- Best beer: Central Waters XX. Great creamy mouthfeel, fantastically fudgy chocolate and barrel notes. IMO it may well be the best anniversary stout they've done since 16.
- Second-best beer: Smooth Whopperator from Mikerphone. Ridiculously thick malted chocolate milk stout. Loved my little pour; hated not being able to stay for more but I do not enjoy traffic and I would've been in the thick of it if I had.
- Third-best beer: Mango Smoothie Resist from The Brewing Projekt. This may have been the best milkshake-style IPA I've ever had. Not that I've had many, since I don't trade for East Coast stuff and the local ones I've had have been rather meh.
- Notes on Half Acre: I was there Tuesday, when they were rolling out the new food menu. I'd somehow never eaten at the OG Lincoln Avenue spot (true fact: if HA had been around ca. 2000-2002, it would've been barely a block from my apartment). I opted for the brisket burrito, which came with chimichurri potatoes. Both the main dish and the side were delicious; likely the second best thing I ate all week.
- Notes on Mikerphone: It's always great to hit Mikerphone and tick their latest brews. I was there the week before but just to grab bottles because the tap room line was really long for the Vanillanoize release. The bar on this Thursday was full up so I was forced to sit with strangers and interact with them and stuff. ;) Also had an employee tease about something cool that is coming up but I can't for the life of me guess what it is but I already plan to be there on the day he mentioned.
- Notes on Energy City: I've heard good things about Energy City's beers. They release once a month AFAIK, and it looks like they do bombers of NEIPAs, stouts, porters, etc. Today was a release day so I headed over there after we got out early from some volunteer work we try to do one Saturday morning a month over at the Northern Illinois Food Bank. After about 10 minutes of waiting I was barely inside the door, but the vibe seemed pretty cool. Basically on their release days the brewer talks about the beers and hands out samples to people who are waiting to buy bottles. Once I found out that the NEIPA had kicked I decided not to leave my wife waiting in the car any longer and we had to meet friends for lunch, so I bailed. But I hope to actually buy from them some time in the future and chat with the brewer!
Best stroke of luck: Winning the TG Assassin lottery. It's literally the first beer event lottery I've won since an Upland Sour release lottery like four years ago. The release is also going to be a fascinating experience, I think.
Other future-forward beer stuff: I bought two tickets for KBS Week, so I'll be getting a double allocation during a single-day up-and-back in early March. I have already pledged a number of bottles to friends and will likely trade a bunch of it if it's as meh as last year's batch was. I failed to get a ticket for Spiteful's upcoming event (they sold out in a minute and I literally forgot about it until five minutes into the sale), so let's not even talk about that right now.
No comments:
Post a Comment