry-pick the absolute coolest of the cool events. That man-boy is ME. So here we go, the coolest events of Chicago Craft Beer Week 2012, arranged in chronological order. Click on each venue in bold to go straight to the event page. Read the rest of this entry »
Ever since writing a post a few months back about the 20-plus breweries in the process of attempting to open in Chicago, I’ve been fortunate enough to develop open lines of communication with some of the city’s nascent brewers. So when I got an email the other day from Arcade Brewery founders Chris Tourre and Lance Curren letting me know about the launch of their new Kickstarter campaign to raise funds and awareness for their project, I knew this would be a good opportunity to conduct an interview and help them get the word out about their unique concept. Through Arcade, these two nouveau brewers are planning a company that will combine unique, comics-based packaging with user-inspired brews.*
*Partially, anyway.
Because I interviewed these two simultaneously over the phone, I’ve condensed all of their dialogue into one amorphous mass that I have dubbed “Arcade Brewery.” They didn’t seem to mind.
Kid Carboy Jr.: Obvious questions first–how did you guys meet one another and decide you wanted to open a brewery? Read the rest of this entry »
Los Angeles is a city of diversity, and this reflects a lot in what we eat here, but even more so in what we drink. LA is also a city of dreamers, of folks that punch in every day at gigs to pay the bills, but spend every other waking minute pursuing their passions, their reasons for waking up in the morning and putting on a tie and combing their hair. Some folks are fortunate enough to be able to have multiple passions in their life, and an even smaller slice of those folks who consider beer-making or teaching as those passions. Then, we have Henry Nguyen, who, while pursuing his goal of becoming a university professor, discovered that he really digs beer too, and decided, “Hey, why not do both for a living?” Read the rest of this entry »
I get to interview Tony, from Lagunitas. It is awesome. If you like craft beer, listen to it as soon as possible. If not, please move along. That is all.
Use the audio player to stream this episode in your browser:
Like many Chicago natives, I was caught completely by surprise Monday night when Lagunitas owner Tony Magee dropped a major bombshell via the brewery’s Twitter account, 140 characters at a time. Throwing formal press conferences to the wind, Magee revealed that the company had chosen the exact site of its brand-new brewery, and–get this–it’s on the West Side of Chicago.
Immediately, I began to imagine the impact that this will have on Chicago’s craft beer community. Most of the city’s breweries are quite small in their total output and distribution, with the notable exception of Goose Island. The reason for this is that most of the city’s breweries are relatively new, and as such are fairly small. Some of the city’s best beermakers, like Revolution Brewing and Haymarket Pub and Brewery, are just brewpubs as we speak, but almost all have plans for immediate expansion (such as the Revolution production brewery opening this year). As I covered a few months back, Chicago is a city in the middle of a true craft beer renaissance, with planned brewery projects that number into the dozens. Things have grown like gangbusters in the last five years or so, and within a few more, the number of places producing beer in the city will have doubled.
And now, suddenly, you add a giant into the mix. There isn’t any brewery the size of Lagunitas anywhere within Illinois. When it moves in, with its 250 barrel brewhouse, it is estimated that it will be producing more beer in a year than the likes of Goose Island, Three Floyds, Two Brothers, Half Acre, Revolution, Haymarket, Pipeworks, Finch’s, 5 Rabbit and the rest of the city combined. The overall national production will be even more ridiculous. Granted, only a fraction of that beer will actually be sold and consumed in the Chicago area, where Lagunitas is already distributed, but who knows what kind of reactions and concerns the brewers of Chicago might still have regarding this sort of announcement? Read the rest of this entry »
If there’s one universal truth in the world of craft beer it’s these days, it’s that you, the drinker, will never be able to try all the good beers out there. No matter how many great beers you sample, there will always be more. This is the gift that the explosion of the industry has presented us with; an almost unlimited variety of choice, where new beers and new breweries are circulated into the fold so quickly that it is difficult if not impossible to keep up, provided you live in the right place.
Chicago, undoubtedly, is one of those “right places,” these days. I live downstate, but whenever I’m able to visit Chicago, I can always be sure I’ll come back with a variety of new brews. Thankfully, some of these beers are even headed to central Illinois now. With the first downstate opening of a Binny’s Beverage Depot package store, a number of “Chicago-only” breweries are now available in my neck of the woods.
One of these ale factories is Central Waters Brewing, which produces beer from smack-dab in the center of Wisconsin, in a small town called Amherst. They were a complete unknown to me prior to my five-day Wisconsin Beer Voyage, a year and a half ago, and only recently has their beer become available in Illinois at all. Read the rest of this entry »
Way back when I first started writing for Aleheads and conducted a now totally out-of-date survey of the Chicago brewing scene, one of the places I glossed over in my haste to showcase all the big, burly ales out there was Metropolitan Brewing. Because they focus largely on classical German lager styles, they’ve just never been a place I focused much attention on. Sorry, Metropolitan guys. I know you probably don’t care much, because as I’m always reminded when I visit Chicago, there are plenty of people who are Metropolitan fans. And I’m glad that the brewery has been successful, because there are definitely places and times for traditional German beers.
