Our first stop was to an unlikely place, Market, a trendy sports bar in the West Loop. Unlikely because its not a place we expected to participate in CCBW, though they do at times, have some solid beers on tap. Their craft beer week special was the New Belgium Fresh Hop IPA from their Lips of Faith Series. It didn't seem to taste as good as we remember, perhaps it wasn't actually that "fresh." Regardless, as nice looking as Market is, it wasn't really our scene, so we walked the few blocks to Haymarket Brewery. Haymarket was having a huge Sun King Brewing (Indiana) event, with 15 of their taps featuring Sun King Beers. We've only tried a few Sun King beers from some time spent in Indy, but we're almost certain they do not distribute to Chicago. We've never seen their beer on tap or cans around these parts. These type of events are exactly why CCBW is fun.
Our lineup of 4 oz. tasters (nicely priced at $2 each) included: Sour Princess, Chaka, Velvet Fog, and Puff the Magic Dragon. Interesting names, interesting beers! We can appreciate when a brewery gets big (or gutsy) enough that they start to do some more experimental type of beers. Every brewery usually does a take on a pale ale, amber ale, etc. but few do sour beers. Clearly, the 'Sour Princess' took top honors from our taste test.
Having completed our West Loop map, we headed back up North to hit up a few places in Lincoln Park. There were no shortage of places to choose from, but we chose two that were reasonably close to each other, but at the same time, had something interesting going on. We settled on Lincoln Station, and the Local Option. Lincoln Station had a few Chicago area beers half off, but both of us opted for Two Brothers instead: Megan with the Bonfire Dunkelweiss and Jen with the Dark Mild. We also enjoyed a tasty polish sausage from the Paulina Meat Market to soak up the suds.
The last stop of the night was the heavy-metal-themed-beer-geek-watering-hole know as the Local Option. These guys were having a Central Waters Brewing Company (Wisconsin) tap night, with 15 CW brews on the chalkboard. In keeping with the week's theme of trying new beers, we both had a CW creation - Megan drank the Satin Solstice Imperial Stout, and Jen had the Bourbon Barrel Aged La Petite Mort. The La Petite Mort was a Weizenbock style beer, which was a first for both of us. I think it would have been in our best interest go with a "lighter" beer at that juncture of the evening, but these two sippers overall, were good choices to end the night. The highlight of the night was introducing ourselves to Chicago Beer Geeks co-founder, Nik. Kudos to our favorite new app, Untapp'd, for making that connection possible. We noticed a check-in for the Chicago Beer Geeks via Untapp'd and scanned the room for one of the fellas based on their website photos. Being that we are just getting this blog up and running, it was cool to make a connection with those guys, who have a good following among the beer community here in Chicago. We didn't get a chance to mention our blog, but hopefully we'll network more tonight at the Revolution Brewing Grand Opening party. We're bound and determined to hunt down Chris & Margaret Quinn from the Craft Beer Temple podcast!
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| Welcome, Nerds |
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| The scene at the Local Option on Thursday |
And with that...we officially secured our VIP entrance to the Revolution party tonight! From what we hear, there will be 28 (!) beers on tap, live music, food trucks, and a whole lot of awesomeness. We saw a photo on Facebook today of the new digs, and it was a thing of beauty. We'll try our best to soak it all in and report back tomorrow...or maybe Sunday.
Prost,
Meg & Jen
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