American Homebrew Association members are invited to a, uh, rally (?) tomorrow at the Goose Island brewery in the fulton market. It looks like the rally includes a brewery tour, complimentary samples of Goose Island beer, a meet and greet with the brewers and a chance to chat up some folks from Siebel and White Labs.

This is from 6-9pm at the Goose Island brewery 1800 W. Fulton Street in Chicago.

If you’re not an AHA member you can sign up at the door. This is free for members. You can RSVP here.

If I don’t go see Inception at the IMax again, I’ll probably be there. Come and rub my belly.

I just scrubbed this from Half Acre’s blog. Sounds awesome, almost awesome enough for me to jump on it despite it being so spendy. Check it out:

Half Acre is taking part in a big collaborative beer dinner on Feb 22, 2010.

Every year, Mindy Segal, owner of Hot Chocolate on Damen, throws a celebratory anniversary event. This is her 5th anniversary and she’s put together a beer dinner that promises be stellar. 7 chefs & 7 breweries.

Check out the lineup of talent:

Benjamin Caulfield of Three Floyd’s passed apps…House made charcuterie
Nick Lessins of Grate Lakes Brewing Co passed apps

Aric Miech…Hot Chocolate (starter) with Half Acre Beer Co

Bill Kim…Urban Belly/Belly Shack (soup) with Lagunitas

Paul Kahan…Blackbird/Avec/Publican/Big Star (Seafood/Fish) Three Floyd’s

Michael Kornick…mk/dmk (poultry or game) Goose Island

Rick Bayless…Topolobombo/Frontera grill (meat) Surly Brewing Co.

Paul Virant…Vie restaurant (composed cheese) Revolution Brewing Company

Mindy Segal…Hotchocolate (dessert) Piece Brewery

Tickets are $150 per person and will likely sell out fast. See Hot Chocolate for details.

Chicago has a new haunt for beer lover’s in the North Center neighborhood, the Bad Apple. Doing their best to take their place among Chicago heavy hitters like Kuma’s, Small Bar and the Map Room, Bad Apple tries to mix an educated collection of draught and bottled beers with tasty, beer friendly – and often beer prepared – food, and the Bad Apple succeeds more often than misses.

I’ve been to Bad Apple twice now. The first was last Friday before Matt and I went to the 5th Annual Festiv-Ale at the new Half Acre Brewery and, speaking frankly, it was a pretty disappointing experience. I had read some extremely positive reviews on both BeerAdvocate and Yelp, making some pretty great claims about both the beer programming and the food. Excited to try a new bar in town we ducked in for a pre-Festiv-Ale drink.

The first thing I was struck by is that Bad Apple is clearly not a bar. It has a bar, but it is definitely a restaurant with a bar in it. Now, whether the owners would admit this or not is not immediately clear to me as it seems they haven’t totally made up their mind on this. When you walk in the front door the first thing you see is a bar – low hanging red globed lights, an exposed brick wall and several flatscreen tvs – opposite the bar is about a half-dozen high-sitting tables with stools. They’ve worked the hardest on this first of three rooms. It’s clean, modern, and trying a bit too hard. The room seems to be designed to reflect well off shiny shirts and waxed chests. Not my cup of macho, but it is forgivable.

Unfortunately, the other rooms – the back room and a side game room – have been given much less consideration. Strange layout and cheap furniture force you to take a second look at the front room undoing the rather thin veneer of pretense and paint that may have first fooled you. Bad Apple is just not a warm place, it looks like it might have been decorated by a forty-something day trader redecorating his “man cave” after a divorce. No personality, but a tangible, uncomfortable ache to be liked. But by who?

Our interaction with the staff on our first visit was pretty negative, too. Two of the three people we interacted with were rude even as we went out of our way to be friendly. Fortunately, last night, on my second visit, our waiter was much different. Friendly, attentive, and knowledgeable he helped make me want to repeat our experience.

One last negative thing and then I’ll stop focusing on the Bad part of this Bad Apple. The music has been pretty terrible both times I’ve been in there. After enjoying our beers for about 20 minutes last night all the sudden the pretty crummy sound system in the game room started blatting out the Austin Powers theme song – no shit. At first I thought some douchebag’s cellphone was going off, but it slowly became obvious that this was coming out of bars speakers. The rest of the night was a mix of 80′s and dub. Bad Apple could go a long way in bringing in someone with musical taste to help them design their sound system as well as their audio programming. With the vibe they seem to be going for they might want to consider hiring a DJ or two to spin some tasteful, down-tempo beats and help them out with their paper-thin monitors.

