I’m pretty proud of our track record with brewer interviews here at OA. We interviewed Gabriel Magliaro just before Half Acre opened in 2009 and then did a great interview with the Pipeworks guys in 2010 when they started their kickstart campaign. Both of those companies have brought something truly unique and uplifting to Chicago’s beer scene, be it through recipe, attitude, or unique turns on how to think about what a brewery should be. Which is why I wanted to make a point to land an interview with Dryhop’s Owner and General Manager Greg Shuff.

I’ve shared more than a couple beers with Greg over the past few months turning over his ideas and watching Dryhop evolve from it’s initial concept into what is soon to be a truly unique brewpub experience in the heart of Lakeview. More than a true and passionate love for craft beer, Greg’s knowledge base and passion extends well beyond beer to see the larger picture of the beer drinking experience and, I promise you, he’s raising the bar more than a little on what to expect from your neighborhood brewery.

I’ve tried Dryhop’s beer and it’s fantastic. But Dryhop’s experience is going to be much more holistic than just good beer. His space is well considered and should be awesome. Their growler packaging – a medium of beer delivery that is typically flawed at best – will be the best in the city providing growler beer that can stay fresh, literally, for months. And their food, their food is going to knock it out of the park. Everybody loves hotwings and french fries, right? But that’s been done. So how about the marrying of French market fare and amazing, fresh, craft beer? If that doesn’t make your knees pickle a little bit then you’ve probably had your taste buds removed by Mennonites who thought they were circumcising you.

There’s two opportunities during Craft Beer Week to try Dryhop’s beers, Monday at the Northdown Cafe & Taproom for what should prove to be a great event and Tuesday at Fountainhead’s now infamous Cask Night. I’ll see you at both of those.

Without further ado, I’m stoked to introduce you to Dryhop’s Greg Shuff:

Tell me about Dryhop.
Dryhop is Chicago’s first gastro-brewery. We’re all about doing whatever it takes to connect with our neighbors though creative ales and inspired food.

What size system are you running on?
We have a ten-barrel brewhouse, six ten-barrel fermenters, and six ten-barrel serving tanks.

What’s your expected yearly output?
We plan on brewing about 800 barrels over the first 12 months. Theoretically, the system can manage about 1,500 barrels/year before we’re totally maxed out.

How are you going to differentiate yourself from other brewpubs in Chicago?
I try to avoid using the word “brewpub” at all. I love brewpubs, don’t get me wrong, but they come with a very specific set of expectations.

There are a number of things that make Dryhop totally unique.

The first point obviously has to be the beer. Our Wheat IPA is to die for. And Brant (our Head Brewer) is prepared to kick out over 60 one-offs and seasonal beers in the first year – including our single hop series. You’re really going to love the creative beers in the lineup.

The second point is our kitchen. We have a world class Chef; Pete Repak formally of Charlie Trotters. Working with Pete, we’ve grown the menu out of the tasting room concept. Thinking about how great it is to sample small amounts of a variety of different beers, why not do the same things with our menu? 80% of the menu we’re doing tapas style. How about a small plate of Wild Tuna, lightly poached Quail Eggs, Watermelon, and warm Yuzu Vinaigrette with our Cream Ale? Hell yes. We’re all about pairing food to beer as oppose to matching the beers to the menu. After all, we’re brewers first.

Third is the space it’s self. We really want it to feel like you’re in a brewery enjoying beers and food from the brewer’s table. For instance, all the serving tanks are stacked behind the tap handles and there is a 15-foot tasting bar up front used only for filling growlers (which, by the way, we fill in counter presser fillers – i.e. no oxygen ever touches our beer and the growler shelf life becomes months as appose to days).

What does your beer program look like right now?
We have 6 house beer and 3-4 guest beers on draft at all times. We make an awesome Wheat IPA and a Cream Ale, so we’re keeping those two on at all times. The other four house taps are all about seasonals and one-offs.

What’s your background? What’s your brewer’s background?
For me, it all started when a professor told me to “write a paper about anything that turns you on about sustainability.” So I started writing about breweries, how brewers can use their resources more efficiently, and how beer drinkers can do their part by simply buying beers from their neighbors.

