The Great American Ale Trail (Revised Edition)
Page 26
The German and Central European immigrants who settled here certainly engrained a cultural thirst for the good stuff, and now breweries and beer bars are delving into life beyond—light years beyond—pale, watery lagers. It’s a wild time: in 2011, Anheuser-InBev, the once proudly midwestern but now foreign-owned makers of Budweiser, took control of the most famous craft brewery in the region, Goose Island, for a cool $38.8 million. Craft beer’s march keeps gathering steam, and ambitious new breweries emerge almost monthly. From Chicago and its world-famous Map Room bar to Nebraska and Missouri, where a bunch of rebel upstarts are helping remake the beer landscape from the geographical center of the nation, it’s nothing short of a sea change. Or perhaps wardrobe change is the better phrase: Beer Belt has a nice ring, doesn’t it?
ITINERARIES
1-DAY The Local Option, Map Room, Pipeworks, and The Publican (Chicago)
3-DAY One-day itinerary plus Hopleaf (Chicago), and New Glarus (WI)
7-DAY Three-day itinerary plus Boulevard (MO), the Rathskeller (IN), Heorot (IN), and Jolly Pumpkin (MI)
MISSOURI
Kansas City
BOULEVARD BREWING CO.
2501 Southwest Blvd. • Kansas City, MO 64108 • (816) 474-7095 • boulevard.com • Established: 1989
SCENE & STORY
John McDonald, a mild-mannered furniture maker, started with some used Bavarian equipment in a 100-year-old converted warehouse. His modest goal was to turn out enough beer for the die-hard beer lovers in Kansas City, perhaps topping out at 6,000 barrels a year, but the local thirst for Boulevard Pale Ale and Unfiltered Wheat was seemingly unquenchable. Fifteen years later, in 2005, he broke ground on a three-story, 70,000-square-foot expansion adjoining the original, where Belgian-born brew-master Steven Pauwels can really spread his wings. There was another major expansion in 2011, too. Boulevard is now among the largest locally owned craft breweries in the American Midwest (making over 600,000 barrels annually), with Unfiltered Wheat as the flagship. The Smokestack series, a line of experimental styles, many aged in wood, set tongues wagging in the beer-geek community. To tour the operation is to see what happens when a fully modern brewery puts ancient techniques into action. The tour even includes a taste of beers in development along the fifty-minute stroll (free, including at least four samples; reservations required). On occasion Boulevard also works with local restaurant partners to create beer and food pairings for a tour and luncheon with brewmaster Pauwels for thirty-eight dollars, which includes a tour, three-course lunch, and a souvenir pint glass. In 2013, Belgian powerhouse Duvel Moortgat bought Boulevard for an estimated $100 million, all but guaranteeing its success for decades to come.
PHILOSOPHY
Balance is everything. Pauwels brews so that countervailing sensory aspects in his beers—such as bitterness and residual sugars—play off and against one other, no matter how rudimentary the style.
KEY BEER
Tank 7 is an 8% ABV saison beer named for a fermenter that seemed to be giving Pauwels some problems for a new batch, but instead yielded one of the brewery’s best beers yet. It’s the color of hay with an aromatic fruit orchard of flavors and a peppery, dry finish. Saison-Brett (8.5 % ABV) takes this superb beer one better: it’s dry-hopped and bottle-conditioned with earthy Brettanomyces (wild yeast), or “brett,” then aged three months before leaving the brewery.
St. Louis
SCHLAFLY BOTTLEWORKS
7260 Southwest Ave. • St. Louis, MO 63143 (314) 241-BEER • schlafly.com
Established: 2003
SCENE & STORY
There are dozens of breweries in Saint Louis, home of the Big One (Anheuser-Busch), but Schlafly (pronounced schlaff-lee) is one of the best. Built in an atmospheric old wood and brick building on the National Historic Register, it has gloriously worn-in floors befitting the original microbrewer in the state, the first to set up shop after Prohibition. It’s a short walk away from both the Gateway Arch and City Museum, home of a massive, interactive monkey bars installation and the world’s largest No. 2 pencil (citymuseum.org), and makes a great stop for unwinding after both.
In 2003 Schlafly took over the former home of an old grocery store to create Bottleworks, which boasts a cool, little brewing history museum with historic cans and breweriana, a selection of beers to go in coolers, movie nights in a meeting room, and a farmers’ market on occasion in the lot. There are twelve taps and a good little pub for eats, as well. Tours (of Bottleworks) are free every Friday through Sunday from 12 to 5 p.m., and there’s also a third Schlafly pub in Lambert International Airport if you’d just like a chance to try the beers en route to or from St. Louis.
