I’ve slowly come to realize while building our brew system that the tools and techniques compiled to create our beer are as much a part of us and our creation as the finished beverage that comes out of it. And, like every good work of art, this one, too, will never be finished. Transcended, maybe [...]
Category Archives: Review
A Mash/Boil Screen Has Made Homebrewing Much Easier
Fuck Me, Pay You
Cuz I can get 4 of these bad mammy jammies for what I’d pay for 1 of those wicked Kratwerk sweaters. Sweater blog!
Speidel Braumeister, a 1-piece, enclosed brew system?
Hiya. Don’t worry, I still love you even though we don’t hang out as much anymore. Really, I do. And don’t be so insecure, it’s making you seem fat. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Either way, knock it off. While I’ve been traveling the finer end of the seasonal shifts and enjoying these [...]
Great Taste of the Local Option
Local Option is like the black tar Heroine of Chicago beer bars. It’s dark, effective and it doesn’t fuck around. Case in point is this Friday’s event, “The Great Taste of the Local Option”, featuring 31 of the most well programmed beers you’re bound to find in any bar, let alone any bar in Chicago. [...]
The Season of the Goat: Farm to Table Goat & The Joy of Open Pit, Whole Beast BBQ
Earlier this season I put a fire pit in my back yard. Actually, that was the first thing I put in my backyard. A firepit, surrounded by dirt on all sides. Eventually we got around to putting in some grass and some stone work to gussy it up a bit, but the first effort was [...]
SoDak Beer
Although, I’ve been a denizen of the Windy city for near on twenty years now, I cut my teeth in the hardscrabble hills and endless prairies of South Dakota. Not a glamorous place to be from nor one that gets a lot of press, save the obligatory American pilgrimage to Mount Rushmore and the hell, [...]
Lagunitas Zephyr, Stone Dinner & Logan Square Free Concerts
I’m so bloody tired all the time lately it’s driving me up a slippery wall. I’ve had to learn the hard way that, despite my doctor’s recommendations, I apparently can’t replace a 6 hour R.E.M. cycle with pure amphetamine salts and vick’s vapor inhalors. That’s the last time I trust a surgeon I meet at [...]
Evil Twin & Mikkeller: Yin & Yang Release Night @ Bavarian Lodge
Thank filthy Jesus that Chicago Craft Beer Week is over. It was great and full of great beer, but my aging corpus can’t take an 8 day bender like it used to. But, it was awesome. Certainly, one of the best parts for me was breaking from my well-worn routine and finding new places to [...]