In 2010 I opened the Last Bay Beer Company, a one-barrel nano brewery in the last bay of a garage down in Indianapolis. Making the world’s best beers has always been my number one goal (and should always be the number one goal of any professional brewer). So when I peaked out on the one-barrel system, I new that the next tool I really needed in my arsenal was a better education. So I closed shop and went to Siebel and Doemens Academe in Munich in the middle of 2011.

Now I’m here in Chicago opening Dryhop Brewers.

Brant Dubovick is a GREAT brewer. Brant is the former Head Brewer at Church Brew Works in Pittsburgh, PA – a very unique and beautiful brewpub built inside of a Roman Catholic Church. Before Church, Brant brewed at Lancaster Brewing Company where he started his professional career in 2004.

Brant and I met through probrewer.com where we started discussing how great it is to personally connect with people through a brewery’s tasting room. We discovered that we both have the same passion for introducing people to great beers in a face to face environment, so it was only natural that we team up for this project.

How did you come to choose Lakeview as your location?
Lakeview is awesome, I love living and working here. My apartment is only one block south of the brewery. Besides the soft spot I have for Lakeview, the neighborhood is experiencing a kind of renaissance. A lot of “experiential” one-off businesses, both preexisting and newly opened, litter our corridor. By extension of that, we feel that Dryhop complements and grows the unique personality of this community.

So much is happening in Chicago right now with beer with so many new breweries opening, how is this going to work to Dryhop’s advantage? How is this going to pose challenges, if at all?
As they say, a rising tide lifts all ships. The biggest advantage of new and growing breweries is the increased awareness of better beer. We all know that inside the craft beer community there is very little brand loyalty, which is great. So the more brewers that are out there converting the macro beer drinkers into craft customers the larger Dryhop’s customer base becomes. For us, there is no downside to the Chicago craft beer boom. We’re just really excited to be a part of it.

I saw an earlier post from Dryhop saying that it was going to function as an “Alternating Proprietorship”. Are you still going that route? If not, why?
The Alternating Proprietorship idea was an earlier business model named Last Bay. Last Bay’s plan was to open Growler Filling Stations supplied only with beers brewed by us. In order to brew those beers we would partner with existing breweries that have excess capacity and we would come in during off hours to brew our beer on their systems.

I still think that it’s a wonderful idea, but execution proved to be just this side of impossible, especially in Chicago. First, no one local has excess capacity. Second, in the state of Illinois you can only sell growlers from the site of production. We had some elaborate schemes in mind to deal with the second challenge, but in the end it proved not to be worth it. So now we’re about to open a Gastro-Brewery. I couldn’t be happier about the change in direction.

What is Dryhop going to do to expand people’s understanding and appreciation of beer? How are you going to make the beer world a little more interesting?
For one, we’re building an expositions brewery in urban Chicago. We’re bringing the craft brewery experience to our neighbor’s back yard. Every step in the beer making process in on full display either behind the bar or next to the tables, our food menu expands the understanding of beer and food pairings by linking the small plate food fare to the beer list, you can try any beer we have for free (I hate paying for samples), we’ll give tours to anyone who asks, and you can expect us to host a number of beer and food focused events around the neighborhood all year. There isn’t a lot we aren’t doing to expand the appreciation of better beer.

From the perspective of the already initiated beer geek, you’re going to find our pairings and growlers the best in Chicago. We’re smashing together the ideas of the gastropub with the ideas of the brewery tasting room. The result is craft beer being placed on the highest pedestal possible without getting all fussy about it.

Do you have any plans to expand beyond the tasting room/brewpub concept? Why or why not?
No. If I live my life right, you’ll never see a Dryhop beer on a shelf in Binny’s. Dryhop is all about expanding the world’s front porch. We started the business out of the idea of a tasting room – where customers personally interacted with brewers, where you can casually sample all the wares, where the community comes to build and grow relationships… We’re excited about sharing our passion, and we don’t believe that we can effectively do that from a cold case.

That said, there’s a Binny’s down the street and I love it. I’m not knocking small packaging; it’s just not our thing.