Anyway. While visiting a Binny’s up in Chicago a few weeks ago, I happened to notice a selection of Metropolitan beers in a mix-a-six rack, and I thought this would be a good opportunity to give them the fair appraisal that they have no doubt deserved since the beginning. So here you go, tasting notes on three different Metropolitan brews. In the end, I was underwhelmed by one and quite impressed by two! Read the rest of this entry »
As you may know, I hail from Pittsburgh… a wonderful, livable city but hardly the craft beer capital of America. Like everywhere else in the country there are several excellent local breweries producing high-quality suds, and a thriving community of enthusiasts currently planning the city’s first Craft Beer Week, but in terms of national acclaim we just don’t match up to destinations like Portland, San Diego, Denver, or Asheville. Yet, we’ve got a beer on tap in the Steel City you can’t find in those craft meccas that keeps winning awards in the most competitive category of any beer festival- the Fat Head’s Head Hunter IPA.
The results speak for themselves: Great American Beer Festival Silver (‘10) and Bronze (‘11) for American-Style India Pale Ale, West Coast IPA Festival Gold (‘09), and Draft Magazine’s Top 25 Beer in the World (‘09). There are more awards- lots more. The Head Hunter just won the Brewing News National IPA Championship, reclaiming a crown it first secured in 2010. There’s no question it’s a delicious beer. Though they brew Head Hunter at a production facility outside of Cleveland, the first Fat Head’s was a beer-centric gastropub on Carson St in Pittsburgh’s vibrant South Side Flats- and that is one of the few places you can sample this highly-decorated IPA on a consistent basis.
Classification, awards, and top ten lists are something irrevocably weaved into the American psyche, and we Aleheads have glommed onto this fact (mostly subconciously) in order to get more people to read our stuff. In short, it is human nature to want to know what is “Best” in the world of beer, and a quick glance at our most popular posts reveals this:
In our round up of IPA’s there is no Head Hunter to be found- although I submit it for consideration, it’s limited range and draft-only status means that our national membership can’t get their hands on it. The winner of our humble little survey two years running has been Ballast Point Sculpin IPA.
The Head Hunter and Sculpin represent very different points on the IPA flavor continuum- while Sculpin is perfectly balanced with citrus notes and bursting floral characters, the Head Hunter possesses a quality some describe as “Piney Resin” but I can only suitably sum up in one word- “Dank”. Read the rest of this entry »
After publishing our “Best Breweries” post, a few commenters asked if I could expand the list to include the next 10 American breweries (I had only looked at RateBeer’s Top 10) and perhaps look at some of the top foreign breweries as well. I agreed that this was a worthy endeavor (or at least as worthy as such an inane exercise can be) so I decided to look at RateBeer’s Top 25 overall breweries (which includes 20 American and 5 foreign ale factories) and crunched the numbers the same way I did in the original post.* Read the rest of this entry »
As some of you know, I work for a central Illinois newspaper in real life, and in the course of that job, I make an attempt to post on the newspaper’s entertainment blog about local, beer-related goings-on. Today, I had a piece there detailing the upcoming opening of a new brewery in Champaign, the college town of my alma mater, The University of Illinois.
The brewery, Triptych Brewing, has successfully been fundraising using Kickstarter, a method that we have covered on a few other occasions. As it closes in on its goal with about a week to go, founder/brewmaster Anthony Benjamin confided in me that he is quite sure it will reach the $20,000 plateau (I think he’s got a “just in case” failsafe to make sure it gets there, if there’s any doubt). Of course, this is only a small fraction of the business’ overall fundraising to open a new production brewery, but I still think it’s a fairly impressive figure, considering that the majority of these donors are all coming from a fairly small, central Illinois city. Contrast this Kickstarter project with say, Lucky Town Brewing, which is having a much harder go raising their own $20,000, despite the fact that they would be only the second craft brewery PERIOD in the state of Mississippi.
