Chicago 2013 Day 3

La Trappe Bock at the Map Room

6/12/13

Chicago 2013 Day 1
Chicago 2013 Day 2

We took it slower today and started with the morning at the Art Institute of Chicago.  The, we did a late lunch at Piece Brewery & Pizzeria.  I seem to love this place, as I've been to it on several trips in a row now and just keep wanting more. I decided on this incarnation that it is the combo of New Haven style pizza and a better than average brewery that gets me.  Either alone wouldn't be enough, but together it's a fun combination for a new beer or two, generally one that I like well enough for a draft and that wonderfully hot, thin crust pizza.  Easy recom for any Chicago visit.

Al wanted to visit the Map Room, which is a fine local bar that does a great job of handling the beers that they have.  I took the opportunity to try for the first time a La Trappe Bock Bier. Beautifully served but I wasn't crazy about the beer. From my notes, I was in the Map Room ten years ago with my wife and the the place is very similar today.  I would be happy to live nearby but it's not the destination bar like Hopleaf.

The Map Room

Revolution Brewing was next on our stop for some hoppy brewing swagger, starting with Triple Fist and Double Fist, triple and double IPAs respectively.  The double was disappointing but the triple was significantly better.  Ended with a saison named Coup D'Etat that was my favorite Revolution brew. We intended to eat dinner at Haymarket, so we ordered just an appetizer of Smelt and Fried Lemons with Sriracha-Lemon aioli sauce. I took some ribbing for never having had smelt before—evidently, a deficiency of my Iowa upbringing—and thoroughly enjoyed them.

Last November, I had a great time at Haymarket with my wife, niece and nephew for our Thanksgiving dinner, one of the only places open. Looking forward to our return, we showed up just before the start of the first game of the Stanley Cup with Chicago and Boston facing off.

Revolution brew house

For dinner, I went light with a bowl of Vegan Chili and a side of Mac 'N Cheese.  Both were excellent. Haymarket tries to push the limit with beer, so decided to try the Girl & the Goatee, a Belgian ale with rhubarb.  Not every experiment goes well, and this one was a mediocre success. The white peach wit Mash Made in Heaven VI was far better. Our main issue for the night was the extremely loud television for the hockey game that made it uncomfortable to sit for the evening. We left as the Blackhawks started to come back for the eventual triple overtime win.

Revolution Brewing main bar

Al had a friend who said he needed to hit Au Cheval.  We were a bit chagrined looking at our phones to realize that we had walked past it on the way to Haymarket; it was on the opposite corner from where we were sitting.  So, we stopped in for one.  I added a new brewery with a draft of Against the Grain's Tickle Me Ale-Mo, an excellent wild ale.  We shared the crisp fries with mirnay sauce, garlic aioli and fried farm egg on top. To my surprise, I like egg on my fries. Too dark to take a picture—or really see for that matter, Au Cheval is an upscale bistro that happens to have a pretty good draft list.  Stopping for one didn't really do this place justice, though I will probably pass on stopping for a full meal since the menu isn't very veggie friendly.

That's Chicago!  At least, our version of it.  A great time with friends and I feel like I have only scratched the surface of this quickly developing beer city.  

Chicago 2013 Day 2

Urine Trouble collaboration
at Northdown

6/11/13

Chicago 2013 Day 1

To start Day 2, we were on the hunt for a Surly collaboration ale with Three Floyds called Urine Trouble that Al read about that morning.  We found it online at Northdown and decided to head out before it opened.  We were happily rewarded with it still on tap:

Three Floyd/Surly Urine Trouble: Heather liked the hoppy funk of the smell but the grassy taste put her off. Lemon and orange without the grapefruit integrated well with the clean and bright brett. Burnt orange ale with a delicate white film after the tightly bubbled head fell. Very fun and interesting beer from two of the industry's best hoppy breweries.

To follow up the first pint, I recognized a brewery that I liked from my Denmark trip: To Øl.  Brewmance, an Imperial bourbon Barrel Aged Wild Honey Stout is a collaboration with a brewery new to me, Omnipollo.  Brewmance has a deep black body with a dark head in the tiny pour of this 12% stout to start the day. Alcohol in the nose without being overly hot and plenty of barrel, fig and a hint of dark cherry chocolate. Sweet and winey on the tongue and then the stout, wood and liquorice hits on the back of the tongue to counter point the sweetness.