Any plans for more locations?
We would love to share Dryhop with as many people as possible. That said our hands are really full opening Dryhop v1.0. For now, 100% of our attention is going into making the best beer possible and improving the quality of life for our Lakeview and Chicago neighbors.

What challenges have you run up against so far in creating Dryhop that you did not foresee and how did you handle them?
I have no love for the legal processes that govern our industry. For us, the biggest challenge has been the city liquor license process. Luckily, we’ve been able to get the support of our neighborhood, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Aldermen. Building those relationships has been great and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. But I’d be lying if I said that I’m not anxious to be built out and open.

When you’re not drinking your beer, what do you like to drink?
This is probably the hardest question here… I find myself trying all sorts of beers all the time. A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to enjoy Russian River’s Supplication. Not surprising, it was one of the best Wild Ales I’ve ever had. Coming down from the crazy world of sours, I really enjoy super dry Pale Ales and IPAs brewed with Pacific Northwest hops, and I’ll always have a man-crush on hefeweizens. So if you’re looking for a Christmas present, any of the above would be great.

Other than your events coming up this week, what events are you looking forward to during Chicago Craft Beer Week?
On May 24th, Sun King is going to be doing a tap takeover at Haymarket. I’m from Indianapolis and besides the fact that they make really great beer; I’m really excited to see one of my home town breweries doing so well so quickly. That event is my top out-of-house priority.

And as you commented, we’re doing a “meet the brewer” on Monday at Northdown Café and Taproom that I’m really excited about (our very first beer tasting!) and we’re part of Tuesday’s Local Cask Night at Fountainhead on Tuesday.

Here’s an easy one, I like to ask everybody this…. What’s your favorite beer moment that you’ve had in your life?
My favorite beer moment has to be the moment that I discovered sour beers and all of their glory. A couple of years ago I was on a golf course in St. Louis with the Schlafly brewers and they had the wisdom to pack in a few large format bottles. One of the bottles was part of New Belgium’s Lips of Faith Series. After a failed punch shot from behind a tree, they handed the bottle to me saying “all good beers are session beers, here try this one.” The combination of being knee deep in pine needles, chasing a little white ball back and forth across a never ending field, hanging out with fun people, and drinking La Folie strait from the bottle was like a lightning bolt to the senses. Sour beers were heaven.

Since then my tastes have evolved exponentially, but I wouldn’t trade a sour beer in the woods for anything.

Cheers.

When I was a kid living in Southern Illinois, I had a line in the water if I could. Being young and boatless, shore fishing was our only option. Preparation then sitting and waiting was the game. It’s a tranquil business tight lining for catfish.  Skip ahead many years and many miles,  I found myself living in Chicago in the same situation. After a time away from fishing I found myself wanting to shake the dust off my gear and head out to the giant lake that I lived next to.  One thing I knew was that I was unfamiliar with northern fish and fishing techniques. Like anyone I consulted the oracle, scouring fishing blogs to acquaint myself  with the aquatic inhabitants and affairs of the north. During my inquiry I came across an arcane style of fishing that was murky as a burbot eye.  It was employed by the die hard salts that frequented the lake front on a daily basis. I kept coming across references to powerliners and powerlining. One guy ventured to ask if it was worth going out to the harbor without one. “If it gives me an advantage” I thought, ” why not give it a shot.”

