Coffee was once the only adjunct a good stout needed, until recent years has brought the entire pastry case with it. So finding five barrel-aged stouts with just coffee added was a bit of a challenge - but it’s a welcome reminder that sometimes all you need is coffee. (And love? Probably love, too.) These five locally-made coffee stouts saw a small variety of different barrels, and the elevated ABV has us hacky-sacking beer cans around the room in no time. We also assemble our team of experts to...
Dec 16, 2020•1 hr 19 min•Season 7Ep. 358
Barrel-aged December is now officially underway, and we’re delighted to crack open four medal-winning Illinois beers from this year’s Festival of Wood and Barrel Aged Beers. Appropriately enough, the barrels are the star of the show, as these four very different styles are presented without additional adjuncts - just wood-made magic. Also, we have our friend Aaron Keefner from More Brewing stop by the Zoom to talk about the beer entry fee he paid to be our first remote guest, but actually he tal...
Dec 09, 2020•1 hr 34 min•Season 7Ep. 357
If there’s ever been a month for careless indulgence, it would be December of 2020, so we’re going full-on dessert and pastry beer for this episode. These five entries have us nostalgic for vacation ice cream shoppes, cozy breakfast diners, and gourmet popcorn stores - despite some initial fears. Also, we are stocking our rage rooms, admiring the Sacred Leavings, sniffin’ stuff at Whole Foods (again), and jiggling like a flan. Diet starts tomorrow. Beers Reviewed Old Irving Brewing - Cinnamon Pr...
Dec 02, 2020•1 hr 9 min•Season 7Ep. 356
Once more of a niche taproom-only style, the Triple IPA has become a more common sight on the shelves thanks to craft beer customers who never say no to more. Hazy or not, these five beers are aiming for the target between too sweet or too strong, and a few veer a bit off course. But they’re still fun to drink, and we find ourselves in mid-show form pretty early on. Also, we are looking to improve our specialized email closings, attempting to decode the Enigma, addressing the butt chugging criti...
Nov 25, 2020•1 hr 8 min•Season 7Ep. 355
We’re on flavor sabbatical for a week, so we’re looking around for minor trends to cover that we haven’t properly explored. As a twist on the traditional German lager, Mexican-Style lagers usually use maize or corn as part of the grain bill, but we find that no two American-made takes on this style are the same. (Thankfully!) There’s also an ongoing game involving America’s most prominent mutation of Mexican culture: Taco Bell. We also try and solve a nice balloon mystery, get hoisted by our own...
Nov 18, 2020•1 hr 17 min•Season 7Ep. 354
For a few years running, Cruz Blanca’s Luchador series has been perhaps the most inspired and creative lineup of the holy trinity of Chicago barrel-aged beer special releases. We get a mouthful on this episode, as we drink through all eight of these big and burly beers aged in a seemingly endless number of different barrels. And it’s only half stouts; find out what kind of magic Cruz gets up to with Imperial Blonde Ales and Imperial Rice Ales. In addition to our complete remote tasting (with hea...
Nov 11, 2020•1 hr 38 min•Season 7Ep. 353
In preparation for a Black Friday like never before, we got a chance to sample through this year’s full lineup of Goose Island’s Bourbon County to help you decide exactly how many online lotteries to enter. Though there are no headline-grabbers like Double Barrel or Rare this year, the seven beer lineup is impressively consistent, even though our individual rankings are very divergent. Get the stories behind these beers (as relayed through us from the media tasting with the Goose team), and find...
Nov 02, 2020•1 hr 36 min•Season 7Ep. 352
As if this year hasn’t been cruel enough, we once again try and assemble a tapestry of nightmares out of old and bad beers. Each host brings the three worst beers they could find to this modified remote version of our yearly late October tradition, and the results are not at all what we would’ve expected. Also, Ryan is trying to make his kids not scared of ska, someone peed in Craig’s soda, and we almost stumble backwards into a Red Ale show. This show is also a tribute to the resilient liquor s...
Oct 28, 2020•1 hr 31 min•Season 7Ep. 351
In need of a haze hiatus but unwilling to give up our hop addiction, we are ISO IBUs as we sample through five West Coast-style IPAs to travel back to a time of malt, bitterness, and clarity. It was exactly what we needed, as this lineup becomes one of the best front-to-back that we’ve had in a while. Also, we add some utility to our quarantine wardrobes, Craig is a self-appointed dank expert who once appeared on Nickelodeon’s Legends of the Hidden Temple , and Ryan is drinking a Celebration wit...
Oct 21, 2020•1 hr 19 min•Season 7Ep. 350
For the first time since this podcast started almost seven years ago, there’s no trip to Denver to drink beer at the Great American Beer Festival - and we’re feeling a little sad about it. So we embark on a gleefully nostalgic and self-indulgent episode, wherein we revisit some favorite memories (and interviews) from the first five years at GABF all while drinking five beers to represent years 2014-2018. You’ll hear some brief interview snippets from the past, including Sam Calagione (Dogfish He...