PHILOSOPHY
Good local beer for good folks. To give you an idea of their scale, consider that Anheuser-Busch produces well over 100 million barrels of beer a year. The Bottleworks location produces just 40,000 (1.2 million gallons), making it 1/100th the size, and the Tap Room brewery is even smaller.
KEY BEER
Try the 4.8% ABV Pilsner for a taste of the style of beer Anheuser-Busch might have been making 100 years ago. Also excellent: the 5.9% ABV Dry Hopped APA, or American Pale Ale, grainy and reminiscent of citrus and honey.
BEST of the REST: MISSOURI
PERENNIAL ARTISAN ALES
8125 Michigan Ave. • St. Louis, MO 63111 • (314) 631-7300 • perennialbeer.com
Phil Wymore, formerly Goose Island’s cellar master as well as the head brewer at Half Acre, tapped Cory King, a home brewer with no professional experience, to become the head brewer at his new brewery Perennial, in 2011. It was a move that would prove to be brilliant for both. With artful saisons and Belgian ales with Brett (as well as oddball projects like a squash-infused brown ale and Abraxas, a stellar stout with cacao nibs, ancho chiles, cinnamon sticks, and coffee beans), Perennial vaulted into the national beer conversation in short order. Abraxas, one of Cory King’s home brewing recipes, took a silver in the experimental category at Chicago’s Festival of Barrel-Aged Beers in 2012, and Savant Blanc pulled a gold in the American-style sour ales category in 2015.
THE SIDE PROJECT CELLAR
7373 Marietta Ave. • Maplewood, MO 63143 • (314) 224-5211 • sideprojectbrewing.com
Side Project is Cory King’s gypsy beer brand, which started (at Wymore’s invitation) within Perennial, and he now has his own attractive tasting room, opened in 2014. On offer, superbly blended, 100 percent barrel-aged (and mostly barrel-fermented) saisons, wild ales, and stouts aged in spirits barrels.
INTERNATIONAL TAP HOUSE
1711 S. 9th St. • St. Louis, MO 63104 • (314) 621-4333 • internationaltaphouse.com
A mile and a half south of Busch Stadium (home of the Saint Louis Cardinals) “iTap” (as this sleek beer bar is known) has a spacious patio with Christmas lights hanging in draped rows outside and a long row of black captain’s chairs inside facing the main event: coolers and forty-four taps totaling 500 selections inside, with a world-class selection of craft brews, not a macro in sight. It’s a long, narrow space with exposed brick, low lighting, and frequent live acoustic music (no food is served). Tuesdays feature Missouri brews, with extra rarities from Boulevard, Schlafly, and other locals. There are two more locations in St. Louis, and one in Columbia, Missouri now, too.
BRIDGE TAP HOUSE & WINE BAR
1004 Locust St. • St. Louis, MO 63101 • (314) 241-8141 • thebridgestl.com
With arty chandeliers, heavily framed black-and-white photos, polished wood, and a leaning library ladder behind the bar, this downtown St. Louis bar draws a young, casual crowd. Open every night until 1 a.m. (midnight on Sundays), it’s the best place in the city to grab dinner from the chef-driven menu or just a bite of local and house-cured charcuterie, duck, pickles, and whole raw cheeses. In addition to a comprehensive wine and farm-to-table menu, there are fifty-five taps and more than 200 bottled beers, with a full complement of Boulevard and a half-dozen Founders taps, including Goose Island’s food-friendly Sofie, an oak-aged Belgian-style
farmhouse ale aged with orange peel (6.5% ABV).
ILLINOIS
Chicago
PIPEWORKS BREWING CO.
1675 N. Western Ave. • Chicago, IL 60647 (773) 698-6154 • pdubs.net • Established: 2012
SCENE & STORY
It’s the ship that launched a thousand tippy Kickstarter canoes. Founded in 2012 by Gerrit Lewis and Beejay Oslon, home brewers who met while working at Chicago’s West Lakeview Liquors, Pipeworks was the first ever crowd-funded brewery, raising an eyebrow-raising $40,075 (on their wished-for $30,000) in January of 2012, plus a reported $40,000 through PayPal from friends, family, and supporters who missed the initial thirty-day window. Neither brewer had real-world experience beyond a brief apprenticeship with acclaimed De Struise, in Belgium, but the duo hit full speed with beers like Ninja vs. Unicorn, a resinous double IPA, and, a few months later, a whiskey barrel-aged smoked porter. Pipeworks’ beers have sold out again and again.