Little did I know that this discovery would become an obsession. Powerlining had all the aspects I was looking for in a fishing style. It has an engaging architecture and an execution that incubates pastoral pauses punctuated with ecstatic moments.  It’s not unlike baseball accept without the grass and dirt.  On a Great Lake casting a rod and reel can feel like you brought a knife to a gun fight.  Powerlining allows you to fish out away from the bank for fish you would have little or no access with conventional gear. It’s a throw line fishing technique that evolved over time as technology progressed. The “casting” is accomplished using a modified co2 fire extinguisher. A wad of wet paper then a 10 oz weight, a cylinder,  slightly less than 1 inch in diameter is loaded into a five foot one inch barrel and shot hundreds of feet out into the lake. A 50′-100” rubber band is attached to the weight and the rubber band to a rod and reel. To cast, you lay out your rubber band on the pier, open the bail on your reel and place the weight in the barrel attached to the fire extinguisher.  The barrel is placed at a near 45 degree angle and fired out into the lake. Make sure you know what you are doing and have witnessed this before attempting. Make sure there are no boats in eyesight and always keep the safety key in your co2 tank when not casting. You will be surprised the first time to see how far it goes. When the weight sinks to the bottom you reel in the line and the weight stays stationary while the rubber band stretches. When you have reeled in the line to the end of the rubber band you attach your  ”powerline leader”. This is your main line that has your hooks attached and is then fed out as the rubber band pulls it back into water. You tie your leader to a bell that rests on your base. Listen for the ding. Set the hook and pull your line in by hand. You will want to walk down the shore placing your line very carefully. Retrieve your fish. When finished renew your bait, make adjustments and feed your powerline back out into the lake. Having a net when fishing on a city harbor wall will make your life much easier.  There you have it. You don’t buy one of these contraptions you construct them, so for every powerliner there is usually a unique approach to this assembly. Remember that fishing with multiple hooks is unlawful accept for specific bodies of water.  Lake Michigan in Chicago is open for business. Consult your local dnr for details. Although the coho have come and gone till early next year the summer perch are just coming in. Get your perch line together. Its a good way to start powerlining and next spring be ready for the big boys. For more information about all things powerlining check out my blog at powerlining.com. Keep your lines tight.

A few months ago I posted a photo of some street art I came across over by the Fulton Market while on a run to get some propane for brewing. I was struck by the piece’s scale, but I was also taken aback by what seemed a kind of mocking, mischeivousness that animated the death inside the piece. It was almost like life and death were both at odds in the same moment, mimicking and making fun of each other simultaneously in the piece. To find this “hidden” below the skyline of the city worked to bring our entire municipality into the joy and menace and menacing joy that was animate in this work.

It’s rare, but one of the great treasures of living in Chicago – or any cluttered urban environment for that matter – to be struck by the shrapnel of one of these cultural bombs. Like an aerosol sorcery, their cast onto mercurial obscurity, patiently waiting for your nervous system to be ready for their discovery, to take over your life in that moment and flatten some neurons in the name of pleasure and revelation.

After I posted it, Lee Chameleon, one of Chicago’s great Cultural Gastroentronologists, followed up that this was the work of a Belgian street artist who goes by the name ROA. Belgium – Brussels in particular – still has one of the most interesting and unique examples of street art of any city I’ve been in. The volume is impressive, but the singular visions in the work are what really make it stand outside of places like Amsterdam, London and New York City. A train ride south from the airport and through Brussels will give you an incredible tour of some world class graffiti artists. A stroll off the Central and North stations might change the way you look at street art forever. I was not surprised at all to find that ROA was, at least partially, a product of Ghent.

Above is a piece on some partially abandoned office building that is the first thing to greet you when you come out of Central Station in Brussels. It framed my entire experience of Brussels instantly upon seeing it, a smokey spirit of madness escaping from the failed beuracratic facade of Belgium’s capitol. It looked unchained, dangerous, and not at all comfortable with revealing itself in any time, but it’s own. It’s as if the artist knowingly placed it there in the shadow so that it would never be imprisoned by the light.

Times are hard right now for first world fat heads. I joked recently that back in ye olde middle ’90s, when I was living on a steady diet of TVP and LSD, reading Terrance McKenna’s “Invisible Landscape” for the first time, and sitting around with my friends, like a puddle of stoned poodles, running on at the lip about 2012 and Time Wave Zero, I don’t think any of us were high enough to predict that the great 2012 rending of the personal and cultural veil would mostly involve the apocalypsis of personal income and career choices. No, none of our senses of humor were that dark or twisted. Leave it to the grand, sprawling magnet to come up with the sickest of jokes.

But, whatever. Money pains and dashed hopes of metaphysical meglomania are really just the belly gripes of the post-modern honky and should be penned in proper perspective. My personal Robert Bly, Rick Steves, nailed it in this Salon interview when he basically offered the seemingly non-Rick Steves advice of “get over it”. Ah so.

And if you need a nail to seal that super-sized casket of sagastic advice, why not investigate this little hot air balloon for your black heart: the Uganda Skate Union.