Oct 14, 2020•1 hr 56 min•Season 7Ep. 349
It’s as good a time as ever to take time to chill with some simple and refreshing pilsners, so we try to lower our resting heart rates through a little lager love. We drink five different pilsners that offer a surprising amount of variation for the style, and we try not to let the prospect of arbitrary rankings stress us out. Also, we workshop some tech puns for our IT friends, name all the crazy bassists (well, two of them), investigate the hot dog bun conspiracy, and reclaim our rightful title...
Oct 07, 2020•1 hr 26 min•Season 7Ep. 348
Enshrouded in a dark and mysterious energy, Illuminated Brew Works has become a cult favorite in Chicago - because they are probably an actual cult. Our initial apprehension becomes open-armed acceptance as we ingest Five Sacraments of IBW, and dabble in the mystic arts. (Actually, we just use a really bad online Ouija board, but hey, we’re trying!) Additionally, we pay tribute to legendary baseball names both real and fictional, wonder what happened to mobile canning, weakly pitch the Magic 8-B...
Sep 30, 2020•1 hr 22 min•Season 7Ep. 347
In a state chock full of great hazy IPA producers, More and Phase Three still stand amongst the best and most-revered. The fact that they have an intertwined history adds to the stakes of our totally arbitrary blind battle of the haze wherein one brewery will be crowned winner, and the other will be crowned, “still very excellent.” We also attempt to guess the beers based on what we know about ABV, style, and hop profiles - and the results are mind-melting. Also, Craig gets caught up on six mont...
Sep 23, 2020•1 hr 16 min•Season 7Ep. 346
Soon to be celebrating their 4th year in business, Old Irving Brewing has established itself as one of the best brewpubs in the city - with the hardware to prove it. This episode features an interview with owner and head brewer Trevor Rose-Hamblin, who tells the story of OIB, his culinary background and its influence on the brewpub, that GABF medal that changed everything, the struggles of running a brewpub during a pandemic, and what surprising plans are ahead for the brewery side of the busine...
Sep 16, 2020•1 hr 48 min•Season 7Ep. 345
We held out so long on seltzers, until the exact moment when we saw some of our favorite breweries releasing their takes on the flavored malt beverage craze. Are they any more refined or impressive than the tacky trendsetters filling a million Yeti coolers and frat house fridges? (And we would know, because we drank five of the highest-selling big seltzers before recording this very episode, and released the unsavory results on Patreon.) We spend most of the episode trying to break seltzers, but...
Sep 09, 2020•1 hr 10 min•Season 7Ep. 344
When a brewery releases a double dry-hopped version of one of their go-to hoppy beers, it’s often a surefire hit with consumers. Though it has somehow become synonymous with hazy beers, double dry-hopping has a longer history of adding bombastic hop aromas to beers as far back as the 1970s in the U.S. But does the added “DDH” really level up the beer? We try two local hazy standouts and one all-time hoppy classic alongside their DDH counterparts to figure out if it’s actually worth all the extra...
Sep 02, 2020•1 hr 19 min•Season 7Ep. 343
After delousing in quarantine for 14 days, our Kansas show is ready to bring our State Show series up to #24, with the help of loyal listener Don Kasak. We traverse the state via quaffable liquid as we review five beers from five Kansas breweries - and no IPAs or stouts are in sight! Also, we come to terms with a terrible truth about our listeners; Craig is on college mascot watch; and we have a full-on SMOOTHIE EXPERIENCE. It’s good for the optics. Beers Reviewed Wichita Brewing Company (Wichit...
Aug 26, 2020•1 hr 19 min•Season 7Ep. 342
Quite possibly Chicago’s best brewery, Off Color still doesn’t make an IPA - nor do they have any plans to. And that’s quite alright. Seven years in, this little critter-lovin’ brewery continues to build one of the best brands around while furthering a stellar collection of esoteric small batches and inspired flavor combinations. We catch up with five recent beers that span the wide range of delectable oddities that make the Mousetrap patio “farm” one of the most interesting places to drink beer...
Aug 19, 2020•1 hr 16 min•Season 7Ep. 341
Our passion for barrel-aged beers doesn’t disappear in August - it achieves a steady simmer below the surface, always ready to unleash itself when the opportunity arises. For this episode we have five barrel-aged beers - all different styles of beer and all from local breweries, four of which we interviewed when they were just starting out in the Chicago-area craft scene, so long ago. Other talking points include the further bastardization of the term “sour” in beer; an embarrassing mask faux pa...
Aug 12, 2020•1 hr 24 min•Season 7Ep. 340
Recent years have seen a surprising emergence of Chicago as one of the top destinations for hop enthusiasts, bolstered by a few well-publicized national medals and hype-inducing haze makers. But there were those that helped reshape our palates in the early days: the local leaders of hops. For this show, we review five hoppy beers ( Oops! All Hazy ) from some of the original hop-crazy Chicago breweries. Also, we take a seat on the Hot Bench, discuss seasonal drinkers vs. temperature drinkers, sla...