Northdown is a nice local with a small but well curated selection of very cool beers. Unfortunately I will have to leave the 't Gaverhopke Quad for another day since we're planning to have lunch at the Local Option with a friend a mine, a former debater from my days teaching in LA.

Mural at Local Option

Local Option feels a lot like Triple Rock in Minneapolis—a pissed off punker vibe except that the beer selection is much stronger.  Unfortunately, the kitchen didn't open until 3 p m, so we were only able to drink but not get any food.  Looking at the website later, it doesn't it make it clear on the menu or the front page that food and operating hours differ, so I feel a little better that it wasn't my research that left us starving through a few beers.

Local Option brews its own beers at other breweries.  Today, we sampled the La Petit Mort brewed at Central Waters and Militiagan brewed at Dark Horse.  At one time this would have stigmatized this very good beer, but Local Option categorizes itself (rightfully) as a brewery since they brew their beer themselves on someone else's equipment because. Since I believe the art is in the brewer and not the equipment being on site, I praise them and wish more places would follow their example and make use of brewing capacity that already exists.  We followed this up with an excellent Dark Horse draft of Old Man aged in Templeton Rye barrels and shared a bottle of Iron Throne by Brewery Ommegang, the latter brewed in connection with the show Game of Thrones. While not a watcher of the show, maybe I should if it's half as good as the beer.

Half Acre brewery front

Hungry, we headed off to find food and add local friends from the speech world.  En route, we happily stumbled upon a pizza by the slice place called Chicago's Pizza, a micro-local chain of three restaurants in this part of town. I had just said I wish I was in New York and could just grab a slice and there appeared our salvation. Since it was thick slice, they asked if we wanted to sit for our slice; odd, but it sounded nice so we did.  I ordered a Metropolitan Krankshaft Kolsch and Al got a Finch's Golden Wing. Both are Chicago breweries I haven't had yet; Al won this one, picking the better of the two.  Pizza was good, but not a slice I would go out of my way for in the competitive deep dish pizza market of Chicago.

Next stop was the taproom of Half Acre Beer Co.  We've seen a lot of Half Acre around town and they seem to be the up and coming brewery of Chicago.  While I like the beers I sampled and all were well brewed, my initial evaluation was that the beers were all of the same mold with little variation. From what I tasted, Half Acre seems like a one trick pony that happens to have a very good trick. Next time I see Half Acre on tap, I will start with their draft early to give them a better shot.

The Bad Apple draft and bottle lists

The Bad Apple Bar is just down the block from Half Acre. Very cool local bar with a wide selection to drink.  We were in full social mode at this point, so my lone note besides my drafts was that the beer battered cheese curds are light and fluffy. For dinner, I remember having a Strange Famous, a mushroom and seiten veggie burger that was tasty and unique. On the stop, I finally added Spiteful Brewing to my database with their Bitter Biker and expanded my sampling from Solemn Oath with the Snaggletooth Bandana, both very good brews and well served.

With the help of some local friends, we took the 50 Bus to the famous Hopleaf, avoiding a longer trip toward downtown on the L and back out on another line.  An altercation between the bus driver and a rider (not us!) cut into our drinking time as we filled out incident reports so the driver could prove that he was in the right.  Not what we expected but an interesting story for the weekend.

Back bar at Hopleaf

Walking into Hopleaf, I found it impossible to resist starting with Atomium by Brouwerij van Steenbergh because I visited the incredibly over hyped namesake of the beer last summer (Atomium in Brussels created for the 1958 World Fair ). The beer disappointed nearly as much as the tourist trap. Al then bought bottles of De Cam Oude Geueze 2000, a decade older version of the extremely excellent beer I tasted for the first time last last summer at the Lambic Discovery Center, which was absolutely sublime when aged, and De Ranke XX Bitter, also excellent. My local friend Ben and I responded with two bottles of Founders from the "special" case: Doom and Bolt Cutter, each living up to Founders' fine reputation. I ended the evening with a Ballast Point Sculpin, a legendary IPA that I've never been able to taste before.  To top off the evening, a former student who was training downtown for her job was able to meet up with us at the stop as well. Overall, Hopleaf provides the beer geek (for a price) with the option for a truly transcendent experience and I look forward to spending more time there in the future.