Ok, the upswing of Bad Apple? Two things. Two very important things. They’ve got a great beer selection. Last night, if I can remember correctly, they had Left Hand Milk-Stout, Great Lakes Dortmunder Gold, Two Brother’s Heavy Handed, Founder’s exceptional IPA, Goose Island’s Matilda, Half Acre’s Daisy Cutter, Karmaleit Triple, New Holland’s Really Delicious and Surprising Charkoota Ale, One of New Belgium’s Lips of Faith series, and several others I can’t recall. They had Surly Cynic the first visit there, but, even without Cynic last night, they had their bases well covered. Bad Apple offers a beer menu, which, in itself is great, with all of their beers well described with region, tastes, and ABV listed.

The other upswing? The food we had was amazing. We started with their Montreal Poutine. If you read this blog at all you know I’m apey about Poutine. As far as I know there is only one other establishment in Chicago where you can get Poutine, Small Bar. Small Bar serves their Poutine with a shift away from the traditional faire, they replace the brown gravy with a sausage gravy. It’s an amazing twist on the classic dish, so I was curious to see if Bad Apple would follow that lead or go the traditional brown gravy path. I was happy to discover Bad Apple went with the brown gravy, and it was an amazing brown gravy. Seriously, it was so good my wife and I sat there rubbing our fingers through the remaining gravy doing brown gravy nummies until the waiter came and took the smudged plate away from us. There is a distinct flavor to this brown gravy, but I can’t peg it for the life of me. It may just be a gang of garlic and salt, but I think it’s something else. There is a flavor in that gravy that I’ve only noticed in thai dishes previously and it works amazingly. And it goes exceptionally well with the Charkoota Rye.

For our main course we took the strong recommendation from our waiter and had the Slow Burn burger. Chili peppers and garlic sauteed throughout the day on top of a bacon and white chedder hand packed patty and cooked to order. The only time I really notice the grade of meat in a burger is when it’s exceptionally good or terribly bad and the Slow Burn definitely made me take notice. The bun and burger literally melted in my mouth and, coupled with the delicious pepper saute, covered my mouth in a delicious, subtle, but thorough coat of easy warmth that hung around several minutes after each delicious bite of the burger went down. Slow Burn is an incredibly appropriate name for this burger. Masterfully made to have heat, but deliver it gently over time and with surprising sustain, dip this wonderful little beast in a just a dab of the table mustard and sit back and let your taste buds find their tone. I can safely say this burger is the best I’ve been able to enjoy here in Chicago and, believe me, I have had a king’s ransom of burgers. I’ll say that again: Bad Apple’s Slow Burn is the best designed burger I have enjoyed in Chicago to date. And kudo’s to our server for recognizing the brilliance of this burger and being able to read his guest’s well enough to know to recommend it.

Ah yes. We also got our hand cut fries covered in truffle oil. Mother of Pete, if you ever make your way to the Bad Apple, and, despite said drawbacks, I really think you should, you must have your french fries covered in truffle oil. It’s like an extra $.75 or something menial, but the deep flavor of the truffle just pops on the crispy fries and is an ideal compliment to the burger. I have heard a lot of good things about duck fries, though I have yet to try them. I’d be willing to bet they couldn’t be any better than the truffle oil fries I had last night.

So there you have it. Chicago’s Bad Apple, it’s not without it’s flaws, but it’s upswing makes passable the bummer atmosphere. If they could get their aesthetic a bit warmer, find comfort in a personality, and lose that offensively dumb apple with the mohawk they could have a really fantastic place. Until then, I will be visiting again to try the goat cheese fondue and their Ebel Weiss ham and swiss, but if they could get their comfort level up they might not ever be able to get me to leave.

Oh, hey, guys, get a freaking website too, eh?

Seriously???

On October 2nd the doors to the retail store for the Half Acre Beer Company will officially become open to the public when they host the 3rd annual Festiv-Ale at their brand new north Lincoln Ave. location. And, with the opening of the Half Acre storefront, another new milestone will be set for beer drinking in our fair city of Chicago.

Sitting in the heart of the beer-loving midwest and long believed to be a town of beer drinkers, Chicago plays host to, depending on who you ask, anywhere from about 350 – 1800 bars. But, despite it’s reputation and the staggering number of places you might find yourself indulging in this heavenly concoction, Chicago has, until very recently, been a bit anemic on the craft beer tip. It’s a bit embarrassing really, what with Wisconsin to the north of us and Michigan to the east, Two Brothers out in Warrenville. Hell, even Indiana has 3 Floyd’s.

However, in the past couple years we’ve seen the rise of two new breweries within the confines of Chicago proper, Metropolitan Brewery and Half Acre Beer Company. Both standing as a testament to the spirit of Chicago and quickly becoming ambassadors for the City in their own right, these two craft beer establishments have helped put new life into Chicago’s beer scene that, for too many years, had become a bit boring being home to only one brewery, Goose Island. But, as craft beer continues to explode around the country and an undeniably exciting beer renaissance is under way, could it be we’re seeing Chicago transform from it’s pilsner induced slumber into becoming a notable contender with other great beer cities around the country? Ok, fair enough, that may be putting the cart before the clydesdale a bit, but, however you slice it, it’s an exciting time to be a beer glutton here in the city of broad shoulders.