Aug 05, 2020•1 hr 17 min•Season 7Ep. 339
So, was anyone going to tell us that gose puns weren’t cool anymore? Well, at least the beers are better than they’ve ever been as we sample five enhanced goses from local breweries that only leave us feeling a little salty. Pineapples, coconuts, lavender, lactose - what won’t these crazy breweries put in a gose these days?!? Also, we address the hairless bear in the room, remember when we used to do research, kill some time with some salt talk, sell our urban foraging secrets, rename our erotic...
Jul 29, 2020•1 hr 14 min•Season 7Ep. 338
Once we accepted the cancellation of beer fests for the foreseeable future, we knew we had a hole to fill. A farmhouse hole. So, we do our best to recreate one of our favorite annual events - our annual Illinois Craft Beer Week event, Saisonathon - by drinking a wide array of saisons from the comfort of our own homes. There are eight wildly different saisons - six from local breweries - that require us to seek a little off-mic assist from our wives. But mainly, we sing our sweet praises of the s...
Jul 22, 2020•1 hr 51 min•Season 7Ep. 337
If it seems that the string of 90-degree days will never end, well have we got a beer style for you. Berliner weisses experienced a considerable rejuvenation in the last five years, but they’ve also recently become synonymous with overfruited slurry beers that buck any sense of tradition. On this show, we seek five local Berliners that add fruit while keeping an eye on the original style. The results are pleasurable for your ears. Additionally, we embrace our new favorite sport (it’s foot golf),...
Jul 15, 2020•1 hr 19 min•Season 7Ep. 336
If it’s been a while since you’ve last visited a craft bottle shop, you’ll likely encounter a whole new slew of labels from local breweries to explore. We pick up five beers from a few breweries we know and from a few we don’t to hopefully help you navigate those crowded shelves. Meanwhile, Ryan’s tenure as the mayor of Hazytown is short-lived; Craig is going to get cancelled by Carly Rae Jepsen fans; and we uncover the truth about all the fireworks. Plus, there’s beer-to-movie comparisons, doom...
Jul 08, 2020•1 hr 20 min•Season 7Ep. 335
After months of curbside-only beer shopping, craft bottle shops have opened their doors to customers looking to pluck some single cans off the shelves in hopes of discovering a few new favorites. We did just that at The Open Bottle in Tinley Park, finding five beers from out-of-state breweries to check out, leading us to one mystery after another. But in that exploration, we learn a lot about ourselves, including just how much older we are than Willy Wonka. (I know, right?!?) This bevvy of contr...
Jul 01, 2020•1 hr 25 min•Season 7Ep. 334
By the time you hit that third Zoom meeting of the day, you’re likely thinking about a beer to drink discretely that won’t get you in trouble. On this episode, we have five very different beers that all land under 6 percent, which should keep you out of trouble with HR. Craig seeks out some movie recommendations, Ryan wishes he had a Willi, and we discuss 3-time World Dabbing Champion Tom Emanski. We also discuss the merits of the margarita gose, get shocked to the core by a City Slickers revela...
Jun 24, 2020•1 hr 17 min•Season 7Ep. 333
Even though people are chasing pre-orders instead of trucks these days, Hop Butcher is still as hot as ever thanks to their consistent schedule of mostly hoppy - and mostly hazy - releases. The variation amongst these six beers is surprisingly significant, despite all being some sort of play on IPA. This episode is a tribute to what this brewery has become, and we’re satiating the Hop Butcher nerds with two trivia games and some additional information about all elements of their process - plus a...
Jun 17, 2020•1 hr 34 min•Season 7Ep. 332
Soothing that early summer heat with big ol’ glasses of lactose and hops, we’re sharing shakes from afar this week with the hopes of better understanding our complicated relationship with this popular style. We have five very different milkshake IPAs from some local favorites and - GASP - there may be a grifter in our midst! Other childish talking points include Green River floats, new Fun Dip slogans, the merits of Neapolitan ice cream, toilet ghoulies, shower sharks, and just who is at the top...
Jun 10, 2020•1 hr 23 min•Season 7Ep. 331
Since you won’t find either of us sitting on some coffeehouse patio anytime soon, we’re bringing the coffee home in the form of five stouts. While they all deliver the caffeine and the booze, each beer stands on its own unique merits - or is a victim of context. But we’re also here to get Craig prepped to audition for the new Supermarket Sweep, including how to navigate the new craft beer aisle. We also feel nostalgic for beer travels, stop at Ryan’s cooking corner, get VIP access to the fields ...
Jun 03, 2020•1 hr 9 min•Season 7Ep. 330
Here’s hoping that we can talk you out of attending that backyard barbecue by offering up this refreshing bowl of audio fruit salad to help your summer isolation feel a bit more festive. We have five different fruited beers that really span the range from “pleasant fruit accessory” to “chunky berry sludge” - and they honestly succeed in ways we didn’t expect. We plan some totally radical ways to break up illicit social gatherings, please the Tootsie Pop conspiracy theorists, mistake Craig for In...
May 27, 2020•1 hr 11 min•Season 7Ep. 329