If you can manage to scroll through these photos without spilling your grande machiatto on your Old Navy cargos and bitching about how this will make you late for work again, well then, sir, you really don’t have a heart or any real aspirations.

Or, maybe, you just don’t have a job. Either is possible, I suppose.

I just got back from a week in southern Kaua’i. Like all vacations, the time was too short, and now I want to move there.

A week living amongst people who stab away their days in the slow, tropical pulse of the south pacific rim makes me wonder how and why I managed to find myself in Chicago, enduring unending indignities for little more than middle-class shelter and a consistently renewed inspiration to carve my nervous system down to a whimpering mass of battery-operated impulses.

But, I learned a lot about myself on this trip. Yup, that’s right. I just invoked that final resignation of a beaten man, that foul consolation of earning a learn “about myself”. What a gift.

But it’s true, I did learn some things. But nicer than the actually learning of these terrible truths was the fact that I had the time to learn them. That was the real treat as, back here in the shit-show, I’ve been existing in a vacuum of commitments, responsibilities and non-starts for so long I hardly recognize myself anymore. So, even though I acquired that dread insight into my failed gorilla self, I’m at least grateful I had the luxury to actually find that filthy wisdom. Too many aren’t so lucky.

For instance, many of paradise’s natives. Before the U.S. finally wrangled the Hawaiian Islands into it’s quiver of territories in 1959, we had spent almost 70 years courting our would be native bride. By courting, of course, I mean indulging in the same shameless charades of European imperialism we’ve come to be so skilled at over the years. You know the map: introduce wealthy white business creeps then promptly employ waspian double speak while systematically dismantling the culture, swatting away would be pests and make way for your pock-marked and alabaster ass to cradle across all those brown faces and building yourself a home.

Take for example the coyly named “Committee for Safety”. These pony-white assholes, formerly known as the more verbose “Citizens Committee for Public Safety”, were a collection of 13 crackers, all republicans, whose goal was the overthrow of Queen Liliʻuokalani’s kingdom and the annexation of Hawaii by the United States. Filled with a super-sized sense of entitlement, these shitnoses are the same kind of pin-lipped morons who would fart up onto an island as gorgeous as Kaua’i and resolve themselves to build a double-wide church to help them feel closer to God. Yes, whatever god that is you’re praying to – you know, the one that rubs a little warmer on your leg once you shut out life’s bounty – you best keep praying to that there god, Barb, cuz he libel to fuck you up good n’ hard ifn’ ya don’t.

But, hey man, I’ve got flies on me, too. I took benefit from this smarmy white acquisition, as well. I bathed in the blood of so many fellow humans, doing my backstroke through it all and with no regrets.

I’m not so naive as to think that my right and my pleasure to bitch about inequities isn’t paid for in buckets and buckets of innocent blood every day. Keeping Moloch at bay requires a lot of this red dirt gold. But, it’s these kind of tantric truths that keep a middle aged fat man in repose and one of the good reasons I still need to go on vacation.

And vacation I did. Aside from a little surfing, and less snorkeling, and the disciplined art of keeping my head fully submerged in a mai thai from dusk til dawn, I did discover two little gems of Hawaiian grace: Poke and Musubi.

Poke is raw ahi tuna, cut into cubes and served with a little cabage. Amazing in it’s pure form, but I became addicted to the Koloa Fish Market’s variation on that theme, the wasabi Poke. This is cubes of raw ahi tuna, cabage, mixed with a lightly brushed wasabi cream sauce and just a little bit of fish roe to give the whole thing some snap and texture. Truly, this is the fruit of the oceans.

Musubi is the perfect articulation of the cultural pastiche that is the Hawaiian Islands. It’s one part maki roll and one part Spam, tipping it’s hat not only to the strong Japanese influence of the islands, but also the military pragmatism that brought us little white devils to come and steal that land away. Musubi can be served with just the nori, rice and spam, or it can be dressed in any number ways including scrambled egg and coconut oil.

The bride and I made a daily ritual of waking up with the roosters, pouring a cup of coffee, picking up a Musubi roll and heading to the waterfront to watch the surfers play. When death finally comes for me, it will be those waters that my viking soul will follow to the sun.

