Tappings and Tastings, oh my!

Two weeks ago, we had our second tapping at Bottom Lounge. As always, much fun was had by all. Check out the photos here.

This week, we have two tastings scheduled...

Friday, March 20th, from 4pm until 7pm we'll be serving up free samples of Metro at Sam's at 1720 N Marcey St. I'm not going to lie, we spend a lot of time and money at this glorious flagship store. And now, as if it were a dream come true, we're going to actually legitimately hang out there for 3 full hours talking about beer!

Saturday, March 21st from 3pm until 5pm, we'll be again handing out free samples of beer at Binny's - South Loop, 1132 S. Jefferson Street. This completely awesome Binny's location has a tap room and everything!

So, hey. You know you'll be needing a beer run on Friday and Saturday this week anyway. You'll be the model of efficiency and impress all of your friends if you time it so you can drop in and talk beer with us.

LunaR TappinG was FuN!

If you didn't join us for our very first tapping and launch party at LunaR Brewing Co. in Villa Park, well... you better have a good excuse. Many laughs, much fun, and pints of delicious beers were had by all. We saw some longtime friends and made some new ones. Beer does that. Anyway, view the revelry for yourself by clicking here.

But wait! You can join us at our second ever tapping event a week from now, at Bottom Lounge. From 7pm until 9pm, join us for Dynamo Copper Lager, Flywheel Bright Lager, and a dazzling selection from one of the finest beer lists in town. So that's Wednesday, March 4th at Bottom Lounge, 1375 W Lake Street. Be there! Win free beer!

Don't bitch, we call this "lagering weather"

First, we're on tap! Find Metro beer at...

Hopleaf Bar, 5148 N Clark St, Chicago
Handlebar Bar & Grill, 2311 W North Ave, Chicago
Risqué Café, 3419 N Clark St, Chicago
Rodan, 1530 N. Milwaukee Ave., Chicago
Hackney's, 733 S. Dearborn, Chicago
Beer Bistro, 1061 W. Madison St., Chicago
Marion St. Cheese Market, 100 S. Marion Street, Oak Park
Binny's - South Loop, 1132 S. Jefferson Street, Chicago
Tavern in the Town, 519 N. Milwaukee Ave., Libertyville
Barley House, 1520 Randall Rd, Algonquin
Lunar Brewing Co., 54 E. St. Charles Rd., Villa Park
Bar on Buena, 910 W. Buena Ave., Chicago


Next, come check out for yourself what happens when a brewery has no rules. Metro Brewing plays host to the Neo-Futurist vision: BEER! This weekend was the first in a run of 6, so go to the Neo-Futurist's website and buy tickets for an upcoming performance. Just do it now. You're killing time anyway.

"When 10 year-old Boon pukes and passes out after drinking his stepfather's crappy beer, he awakens to find himself lost in a mysterious brewery. Together with his only friend, the puppet Puke, Boon must learn the brewing trade in order to go home. Through puppetry, animation, and a live band, learn about the world of BEER."


Finally, we've updated the website. Looky. And Facebook took down our page because it wasn't set up in the format they require. Stand by for a new Facebook page in the near future. As always, though... no promises.

Holy Moly

Our website and blog are two casualties of the speed and ferociousness of a business start-up. Oh, how we fantasize about processing photos, writing, and updating everyone on our whereabouts right now. Stand by, we're on it. In short, over the past month...

1. Doug went to China to dismantle and load our brewhouse.
2. We prepared our space for equipment installation, including but not limited to breaking into the concrete floor and repouring it.
3. We built (and by this I really mean *we*) three rooms in the brewery to accommodate various equipment.
4. We received our federal Brewer's Notice number from the TTB.
5. We've begun the street-pounding to hawk our beer-wares.
6. We bought big toys like a forklift, 128 1/2 barrel kegs, a glycol chiller, and more.
7. After a 2-day delay, our equipment finally arrived from China.
8. We rigged our equipment into place. (Teaser photo above.)
9. AND, we found out that our next-door neighbor... inside our very own building... is a new distillery!! Can we get a triple-dog whoop, Whoop, WHOOP!

You want more photos, don't you!? Well, we're only too happy to meet your demands. Just give us a little time. It may be a day or two, it may be a week.* But we'll get you the goods as fast as we can.

*With a righteous middle-finger held aloft to our present workload, we're escaping to Denver this week to attend the Great American Beer Festival. It's our version of what some folks call a "vacation." We're not bringing Metro beer this year. We've paid admission as proper beer-enjoying folks and will take this first and last trip to GABF as grinning drinkers. Next year we'll be there as grinning drinkers and vendors.

More to come. Hang onto your pants.

Tools + Beer = Awesome Happy Fun Time

We're nearing the end of the 2008 beer fest season. Our best beer fest season, for sure! Okay, this was our first season, but still... whoo hoo!