PHILOSOPHY
Sometimes having no experience means going no-holds-barred. Since their formation, Pipeworks has hewed to a rarely used commercial model: almost every single batch is totally unique. (The surging Gigantic, in Portland, Oregon, is also an adherent to this model.) What it means for fans of the Bucktown brewery is that every week or two a new beer lands. And that’s just how locals like it. “It’s very much a home-brew mentality,” says Cicerone (the beer equivalent of master sommelier) Chris Quinn of Avondale-area, 800-label bottle shop, the Beer Temple. “They experiment constantly. Last Kiss, for example, was a wonderfully clean and malty wee heavy brewed with molasses. Sonorous was an ‘Imperial English Summer Ale.’ I have no idea what that is—but it tasted darn good, and showed you can balance hop and yeast character in an over-the-top, imperial beer.”
KEY BEER
The guys are fond of goofy, pop-culture references (i.e., naming a “White Russian” imperial milk stout “Hey Careful Man, There’s a Beverage Here” after the classic Big Lebowski line). But Pipeworks’ brewing experiments are more bold than simply weird, skewing into the culinary (i.e., Zommelier, a smoked wheat wine with black cardamon, lemon, and black peppercorns). And with Brown & Stirred, a recent rye strong ale aged in Heaven Hill rye whiskey barrels with cherries and bitter roots—a Manhattan cocktail in beer form brewed in collaboration with Longman & Eagle, a stylish Chicago inn and whiskey bar—Pipe-works is veering into mixology terrain.
LOCAL OPTION
1102 W. Webster • Chicago, IL 60614 (773) 348-2008 • localoptionchicago.com • Established: 1988
SCENE & STORY
With black walls, a tattoo-like skull illustration on the wall, and a good-size chalkboard of hard-to-find beers that unfailingly makes the savviest beer lovers weak in the knees, this Lincoln Park beer bar has another quality many of the top beer bars in this country haven’t quite nailed: humility. Service is knowledgeable and friendly without being overly solicitous nor irritatingly aloof. There are thirty taps and over 100 bottled brews drawn from the most eagerly savored American, Dutch, and Belgian makers, such as Denmark-based Mikkeller, always an educational choice, as many of the beers are often formulated to highlight a single defining element, such as a hop variety or yeast strain. And their own line of beers, especially pathbreaking sours, is excellent. It’s even vegan-friendly.
PHILOSOPHY
As the motto in the skull says more colorfully (if inaccurately) in German, bad beer can be fatal. (Note: If jokey references to the Prince of Darkness/Satan offend you, you might want to pick another spot. These low-key guys, Jack Black–like, are all about referencing the heavy rock symbolism of 666.) Brand Ambassador Alexi Front is, in addition to being a really nice guy, a Swedish death metal aficionado. To hear the place as described by the hallowed New York Times: “Stepping in the door was like passing through a portal from a Catholic college into a disaffected teenager’s basement hideout. The walls of the dim, crowded hallway of the bar were decorated with painted flaming skulls. Death metal music roared. I waded into the mosh pit to shout an order to a tattooed bartender. . . .” What a country.
KEY BEER
Jolly Pumpkin’s Oro de Calabaza. Technically speaking, this is a bière de garde, or French for “beer to keep.” It’s earthy, oaky, spicy, floral, slightly tart, and incredibly delicious. Feeling local and devilish? Try the tasty Exorcist! foreign extra stout, which, at 8.5% ABV, “pours black as Satan’s heart.” You’ve been warned.
THE MAP ROOM
1949 N. Hoyne • Chicago, IL 60647 (773) 252-7636 • maproom.com • Established: 1992
SCENE & STORY
True to its name, the Map Room is equipped with old issues of National Geographic and huge colorful topographic charts, and the twenty-six taps and 230 bottled selections (and one cask at all times) reflect the worldly outlook. A Bucktown neighborhood standby, the cash-only bar has high ceilings with black tin tiles hung with various flags, red walls, and a half-dozen round tables along a polished wood bar, and chalkboard tap lists that require a lot of attention, because beers turn over so often. The Map Room’s owners freely admit they had no idea what they were doing when they started, but quickly fostered a community of committed beer lovers who held beer club meetings, brought back travelers’ tales, and even taught “beer school” classes, a tradition that continues in the bar to this day, led by brewer Greg Browne of Mickey Finn’s Brewery in Libertyville, north of the city.
