As I mentioned in my earlier post, I recently had the good fortune to return home for a long weekend to Chicago. Past the normal (and excellent) aspects about visiting - spending quality with family and friends, walking down old familiar streets, eating myself silly - there came another, more hop-and-malt centric benefit: Chicago beer distribution.
Though I love New York City and its beer scene, there are certain breweries whose product you just can't get here. This is one of the eternal challenges of being a beer nerd: your home base limits the brews that you can readily access. Vermont is blessed with Hill Farmstead, Minnesota with Surly, Wisconsin with New Glarus. Barring clever trading, inside connections, or rare events, it can be difficult to get ahold of a desired beer.
Ergo, traveling to another part of the country always carries with it the added bonus excitement of exposure to a whole new suite of available breweries. In the case of coming home to Chicago, this meant having access to beer from world-class operations such as Three Floyds, Pipeworks, Half Acre, and Revolution. Even that subset merely limits the available bounty to a handful of Chicago area breweries that only have local distribution - other non-Chicago breweries such as Lost Abbey, New Belgium, and Boulevard distribute outside of their home states, including to Illinois, but don't ship to New York.
Put simply, I stepped into Binny's Beverage Depot in Lakeview (3000 N. Clark, Chicago, IL - 773 935 9400) and my jaw hit the floor at the staggering array of new choices on the shelves. I took a languorous half-hour rolling up and down the aisles appraising the incredible variety. The first thing I asked one of the staffers about was Three Floyds, my favorite brewery. As fate would have it, the shipment had come in three hours earlier, and the eager public had already beating me in scooping it up. Given the fortune that I've had in the past with tasting Three Floyds beer, I had no reason to be upset, but I nevertheless vowed to keep my eyes open and ears perked on the odd chance that somewhere else in town got some in.
My "consolation prize" was an incredible haul. Out of those that I picked up at Binny's that day, I've so far tasted Pipeworks Flower Child, Half Acre Daisy Cutter, and Revolution Anti-Hero. I'll be reviewing he other beers that I purchased that are more amenable to cellaring (Imperial Stouts, Belgian Tripels, Saisons) when I return home to Chicago this summer.
After stopping at the venerable Chicago institution The Wiener Circle to pick up some sorely-missed Merkts-cheddar-doused fresh-cut fries, I drove back out to my family's home, stopping at Marion Street Cheese Market (100 S. Marion Street, Oak Park, IL - 708 725 7200) to investigate what they had in their always-well-stocked beer fridges (N.B. - MSCM does exceptional dinner, brunch, and cheese-plates as well; well-worth the visit if you find yourself out in Oak Park to see the Frank Lloyd Wright houses or some other attraction).
Sure enough, I got in and noticed several cases that looked to have once held Three Floyds beer, all sitting in a stack by the door. I had struck gold: Three Floyds Dreadnaught, Three Floyds Alpha King, Three Floyds Zombie Dust, and Three Floyds Gumballhead! To help properly communicate the magnitude of this find, imagine the best craftsperson or brand in your hobby, then add on the fact that their work is now quite rare except in one city in the world, and then imagine finding four of their pieces in one store, bin, or garage sale. I almost floated out of the store.
All in all, what a haul:
Now onto the reviews. I started the evening with Half Acre Daisy Cutter (5.2% ABV), a Pale Ale that is usually regarded to be a very good example of the style (6th best out of those beers with more than 100 reviews on RateBeer). Given my love for the stlyle, I was very much interested in seeing how this particular one checked out. It poured a golden orange-like color, with a one-finger white head that receded to a slight foam. A bready aroma emerged at first, bordered by some very mild, but aromatically nondescript hoppiness. Sipping revealed Daisy Cutter to be beautifully smooth with good mouth-carbonation and a slight chewiness to the malt. In terms of taste, this Pale Ale featured very pronounced malt throughout, with much fainter, round, and subtle hop notes that echoed a vaguely earthy-yeasty quality redolent of bread dough. The close was very bready and biscuit-like with a slight touch of bitter. This generally heavier showcasing of maltiness over hoppiness was in contrast to most other Pale Ales that I've had in the past, which tend to have more perceptibly assertive hops even if they're well-balanced with malt. Overall, very drinkable, but not particularly remarkable, earning a 3.75/5.
Pipeworks Flower Child (3.5% ABV), a groovily-graphically-adorned Berliner Weisse, was up next. As a quick refresher, a Berliner Weisse is a soured wheat beer originally developed in, you guessed it, Berlin starting in the 1500s. Given the low alcohol content, pleasant tartness, and refreshingly mild wheat character, this style is a prime option for pairings with robustly flavored summer BBQ foods. I, unfortunately, had not yet cleaned out the old Weber for the summer's grilling, so I had to content myself with merely drinking this one by itself.