If you've attended any of the fests we have, you've had the chance to see our super-swank jockey box made of a converted Craftsman toolbox. Pouring beer has never been so fun. Folks seem to like it almost as much as we do. One AleFest Chicago attendee referred to it as "beer porn." Agreed!

Click here to see a website of photos taken on the afternoon we turned an everyday, kick ass tool box (I've nearly always been a Craftsman tools gal), into a kick ass jockey box. I did forward this website onto Craftsman (Sears), but so far, no word. We expect to either 1. receive a cease and desist letter or 2. receive funding to build more.

How do you pour your beer?

Biggest. Shopping. Ever.

Starting a brewery requires a lot of equipment. Big stuff. Shiny. Some of our brewery toys are new; the brewhouse and several fermenters. But with the price of steel going up, we've been hitting the used market for just about everything else.

Last week we rented a Penske truck on two separate occasions, for two separate noisy, bouncy road trips. On Monday, we drove to Dexter MI to pick up our 1996 Meheen bottle filler. It's old, but we got'er running at the brewery where we bought it, Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales. Later in the week my step-Dad visited us, and the Meheen. Fortunately for us, he got that look on his face that only a tinkerer who loves a good challenge can make.

On Friday, we hit the road again in a 15' Penske to drive to Iowa City, IA to pick up our DE filter from Old Capital Brew Works. Again, it's old and needs some spiffing up, but it fit the budget.

We didn't do any photos of those two trips. The inside of a Penske truck doesn't exactly make my trigger finger itchy. But we did do some photography back in May when we purchased a hot liquor tank and 30 bbl fermenter from our friends at Two Brothers Brewing Co. Starting this brewery has been one, big exercise in logistics and I've never seen logistics like these. I know that you, like me, have long wondered just exactly how you get a 12' tank off its feet and onto a flatbed trailer. The hot liquor tank was no big deal really, but personally witnessing riggers working to load the fermenter was pretty damn cool. Check out the photos here.

Smell the dust... smell it!

Look! Photos of the space!

We'll be updating this page (or adding pages of photos) as we go so you may all share in the glory of construction and build-out.

One less vacant spot in Chicago

If you were to judge by our blog alone, it would seem that we've been lounging around, popping bon bons over the past weeks.

Probably the biggest accomplishment has been to secure our brewery's location. We looked at a lot of places. I'm guessing around 20-25. All in the city, and all with some promise. This was the first time we'd researched commercial space, so we found ourselves once again ferociously schooled in the Ways of the World. Any kind of manufacturing has physical logistics. When it comes to a brewery, most of those logistics have to do with the need to use gratuitous amounts of water. In the brew vessels, around the brew vessels, under the brew vessels. This requirement definitely narrowed our choices conveniently.

Anyway, if you want to know more about what finding a space for a brewery is like, buy us a beer sometime and we'll regale you with stories. For now, let it be known that the new home of Metropolitan Brewing is: 5121 N Ravenswood, Chicago. Folks, this was exactly the location we wanted! We lived in the Ravenswood neighborhood for 4 years. Had we not been booted by the condoization of our apartment building, we'd still be there.

Of course, we love you all dearly but don't come to visit just yet. The space was an auto-body shop for the last 15 years and the phrase "we need to clean this place up" has taken on a whole new scope. Sandblasters have stripped the rafters down to the wood and the walls down to the brick. In dramatic and ironic contrast, the floor is covered with 6 inches of oily, paint-soaked sand. Next, we patch and customize the cement floor. See again, there's the whole water aspect coming into play. The brewhouse needs to sit on a floor that slopes and drains to a trench. Personally, I'm hoping to get a chance to try using a jackhammer.

Now that we have our location, the floodgates have been rent asunder. Now we start dealing with our licensing, the TTB, build-out, etc. Our equipment broker told me that he's never delivered a brewhouse to a complete space, just sitting there ready for the equipment to be screwed down. I told him that we would be the first. I went further to predict that we'd be reclined in lawn chairs in the dock doorway sipping coffee on the morning of our delivery. I can already smell that plate of crow he'll be fixing for me.

Honk if you're sad

Early warning rumblings gave way to the sad truth this week: Goose Island will be closing it's pub at North/Clybourn here in Chicago.

Click here to read the Chicago Trib article.

Now, I've always been bummed about the fact that the place closes down so early on Friday and Saturday nights. 11:oo pm hits and we always manage to find ourselves surrounded by chairs propped on top of the tables and mop-wielding staff who are clearly eager to split. But that isn't to say that GI-North/Clybourn isn't one of our favorite places to be.

The beer is excellent. Say whatever you want about the relationship with Widmer, the beer in the glass is what counts. We've been proud to hold countless business meetings at GI-North/Clybourn because the beer is so reliably tasty.

The Siebel Institute of Technology has called GI-North/Clybourn its classroom home since 2003. The Dugg earned his diploma in Brewing Technology at this pub. The Illinois Craft Brewers Guild has held meetings and festivals here. When I think about it, we've spent a lot of time at this place. No wonder I'm so thirsty right now.