Half Acre Beer Company bills itself as a “community based brewing company” and boasts a steady line up of 4 delicious beers from their very solid Over Ale to it’s amazing Daisy Cutter Pale Ale which, in my estimation, stands just atop the Surly Furious as the tastiest Pale Ale I’ve been blessed to wrap my big fat fish lips around. In addition to brewing a roster of beers that challenge you not to drink them Half Acre also supports a competitive bike team and a number of socially conscious organizations helping to make good on their claim as a “community based” organization.

In anticipation of the opening the Half Acre storefront at 4257 N. Lincoln Ave, which will be opening the first week in October, we shot some questions over to the brains and brawn behind Half Acre, Gabriel Magliaro, which he was kind enough to answer:

As far as I’m aware Chicago now has 3 local breweries to the city proper – Goose Island, Metropolitan, and you guys, Half Acre. How do you fit into this collection? Do you see your roles as competitive, or adding to a growing Craft Beer community both in Chicago and nationally, or both?
GM:I don’t see us as competitors. Chicago is a big town and there’s room for all of us to exist. If a bar has 10 beers on tap I’d rather see locals have one and let the out-of-town breweries fall into the remaining slots.

How do you differentiate yourself from Goose Island and Metropolitan… or any other Craft Beer for that matter?
GM:DIfferentiation comes in a bunch of forms, I suppose. We like to think our vibe has a different feel. We’re a young company, both in existence and how old we are as people. I think we have a level of sophistication, but also have younger edge to our identity. Beer wise, Metro is brewing Lagers, and they’re committed to that, which is great. Goose has dabbled in everything and has a huge portfolio that’s easily accessed. We brew beers we want to drink and try to make them as interesting for us as possible – we hope that carries out to the consumer.

There seems to be a very strong sense of local Chicago pride to Half Acre which shows, most obviously, in the Beer Hunt’s that you host. What is it that makes you so proud to be in Chicago and why did you choose to show that through something like the Beer Hunt?
GM:Chicago is a great town, and I think most Chicagoans are very proud of their city. The Half Acre has various levels of meaning for us, and part of that is the natural inside this urban juggernaut that we live in. The hunt is a great way for us to explore the city, get outside on the motorcycle and have fun, then pass that on. Getting people out and about and enjoying themselves, we feel, is very positive.

Clearly Half Acre’s passions extend beyond the brewing of delicious beer. You also sponsor a competitive bicycle team and involve yourself in socially conscious activities like the upcoming Brews Not Bombs. Do you see a common thread between these interests, something that drives you to each of them however disparate or seemingly unrelated they are?
GM:We try to pair up with people that are motivated and having fun. We try to support as much as we can while not putting ourselves out of business. Half Acre Cycling is a great group of people who race to have fun and get better at it. It’s an easy fit.

Right now Daisy Cutter has a deep and rooted hold on my liver. It’s presently the finest Pale Ale I’ve been able to taste. Which is your preferred Half Acre Brew? What kind of brews should people be looking forward to in the future from Half Acre?
GM:I drink a lot of the Daisy, as well. We have a number of specialty brews coming out and have been trying to step out with new beers as much as possible. We have specialty release coming out in October called Magnus, a big Schwartz that we’re hoping will be delicious. Our goal is to release a specialty beer once a month and sell it in our store and other spots around town.

What’s the most memorable (flavor, location, event, and company all considered) beer you’ve ever drank?
GM:There’s been a lot of those, but one that sticks out in my mind right now was drinking some Ellie’s Brown at Avery in Boulder. I had had numerous beers before and the weather was clutch. I was drinking this beer, which is a great brown beer, when Ellie herself came running out of nowhere and basically landed on my lap. I love dogs, I love Colorado and beer.

You’re opening your brew pup here in less than a month. What should people expect from the Half Acre brew pub? And, of all the restaurants and bars in Chicago, why should they come to yours?
GM:We’re not opening a brewpub. We’re opening a retail store where people can buy beer directly from us. It should be unique. There will be offerings here that you can only get here. We will also carry beers and spirits from other companies that we admire.

Is there a Half Acre philosophy that is applied to your beer creations?
GM:Brew beer you want to drink.

When you’re not drinking your own beer what do like to drink?
GM:I drink the beer of others all the time. I try to support the locals and seek out the latest and greatest from those who I respect.

If there was one piece of advice you could give people to help them enjoy beer even more thoroughly than they do now, what would it be?
GM:Stop thinking so hard.