PHILOSOPHY
The best kind of journey is one for the love of interesting beer. The Map Room’s owners and staff go to great lengths to bring back treasures they can share. As founder Laura Blasingame writes on the pub’s home page, the Map Room started out as a place “where ideas could be exchanged, where people could come to get some good social nourishment. What a better beverage to feature than beer?”
KEY BEER
Muncie, IN’s, Three Floyd’s Dreadnaught, a 9.5% ABV Imperial IPA, a lush panoply of tropical and fruit flavors like mango and peach balanced with a hefty dose of resinous hops.
SHEFFIELD’S BEER AND WINE GARDEN
3258 N. Sheffield Ave. • Chicago, IL 60657 (773) 281-4989 • sheffieldschicago.com • Established: 1980
SCENE & STORY
With three distinct bar areas and a beer garden for fair-weather days, this well-established Windy City watering hole in the Lake View area of town is known for both its great beer lists and its “Backroom Barbecue.” The whole place has red tile floors, warm, mustard-yellow walls, antique trim, old craftsman-era light fixtures, and an incredible selection of beers (thirty-eight taps; 150 bottles) from close-by favorites like Bell’s and Goose Island to West Coast cult beers and abroad to Belgian, German, and Japanese imports such as Hitachino.
PHILOSOPHY
Options make the meal. Late founder Rick Hess worked hard to give diners the choice of the best Memphis-, Texas-, and Carolina-style sauces to dress the house-smoked ribs, brisket, and other barbecue fare, and the mostly American draft beer list reflects a similar attention to detail and quality, with cask-conditioned beers, growler sales to go, and a “new and notable” list for customers.
KEY BEER
Furious, from Surly Brewing in Minnesota is, a 6.2% ABV American IPA. It’s perfect for cutting the tangy spice of the ribs.
THE PUBLICAN
837 W. Fulton Market • Chicago, IL 60607 (312) 733-9555 • thepublicanrestaurant.com • Established: 2008
SCENE & STORY
All together now! Among the most impressive aspects of the Publican is the huge square of walnut-hewn, communal table space in the center of the dining room, which seats 100 and is ringed by tiered booths and walls glowing with an earthy, ochre color and lit by striking, globelike light fixtures. The space was designed by James Beard Award winner Thomas Schlesser, and the bar area is a marvel of polished steel and brass fixtures, chic wooden tap handles, and gleaming delicate glassware for the carefully curated list of twelve taps and eighty-five bottles. Impressively, all servers, managers, and bartenders have achieved at l
east level-one certification on the dauntingly long path to becoming Cicerones.
PHILOSOPHY
Beer and food deserve equal thought and care. Executive Chef Paul Kahan’s beer-centric menus center upon sustainably sourced seafood, certified-organic pork from Dyersville, Iowa (made into, among other things, terrine and charcuterie), seasonal vegetables, and daily aioli. Other beer-friendly specialties include housemade black and white sausages, steak tartare, pork shoulder, pot-au-feu, and wood-roasted chicken with frites. Special beer dinners are common, with recent appearances by Los Angeles’s the Bruery and American barrel-aging pioneer Allagash.
KEY BEER
Order up Thiriez XXtra (Brasserie Thiriez, of Esquelbecq, France), a wonderfully aromatic and spicy food–friendly beer in 750-milliliter bottles (4.50% ABV).
GOOSE ISLAND BEER CO.
1800 N. Clybourn • Chicago, IL 60614 (312) 915-0071 • gooseisland.com • Established: 1988
SCENE & STORY
At this point, it’s almost a household name. And the elephant in the room? In 2011, owner John Hall sold out to Anheuser-Busch for a cool $38.8 million, prompting howls of protest, but the beers—especially sours and other barrel-aged specialties—have continued to be good, with a few greats since the merger. So. One must simply decide: is it now perfectly okay to drink beer from a global corporation that has relentlessly mocked and conspired against small craft breweries by controlling distribution and shelf sets in stores for decades? Now that Anheuser-Busch is snatching up respected craft breweries (i.e., Elysian, Golden Road, and many, many more), the wolf of monopoly-like distribution now comes wearing once-trusted craft beer clothing.