non-local breweries

Last Saturday, the Festival of Barrel Aged Beer rocked the Chicago Journeymen Plumbers' Hall in the West Loop. This annual tasting of strong and tangy beers from the wood was the biggest yet with 113 beers from 41 breweries from 14 states. The Plumbers' Hall turned out to be an excellent venue for this event, with visual appeal, good acessbility, and a nice loading dock for getting all those kegs in and out. The affable Pete Crowley from Rock Bottom was the driving force behind the event, and now I've got a better understanding of how they kick so much beer out of that brewpub downtown. Personally, in addition to the beer, I enjoyed the solidarity with the Plumbers' who are invaluable partners in the everyday work of making beer. The eastern spiral staircase in the hall was home to the wonderful mural above, which was credited to 'National Decorating Service "Studios" 1960'. I look forward to the day the Illinois Craft Brewers Guild has such a nice hall to decorate with inspiring verse.

Back to the beer event, there were far too many tasty beers to mention but I enjoyed Goose Island's blackberry rye aged in cabernet barrel brew aptly named Juliet. I preferred the wild, sour beers, but lord did I sampled plenty of barley wine in one day. Piece's Monkey Knuckle (cousin of the Camel Toe) had some nice hop for a barley wine and Lost Abbey's Angel's Share was the most refined of the bunch. Tomme Arthur of Lost Abbey/Pizza Port stopped by the Handlebar today in the midst of their Chicago launch of bottled product. A nice guy making nice beer.

I was honored to speak my experience trying to open a brewpub at the Craft Brewers Conference in sunny San Diego last week. A couple highlights from the trip:

The welcome reception at Stone Brewing's production plant and restaurant, Stone World Bistro & Gardens was a great way to kick things off. Wow. Beautiful Rolec brewhouse, great hoppy beer and an amazing landscaped grounds. They gave the 2000 or so attendees the full run of the place, including old friend Carla from Ipswich Ales seen here hanging out on the brewhouse deck.

The brewhouse was clean and well organized. My favorite piece of equipment was this custom made keg ring holder:

San Diego seems to have a pretty cohesive brewery scene and they sure are proud of their Imperial (or double) IPA's. Every night the California Small Brewers Association hosted a late night session supplied by a custom-made 100 tap cooler of local beers. Too many good beers to mention (or remember).

I left right as the World Beer Cup awards were being announced. It was good to see that Goose's Matilda got recognized. And somehow former Goose brewer and defending champion mid-size brewer Matt Bryndilson of Firestone Walker won four medals but lost his title to Germany's Privatbrauerei Hoepfner.

I'm just about through with Dogfish Head founder Sam Calagione's business-advice book, Brewing Up A Business. Never being one to drift anywhere near the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, this is one of the few business books I've read. It is clearly aimed at those involved in small business or thinking about getting into it, and it offers a smattering of lessons on understanding your consumer and guerrilla marketing. Given the strong following for their beers, non-business oriented beer geeks might get a kick out of it if you don't mind the constant reminders of Calagione's sales philosophy.

The book is fortunately not loaded with buzz words but they make an appearance in between fun personal stories of crashing beer delivery trucks and exploding fermenters. It is an amazingly fast read, especially for generally slow readers like myself. He got his degree in English and it shows. The book is also chopped up into short sections that are tailor made for today's news-bite hungry world.

I tend to agree with guy on most of his sales philosophy although I'm more of a fan of keeping things local rather than spreading quickly around the country as they have. But coming from little ol' Delaware, I don't blame him for looking beyond the borders. Here in Chicago, we're lucky to have lots of mouths and livers to satisfy in close proximity.

Calagione was just in town doing a tasting at Sheffield's of his beers alongside cheese from the about-to-close The Cheese Stands Alone up in Lincoln Ave. I didn't make it over but I'm sure many of the combos went well since Dogfish is known for including odd herbs, fruits and spices in their ales that could counterbalance cheese flavors nicely.

I'm a big fan of their wide range of beers and have an essentially fond memory of tasting their 60 minutes IPA for the first time in Miami Beach. While I waited in the rental car with our napping kids outside a natural foods store, my wife ventured inside to fetch a few things including some brew for daddy. South Florida is known for many things, but I wasn't finding much good beer on the trip. Not knowing what brands they would have, I asked for 'something something' pale ale leaving my fate in the wind. You've got to understand that with two kids under 3, we spent much of the trip by the beach and the pool and the opportunities for any adult debauchery were pretty slim. But later that night while the rest of Miami Beach drank cocktails in cafes and clubs, I sat on the balcony of the hotel room looking out at the ocean with the joyous taste of hops on my tongue. And all was good.