Here’s a recipe for Musubi from the Spam website:

2 slices SPAM® Classic
3 ounces cooked white rice, seasoned with furikake* and toasted sesame seeds, if desired
1 tablespoon House of Tsang® Hibatchi Grill Sweet Ginger Sesame Sauce, or SAM CHOY’S® cooking sauce
1 sheet nori **

In large skillet, cook SPAM® Classic until lightly browned and crisp.
Place 1/2 of rice into musubi press or small can. Place SPAM® Classic on rice; drizzle with grill sauce or cooking sauce. Top with remaining rice; press down. Remove SPAM® and rice from musubi press.
On work surface, lay nori shiny-side-down; top with SPAM® mixture. Wrap up. Cut each musubi in half. Slice each half diagonally into 2 pieces. Serve immediately.

With a good Musubi, I can bow my belly and my head in reverence to a world so fucked up and complex that blood can taste like pineapple and defeat like the warmest mother’s sun. So, here’s to it.

I had the chance to try Pipeworks second effort last night, the End of Days milk stout. Made with ancho chilies, cinnamon and cocoa nibbs, End of Days delivers a beer that doesn’t stumble over any one ingredient, but elevates into a synergistic whole greater than any of it’s parts. I couldn’t be happier to know those guys are doing their work in our big-boned city.

The beer drinks like a Vosges chocolate bar, silky, expertly balancing it’s lactose sweetness with the earthy and the tactile, but understated heat. This might not be a beer for everyone, but if you don’t have shit in your too-far-apart eyes or sagging between your strange looking ears, you’ll most likely find more than a few things to enjoy in it.

We did an interview with Pipeworks about a year and a half ago when they first put out their video to announce their funding. Since then they’ve progressed from a couple homebrewers with an audacious plan to a fully licensed brewery that’s actually gotten real press, including a pretty flattering article in the Tribune the other day.

It’s been fun to track their progress as they’ve put this project together from a heady mix of over-sized confidence, community support and tenacious will. I’m glad to see with the release of End of Days that their eye towards balance didn’t end with the inauguration of their business, but is carrying over into their products as well.

Chicago and it’s exploding beer scene should be proud to call Pipeworks it’s own.

Made this last night and it worked to make a hunk of protein have flavor. The swiss and chedder cheese and the strip of bacon I put on top helped too, but, in a pinch, this gave my chicken breast some flavor before putting it on the grill.

I fried some brioche in lard on my cast iron skillet to eat this with, but you can eat it alone or however your jaded palette allows.

1/4 cup dijon mustard
2 tblspns lemon juice
2 tspns worcetershire
1 tspn marjoram
a few splashes of vinegary heat
pepper to taste

Put that on about 14oz of chicken breasts and let it sit for at least 15 minutes. Grill around 525* for 8 minutes on each side. Put some cheese on there and let it melt for about the last 2 minutes.

Unlike the voices in your head, this is good.

I know I admitted to my first full-fledged mancrush on Damon Zex a few weeks ago, but I may be developing another on Brian Strumke from Stillwater Artisanal Ales. I tried his Folklore on Friday for the first time and it immediately turned me into a quivering puddle of little girlness, pigtails and all. I’ve since covered my walls with all the pull-out posters of Strumke that I could find in Teen Beat magazine and have been carving his name into my desk and my arm here at work. These feelings I am having are new and strange, but I think I like them.

I’ve said it in hushed corners before, but I think Stillwater is as close to an Americanized take on Fantome as we have right now. Clearly there are some real differences, but what Strumke is doing with yeasts and herbs is starting, more and more it seems, to be coming to the same conclusions as that maniac in the Ardennes.

Anyway, I’ll have a chance to bat my pretty eyelashes at Strumke tomorrow at the Bottom Lounge. Wait until I tell him we have the same first name! OMG!!!!!!