Pipeworks, the brewery, had only opened in 2012, but had already captured RateBeer's "Best New Brewery in the World" 2013 award. This put it in highly elite company: Anchorage Brewing of Love Buzz fame and Hill Farmstead of everything fame had preceded Pipeworks as the awardees of this prize. Their unique approach so far had been to brew each particular beer in a one-and-done fashion, thereby ensure novelty, buzz, and a whole lot of eager beer-hunting.
Flower Child poured a hazy pale straw color, with only the slightest wisps of white foam adorning the surface. The nose presented wheat honey, a bit of indistinct citrus, and some apple juice with funky sourness around the edges. It sipped very lightly with high carbonation on the tongue, and intriguingly threaded a smoky BBQ wheat taste in and out of a nice sour lactic body. A yeasty taste came through on further sips. As the beer warmed up and the aromas intensified, they practically screamed out to be paired with a bleu cheese burger. Overall, while very refreshing and a great food beer, this brew didn't offer anything of particular notice, earning a 3.75/5.
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| Look at that label! Carefree hippie girl with an acoustic guitar - what's not to love? |
Later in the evening, I followed with Revolution Anti-Hero (6.5% ABV), a canned IPA. Revolution had also done well in their first year, placing in the top five new breweries in 2011. Many of the brews from Revolution are themed around late 19th and early 20th century social struggles and disturbances around labor rights and radical politics. Cross of Gold, Repo Man, Eugene Porter, Bottom Up Wit - the list goes on in highly amusing fashion.
This particular IPA poured golden orange with a full finger head on top that gradually reduced to slight foam. Citrusy and piney hop aromas emerged, followed by a slight whiff of juniper. Anti-Hero featured medium to light mouthfeel, and delivered nice round cascades of balanced malt and hops. The close was a bitter tinged bready note of somewhat unsatisfactory dullness. While perfectly drinkable, I wouldn't necessarily choose this one again; it earns a 3.5/5 overall.
Luckily, now it was time for the heavy hitters: Three Floyds, in spades. I had the chance to try Zombie Dust and Alpha King again comparatively with tasting notes, stock away a bottle of Dreadnaught to compete in a planned head-to-head-to-head later on with Pliny and Abrasive, and finally taste the heretofore elusive Three Floyds Gumballhead (5.6% ABV), their hoppy wheat ale.
Alpha King didn't fare well under more attentive scrutiny. Non-descript citrus hops aroma emanated off of solid amber body. Good mouth carbonation upon sipping was nice, but a caramelly maltiness just overwhelmed the main hop flavors. Not as balanced, and not even as good as originally rated. This one earns my first official downgrade, from its original 4.25/5 to a new 3.75/5.
Zombie Dust, meanwhile, was the perfection it had been last time. I even had the chance to taste it on tap later in the weekend at Hopleaf, as I'll write about in Part 2.
This left Gumballhead, my score for the day's haul that I'd most been looking forward to tasting. Since visiting Three Floyds back in December, I had spent an inordinate amount of time poring over the web learning about their many fantastic brews. Of all of them, Gumballhead was the one that kept drawing my eye, and not just because it featured an oddball comic creation that had once run in the local Reader newspaper (disclaimer - I know nothing about this comic, but anything that brings together comics and beer is most of the way there in my book).
Gumballhead is a Wheat Ale, a style that's commonly quite boring and one-dimensional. Three Floyds appropriately end their label description of this beer with a statement of innovative purpose: "Gumballhead [is] a refreshing American Wheat Beer that doesn't suck." I sought to put this claim to the test.
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| Gumballhead! Credit to champps-wi.com |
Gumballhead poured a slightly murky golden yellow with an afterthought of a ring on the top. A wild, earthy wheat nose emerged, with the faintest hit of citrus flitting about. As it warmed, the smooth, earthy aroma of fresh masa emerged quite unexpectedly, but pleasantly. Sipping revealed very nice mouth carbonation with a smooth, light body. Sweet starchiness led into a thoroughly wheaty flavor, with a lactic tart border surrounding hoppiness more akin to that found in a Pale Ale. A bit of creamy mouthfeel came to the fore during the transition to the beer's maltiness, followed by a a bright citrusy kick with into a peppery, wheaty finish. The "red wheat" and "boatload of Amarillo hops" touted on the label certainly were evident, though the former was expressed more than the latter with this particular bottle, perhaps as a result of the bottle not being entirely fresh. Even with this in mind, I enjoyed this unorthodox take on the Wheat Ale style, and will be sure to pick up a six pack when I come back to Chicago this summer. Overall, a 4/5.
All in all, a fantastic day of beer enjoyment and evaluation. In part 2 of "Gone Home to Chicago", I'll write up Hopleaf, Chicago's best beer bar. There, not only did I have the chance to try my all-time favorite Zombie Dust on tap for the first time, but I also got to evaluate some highly-regarded brews from Bell's, B. Nektar Meadery, and Dark Horse. Check back in soon for the verdict!
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