On the day, two of my former students, one from LA and one from Minnesota, plus speechie slash beer friends from Minnesota and Chicago, all gathered together for various parts of the day to hit some excellent beery spots without a single clunker. In short, a near perfect pub crawl with friends old and new.

Chicago 2013 Day 3

Chicago 2013 Day 1

Feloniousmonk and his FFF beer haul

6/10/13

Because Three Floyds is a short trek from Chicago in Munster, IN, Al and I picked up our friend Heather and headed to FFF first with the car before parking for the weekend.  Plus, it was Al's top choice on the weekend.

FFF is becoming a regular stop, so I will just add the highlights. I started with In the Name of Suffering, a black IPA, that was super smooth and hoppy.  Tiberian Inquisitor, a golden Belgian, and Toxic Revolution, a stout porter, were also positives of the stop.

Before each trip to FFF, I check the every changing menu online because it's not always very veggie friendly.  However, they took the bacon out of the White Cheddar Mac n Cheese for me and it was delicious.  Heather and I shared the smoked octopus (I'm pescetarian now) with "ramp pesto, cherry tomatoes, pickled ramps, arugula, mint and grilled bread." Quite amazingly good for eating tentacles.

FFF White Cheddar Mac n Cheese 

While en route to Chicago, Al received word via the social network that a former Minnesota beer friend Adam Schulte, who now works for Artisanal Imports in Chicago, said we should head to Headquarter's Beercade for a special Meantime tapping.

Walking in, the Beercade is eerily similar to Barcade in Brooklyn. The bartender quickly confirmed that Beercade was inspired by Barcade.  The two main differences is that Beercade is less sketchy of a place and neighborhood, and the games can be played for FREE!  While pumping a few quarters is no big deal, it was a lot of fun to just hit restart on Asteroids a few times because of my rusty play (200 points from making the top ten!). While the games aren't as classic as at Barcade, many are from the 80s plus newer ones from the 90s that I don't know how to play.




Nice mix of local and regional brews in the tap list.   I started with the Solemn Oath Mythological Wonder, which was ok. In researching to put it on the list, I saw that it was a collaboration with Sun King, not a favored brewery by me.  To be nostalgic, I ordered a can of Olympia. As a kid, my dad drank Olympia for years until he changed over to Miller Lite.  I see why he changed now.  The Meantime beers came on and I had samples of the barleywine and the scotch ale.  The scotch ale on draft was every bit the beer I had tried in bottles from the Rare Beer Club in 2007. Maybe the best scotch ale anywhere.  My draft of the barleywine fell victim to high expectations. Still a very good beer, but not what I hoped for.

Like Barcade, there's no food service at Beercade.  Our bartender kindly recommended his favorite pizza place and we ordered Giordano's for delivery.  I gave the doorman my name and he nicely watched for our pizza and directed it to us. Very excellent, full meal after the lighter fare I had at Three Floyds.

At Beercade, I was chatting with Chris, who was the owner of a local business called Bee's Knees, which makes bar snacks. Later in the weekend, we were able to find them at the Map Room, and can report that the Chipotle Lime were assertively hot and tasty.

Sheffield's 

Again, based on a recommendation from someone at the bar, we ended the night at Sheffield's, which was in walking distance down the street.  Natural cut fries with aioli sauce appeared at the table (not sure who ordered them)—very good.  I ended the night with a Green Flash Imperial Rye IPA and happy that Green Flash is almost always a good bet.  Al ordered a bottle of 2007 Bigfoot Barleywine, which was solid but past its prime with a bit too much oxidation. We sat in the small bar up front, but from walking around and the website, there's a lot more to Sheffield's than meets the eye.  The aged bottle list, a portion of which we saw in a cooler, was the main reason for the recom. While Beercade has cool beer and is full of hipsters, Sheffield's down the street has an older crowd and the bar seems to cater more to the beer geek. We clearly shortchanged Sheffield's as the last stop of the night, but can't drink every place first, especially when it was unplanned.

Great first day in Chicago.  In the future, I would like to go back for an extended time at Beercade for playing the games until I had my fill while sipping on local beers—slowly, so as not to interfere with the game play. This also should be done alone, to relieve any guilt or pressure to play less or draw focus from the transporting back in time. Or, possibly, the day could be done with a geek of similar passion or old arcade games and beer. When sated on nostalgia with my name in the top ten of a few games, I'd head to Sheffield's for a bottle of something special to end the night.

Chicago 2013 Day 2