Goose Island is one of the very few places in that shopping district that is truly Chicago. Depending on your direction, you walk past Best Buy; Bed, Bath & Beyond; Trader Joe's; Whole Foods; CVS; Crate & Barrel; The Gap; Circuit City; and Patagonia to get to the pub. If it weren't for Sam's Wines & Spirits, we would probably never step foot in that area again.

I will run in circles sobbing like a child if a Chili's moves in.

The Hops are in da Haus!

Starting a brewery during a hops crisis requires us to keep our proverbial ears to the ground (eyes to the interwebs) and pounce on opportunities like a cat on nip. So, when we heard about some available hops, the very hops The Dugg desires, we made one of our very first Huge Purchases. People paying attention know that we're still searching for Metro's home, so we had the hops shipped to our apartment. All 300 lbs of them.

We've never seen the UPS guy so pissed.

At our Top Secret Metro Hidden Headquarters, our bounty is safely stored. The protective measures taken are too numerous and Top Secret to list here.

Drinking from the Firehose

Our "pre-production" phase officially began April 1st. This refers to the 6-month period during which we are allowed to spend our time pulling together all of the various aspects of starting a brewery, but aren't expected to actually sell any beer. We both officially work full-time for Metro now. Of course, I've been doing so since October 1st and Doug since March 21st. The difference is that now, we get paid for it.

I've never needed a nap so badly in my life.

MetroLocation
Every day begins early. We typically schedule appointments beginning at 8 or 9am with one of our six Realtors to drive all over Chicagotarnation looking at possible spaces. I'm not going to say that we've seen it all, because that would be exaggerating. But we have seen a space that was too lovely, oh so perfect and out of our budget; a warehouse space with "place rodent trap here" drawn in marker on the wall; a barn-like space that would have worked nicely but for the sagging and chipping roof; and a space that might work once the dollar-store merchandise has been liquidated. How do you put stuff that costs $1 on sale?

MetroBigGear
Last week, we took a field trip up to The Great Dane at Hilldale in Madison, WI. The brewhouse (the tanks in which you brew beer) at this location is the prototype of the system we intend to buy. The brewer was incredibly hospitable, allowing us to brew a batch of his Oktoberfest with him from start to finish. The entire 15 bbl system made us feel like really little kids in a normal-sized toy store. The hoses were big...
The mash rake in the mash tun was big...

And the amount of spent grain needing to be raked out of the mash tun was big...
And apparently, we need to brush up on our Cantonese in order to use the equipment.
Metroducation
We've been asked to give a talk at the Siebel Institute of Technology (this is the school where The Dugg earned his diploma in Brewing Technology) here in Chicago next week during a 3-day seminar named "Start Your Own Brewery Course." I guess we've actually gone through many of the paces necessary to open a brewery, and I suppose we do have some wisdom to pass along. But we don't feel like experts and we desperately hope that no one sitting in the course holds us to such standards. However, we are looking forward to sharing some of our experiences and even took some time to pull together a snazzy PowerPoint presentation in order to look more official-like. Our mantra: learn from your mistakes. Hell, learn from others' mistakes too, if you can help it.

Metrofficials
The past few weeks have also involved numerous meetings with our accountants, lawyer, insurance agent, and banker. Oh my! Now, each person involved is lovely and has helped us tremendously, but like the back of a thong on a 20-something, our inexperience is showing to the embarrassment of everyone involved. We were soundly scolded for mixing up our personal and business financials. A situation that is now remedied... but we do often "buy gifts" for Metro with our own money. Sorry, we love our kid and can't help but spoil it.

And we're waiting with bated breath for the appointment wherein a nurse (PortaMedic... hee!) comes to our home to take urine and blood samples. These, along with an interview that grills us for our health information will finally be distilled into a number for each of us. This number will be stamped on the life insurance policy - and our checkbook annually - required by our bank in order to obtain our bank loan.

A high point of our meetings with professionals involve our graphic designer. He is probably one of the strongest members of our team. He's a genius of graphic design, brewing, and marketing and we're relieved he saw fit to help us along our way. This week, he showed us a nearly-final version of our first beer label. Behold...

We're happy to be nursing our newborn through the first few months of life. But they say new parents are often surprised by the amount of work and attention their larvae-like offspring requires. We're no different in this respect. Fortunately, if we screw up too badly, no one dies.

And to think... we haven't even begun to apply for our licenses yet...

No! Wait!

Hands off the hops, Tom's. We need them in our beer, not our armpits.

Is that a pub in your pocket, or are you...?

If you've ever wished that you had your own pub - not to make oodles of money or because you're hospitable - simply because you just want your own darn pub. Airquee can feed your desire.

Let us know if you buy one! We'll serve up a complimentary keg of Metro beer.