Touring our lil' Brewery

Greetings, all!

Due to the large number of emails, Facebook posts, and Tweets requesting info about tours, I thought it might be wise of me to put a post here to explain ourselves; to explain just why the hell we haven't scheduled any public tours lately.

Let me cut to the chase here: it's all your fault! You wonderful, craft-beer drinking folks are out-pacing not only us, but every other small brewery who supplies the goods to our lovely city. We are brewing brewing brewing to keep up. We literally work every day to produce as much beer as we can. Not that we're complaining. We love our jobs. But this workload doesn't leave us much time for offering tours.

The value of offering tours to our devoted drinkers is immeasurable, we're not missing that point. But our main focus is - and always will be - brewing the best damn lagers we possibly can. All four people on our staff are devoted to this singular goal. All of our resources and money are dedicated this singular goal. Everything else comes after this singular goal is met.

Allow me to propose a solution to this (awesome) problem. For our part, we'll continue to focus on our brews, that's why we're all here, after all. And we cross-our-hearts-hope-to-die promise that we will schedule some public tours as soon as we can (we'll post them on on Twitter and Facebook). For your part, please continue to buy and drink craft beer. The more beer we sell -> the more people we can hire -> the more resources we'll have -> more public tours!

our walk to work today

Nothing will stop us from brewing beer. Not even a historical midwestern snowstorm that has pretty much the entire city of Chicago shut down. Behold, I documented for you what it was like to walk to the brewery today. Before we even left the back gate...


At first we tried to walk down the sidewalks. The winds caused incredible drifting and the sidewalks were nigh unpassable.


Phelps took to leaping through the drifts, which probably wouldn't have lasted long before his tiny heart gave out. So we moved out into the street. We didn't see any cars ourselves, but we were able to walk in tire tracks, so someone managed to get where they were going this morning.


Neighbors were out all over the place, starting to dig out.


We worked long and hard for many years to have this privilege of living just a few blocks from work. We almost never drive our car. And today, no one else is driving their car either.


This is the west side of our building. Huge drifts. Fortunately, the snow had drifted off of the sidewalks on the north side of the building (our side).



Phelps once again engages his leaping skillz to get into the brewery door.


See the joy on this face? Beer does that.


Our first mash-in for the day. No snowstorm can keep us from puttin' some Krank in the tank!

When good friends join powers, listen for the BOOM!

When Doug and I moved to Chicago in 1999, our first priority was to seek out the beer crowds. As you may know, Chicago is loaded with beer legends, authors, aficionados, and of course, geeks. We had no trouble finding a wealth of new friends who shared our obsession. Counted among them is Pete Crowley. At the time, he was the well-known brewer at Rock Bottom (State/Grand). His hospitality at Mug Club meetings and at beer events was unmatched. His friendship and support while we were starting up our brewery easily makes up for all the times he's pissed me off.

Around the same time, we also became friends with Steve Mosqueda and Sean Benjamin. Doug homebrewed with both of them, and we became staunch fans of The Neo-Futurists, the Northside theater in which they both performed. They are also the founders of The Drinking and Writing Brewery, a mash-up of theater, thought, writing, and drinking. For a while the D/W Brewery made its home in various beer bars for it's on-location performances. They even staged a show that ran for 8 weeks right in our own brewery! Oh, the (loss of) memories...

Steve, Sean, and Pete have been working together for a long time, but now, they've officially set up house together at Haymarket Pub & Brewery! Last Saturday, we finally hauled our sorry butts all the way down to Randolph and Halsted to check the place out and watch Steve and Sean perform Drinking and Writing Volume III: To Cure a Hangover.

So, full disclosure: Steve, Sean, and Pete are dear friends of ours and Haymarket has already poured many, many kegs of Krankshaft. Now that that's out of the way, if you haven't visited the brewpub and seen the show, what are you waiting for?!? The atmosphere is classy, yet cozy. The staff is friendly and thoughtful. The beer list is amazing (Pete's beers are fermenting right now and will be available soon). The menu features not one, but several vegan dishes - including one for kids! (swoon) And as usual, the D/W show was hilarious.

If you're looking for something fun to do on a Saturday afternoon - and you need to know how to manage the stinky, painful results of a night of voracious drinking, check out Drinking and Writing Volume III: To Cure a Hangover. The show runs from January 1 through February 5, 2011; Saturdays at 4pm. Buy tickets here.

Krankshaft! Flywheel!

Summer is here, if our beer sales have anything to do with it. Krankshaft and Flywheel more than doubled in sales over the past 2 months. Whoo HOO! You drink it, we'll brew it. We promise.

For a short time, we had a Spring seasonal available, I-beam, an Alt-style beer. We loved this beer and we were sorry to see it go. But, our tanks are churning away with Krankshaft, Flywheel, and Dynamo right now. We'll let it ride. Don't give up on I-beam, though. You'll probably see it again.

Doug was allowed to flex his creative muscles recently. The Craft Brewers Conference (held here in Chicago) in April and Chicago Craft Beer Week in May both were great reasons to try brewing some unique beers and give birth to our Urban Evolution Series. Stay tuned for more. He's just getting started.

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!

Listen... to what the beer people say

Last week, Karl Klockars from Chicagoist interviewed me about opening our brewery in Chicago, lagers, and how many awesome bars we have here. The first 19 or so minutes of the podcast is the completely unedited interview (glad I didn't drop any f-bombs). Enjoy!

Lovin' the Lager Life

More press, people. Marty Nutley at MetromixTV in Chicago did us an incredible service by making us look good. And he did it on TV.

Behold.

Bill Murray sky dives onto North Ave Beach

Yesterday, Friday the 15th, Bill Murray opened Chicago's 50th annual Air & Water Show by doing a tandem sky dive with the U.S. Army's Golden Knights. The Sun-Times article can be found here.

But the reason we're posting about this is here. Raw footage from a nearby helmet-cam features incredible views of the lake shore and city, other jumpers, and the crowds waiting for the landing. Awesome.

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.

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.

Plenty of guile

Our friends at the Drinking and Writing Brewery took some time out to talk with us at this year's Rockfest, held at Rock Bottom - Chicago and hosted by head brewer Pete Crowley. Behold! Our very first official interview with the media. Well, very casual media. Guerrilla media. Media that drinks and swears.

Click here to hear the interview portion of the radio show. About 10 minutes long.

Click here to hear the entire radio show from April, 2008. Enjoy the frenetic, hilarious madness that Neofuturists channel with uncanny ease.