What follows is a conversation I had with Benjamin, as he describes the genesis of Triptych, it’s session beer-forward portfolio, and the interesting three-phase expansion process the brewery intends to follow. Consider this just a basic look into the concerns and process of starting any new small production brewery. Read the rest of this entry »
When Aleheads was but a mewling, week-old newborn, I made my first attempt at hamhandedly marrying my loves of statistical analysis and beer. Many similar follies followed. In that first stat-based post, I struggled to determine the best breweries in America based on a cumulative GPA. I used BeerAdvocate data and obtained an average GPA for all beers produced by a single brewery (as long as they had over 10 ratings a piece). It was an amusing exercise but the data wasn’t particularly useful. It gave a very “rough” indication of the quality of individual breweries, but the overall results were flawed. First, it gave every beer in a brewery’s lineup the same weight. So if you had a highly-regarded DIPA with 1,000 ratings and a novelty one-off with 10 ratings, they counted the same. Second, I somewhat haphazardly picked the breweries by simply asking the other Aleheads (just Doc and the Baron at the time) to name their favorite breweries (or at least breweries they had heard good things about). The results were a messy gathering of 46 ale factories (later expanded quite a bit). That list included small brewpubs like Minneapolis Town Hall and massive factories like the Boston Beer Company. That’s not even apples and oranges…that’s apples and oven-mitts. Read the rest of this entry »
EDIT: I am blown away by all the brewers who have shown up in the comments section to answer questions and check in. Thanks so much to everyone who said hi!
Considering that one of my first posts on this site was a breakdown of the Chicago brewery scene only 11 months ago or so, it’s downright embarrassing how outdated it now is. To sum up–it’s bad; real bad.
The evolution of craft beer in the Windy City has just continued accelerating at what is now almost a frightening pace. It is getting to the point where I am straight-up unable to keep up with all the different breweries in their planning stages, or under construction, or seeking licenses, or simply shopping their wares around town at little tastings and festivals. Everywhere you look, there are people brewing beer and saying to each other “We should totally open a brewery, brah.”
The biggest reason I’m so out of the loop is that I don’t actually live in Chicago. I’m from the suburbs originally, but now work downstate, several hours away from the fertile beer garden that the city has become. It really has been killing me to be missing out on some of these places as they come closer to their openings, but I am at least comforted by the thought of visiting them all at some point in the misty, uncertain future.
Of huge assistance in actually keeping up with this sort of thing are Chicago-centric beer blogs–ESPECIALLY the phenomenal Chitown on Tap. Seriously, without these guys, I would be lost. In this post, I’m going to try to give a vauge roundup of all the craft breweries they listed in a recent “2012 Chicago Craft Beer Preview,” with a bit of my impressions on the new businesses and some perspective for those who, like me, are actually living outside the city. So without any further ado, let’s get to it. Read the rest of this entry »
El Segundo Brewing Company. Home of Blue House Ales
If you read this blog on a regular basis, then chances are that you too have fantasized about ditching the rat race to start your own brewery, but most of us never get beyond the weekend home brewer stage and are forced to drown our “shoulda coulda woulda” sorrows in pints of the latest and greatest regional brew while checking work email on our phones. One man who actually took the plunge and gave up a cushy corporate gig to pursue the dream of making the perfect beer is Rob Croxall, owner and head brewer of El Segundo Brewing Company in El Segundo, CA. His taproom opened back in October of 2011 and has since been well received by not just residents of the South Bay, but also beer lovers from all around the greater Los Angeles area, who flock to the subterranean tasting room on Friday and Saturday nights to watch college sports and have some laughs over pints of Hyperion Stout with Vanilla, or the flagship Blue House Pale Ale with fellow beer geeks. You see, until recently, Los Angeles, a city of over 9 million residents, has never been much of a beer city. It was no problem finding beers to drink, but as far as locally produced brews, LA paled in comparison to nearly every other part of California. This has been changing though, and Angelinos are finally able to drink beers that we can call our own, thanks to folks like Rob. Read the rest of this entry »
Gov. Bev Perdue with the spoils of war, via Mountain XPress on Flickr
Unofficial (for now) North Carolina Craft Beer Goodwill AmbassadorWin Bassett of ncbrewing.org stops by to discuss the monumental announcement that Sierra Nevada Brewing will be building an east coast production facility just south of Asheville, NC. We discuss the incentive package, the practical and philosophical implications the development might have on local brewing culture, the impending New Belgium announcement, the economic benefits to the region, and more.
We also get into some of the state’s other beer destinations in the Triangle , Charlotte, and Coastal regions, as well as Slouch’s impending hero’s welcome* to visit the state’s myriad breweries and bottleshops.
Also of note: Win has been a leading advocate for getting his local legislators to sign on as sponsors to HR 1236 Small BREW Act. Where do your representative stand on this bill that reduces the tax excise rate for craft breweries that produce less the 60,000 barrels annually? Maybe you should call and ask them!
Click below to stream this episode in your browser:
Two Brothers Brewing in Warrenville, Illinois, is geographically the closest “major” production brewery to my suburban Chicago hometown, so when they announce big news, I’m always quite excited for them. Throw in the fact that the brewery’s founding brothers Jim and Jason Ebel share my alma mater, and you get a brewery that I’ve tried to support whenever possible ever since I first got into craft beer. This has included a number of trips to the brewery-adjoining tap house and special events like the yearly release of their DIPA “Hop Juice.”
I was excited, then, to see the brewery announce via its Facebook page* Tuesday afternoon that it would officially begin releasing canned brews. And surprisingly, it’s not even one of their year-round brews or a flagship beer like Domaine DuPage that they’re releasing! Instead, it’s an entirely new beer called Outlaw IPA. It’s something quite unexpected from a brewery that already makes a few different IPAs, but indicative of Two Brothers’ obvious confidence in their product and in their fans.
I know, I know. There are a lot of breweries that have tried to raise money on Kickstarter. I know that funds are tight, the economy remains in the dumps, and we are most likely spiraling towards the collapse of modern industrial civilization. I know all this. Still, you should consider pledging some money to help our friends get Lucky Town Brewing off the ground. Brother Barley and I interviewed them last month, and here are ten damn good reasons for you to consider helping them out.
Plus in a peak oil, post-apocalyptic world, money will most likely hold no value. You might as well spend it now.
1. Mississippi makes Alabama’s beer laws look progressive.
It’s the final frontier for craft beer. 5% maximum ABV. Homebrewing is illegal. Self distribution is illegal. Thinking about beer is illegal. I think. Anyways, it’s bad. What do I look like, a lawyer?
2. There is only one (1!) production brewery in the state.
Lazy Magnolia. I like their Southern Pecan, but this is fucking ridiculous. Portland has 35 or-so breweries. I’m pretty sure this state can support another.
As you’ll likely recall, I had a lot of fun a few weeks ago compiling a list of some of the worst brewery websites on the internet. We live in an age where having a good website with actual, useful information is an inarguable necessity in operating a successful business, so it was fascinating to see just how badly some of them fell flat. Whether it was not being updated since 2006, having no information on the products, or just being an aesthetic nightmare, there was a little something for everyone.
Of those breweries that were listed on my post, perhaps the very worst was a tiny brewery in Riverside, California, called Krash Brewery. The site combines elements of everything that made up my criteria of awful: Incomplete beer information, buttons that don’t go anywhere, garish layout and grating sound effects on any button you click, broken links and what appears to be inscrutable Japanese kanji sprinkled about at random. It’s got everything! Read the rest of this entry »
If you had told me yesterday that I would be reading a headline proclaiming the sale of St. Louis’ Schlafly Brewing in the afternoon and would later that evening be writing why it was a good thing, I probably wouldn’t have believed you. After all, Schlafly is a large company*, one that exists right in the shadow of Anheuser Busch, craft’s ancestral foe. It’s almost inevitable, then, that if you live around that area and see the words “Schlafly bought out,” your immediate reaction is going to be automatic, paralyzing terror that somehow, the AB eagle is swooping in to rend and tear a beloved local brewery assunder. But it turns out I needn’t have worried–or so it seems, anyway.
*The #42 largest U.S. craft brewery in 2010, which doesn’t take into account the 20% growth in volume the company experienced in 2011.
Schlafly has in fact laid out a template for every regional brewery that is considering its own “endgame.” This sale shows that it’s not impossible to sell a brewery without kowtowing to the big boys–that there is in fact a practical way to “sell out right” with respect to the company’s legacy. As covered in detail by St. Louis Post Dispatch beer writer Evan Benn (who was quite helpful during my beer trip to St. Louis earlier this year), Schlafly co-founders Tom Schlafly and Dan Kopman chose to avoid a sellout to a larger brewer like Anheuser, Miller-Coors or Tenth and Blake by selling a majority stake of the brewery to a group of 13 local investors. Read the rest of this entry »
This time of year, it is easy to be pessimistic about… well… everything. Over the last two months, society has just forced us to empty our pockets buying useless trinkets that none of our friends and loved ones really need (unless you bought them beer). New Years Eve is another opportunity to look back on how little you have really accomplished in the past year.
But “always look on the bright side of life!” over the past year, craft beer has continued to grow, and more craft beers from more craft brewers are available than ever before.
I ask you Aleheads, what were the bright spots in 2011, for newly released regular production beers? I don’t want to look back and think about rare limited releases and one-offs that won’t be available again, because frankly it makes me sad. And this post has been negative enough already. Although if a beer was previously released as limited distribution or a brew-pub test, but is now full scale, it counts too.
I love Chicago Craft Beer Week. The fact that we all get to revel in American Craft Beer Week each year is already cool enough, but when you throw in all the incredible beer events of Chicago Craft Beer Week at the same time, it’s a true embarrassment of riches. In the last two years, I’ve made it to at least one awesome CCBW event during each celebration, like last year’s closing party at Revolution Brewing (it’s at the end of that post, scroll down), and as more and more breweries get on board and the event organization gets better, each year has more and more reasons to get excited.
Posted by Kid Carboy Jr. 