Please come to a meeting at St. Paul’s Church on North Avenue to support the Near Northwest Arts Council (NNWAC) on March 12th at 7pm. The NNWAC is being pushed out of their building by a super shady “religious” organization with a long track record of activities typically associated with cults. And no, not the sweet kind of cult where you get to have acid orgies and learn to see gods in the finer creases of your asshole, either. No, this is the ill kind of cult where family’s become alienated, bank accounts become depleted, and people’s highest aspirations toward sublimity get corrupted to the base and criminal ends of the few degraded leaders.

The Near Northwest Arts Council has been in Wicker Park for 23 years, way longer than you, I promise. They’ve sponsored innumerable events that have made our community richer – plays, rock shows, fundraisers, film festivals and even a dear friend’s wedding. I can promise that the NNWAC has done more and will continue to do more vital work for that community than any knuckle dragging cult ever will.

Please come to this meeting and join members of the Wicker Park Community, including Alderman Joe Moreno and Channel 5 newswoman Mary Ann Ahern who has run several exposes on the Love Holy Trinity Blessed Mission cult and their criminal activities over the years.

The Love Holy Trinity Blessed Mission? Let’s put our dicks in their nose!

Here’s some more info.

This past Sunday West Lakeview Liquors hosted Jérôme Rebetez from BFM to tap and pour a wood cask of his 2010 Abbaye de St. bon Chien. As always WLV played the expert host, not only pouring the bon Chien, but also a Terrapin collaboration barley “ryne”, as well as BFMs entire bottle portfolio. There was the obligatory selection of delicious cheeses and cured meats, too.

If you don’t know, St. bon Chien is one of the great outliers in the world of sour beers. BeerAdvocate calls it a biere de garde, I’ve heard it compared to a geuze, but really it’s neither of these. The malt base is most likely where BA derives their style designation. There’s a deep orange color to the beer with only light hop notes and that leave room for some carmelly notes most likely derived from some dark sugars to shine through. But the majority of the flavor is derived from the barreling process, combining three different barrel types to the beer and then blending to achieve their final result. Jerome mentioned on Sunday that there’s no addition of wild yeasts or bacteria to the beers, only the aging in the barrels which, apparently, are loaded with bugs the multitudes of which would make Noah envious.

The complexity of bon Chien is unrivaled, even amongst styles known for their complexity. And you could write a master’s thesis on the differences between each years personality. The 2010 was tart with a strong, spicy acidity to it, while the 2007 they were pouring was hung in deep berry and plumbs. Even with American craft beers it’s too easy to forget that beer is a living organism that is changing, developing, degrading and unfolding in time. Even as Americans come to appreciate the expanses of possibility available in beer our underlying programming by the McDonaldization of flavor keeps American producers anxious about truly indulging in the craft and chaos of the living beer. This is decidedly not the case with our friends on the other side of the spittoon.

If there is any one lesson I wish American brewers would learn and employ it is to recognize, trust and explore the dynamic arc of a beers existence. We can see the first puritan pokes at this with the barrel aging trend right now. But, where some are truly relaxing into the vulnerabilities inherent in this pursuit, too many others are just trying to get their imperial stout portfolio effort to keep pace with the rest of the herd. This is fine, and it produces many enjoyable results, but I’m excited for when these breweries finally feel comfortable to take their shirts off in the pool.

That said, there are notable exceptions. Jolly Pumpkin is probably the most exciting when it comes to American brewers exploring the vitality of yeasts. By actually spontaneously fermenting, following seasonal fluxuations in their brew schedule, and noticably and wantonly producing different results under the same recipes, Ron Jeffries’ operation is doing the dark lord’s work for the American palette.

While I’m not always crazy about the results, Stillwater is another producer that is always fun to try. He doesn’t seem to be playing with yeast development as much, but, with his adoption of the rather oblique title of artisanal ales, he has found a medium to really draw outside the seemingly boring lines of American styling. I’ve heard many people bitch about it, but for the same reasons folks are complaining, I find Existenst Brian Strumke’s most interesting and encouraging effort to date. It’s confusing, it’s unsettling, it’s not what you expect at all. And isn’t that what art should be? It should rewire your expectations to bring you to new places, if it doesn’t do that, it’s not art.

There’s others too, probably many I’m not yet aware of and I can’t wait to find them.

But let’s be clear, I don’t think that burdening your beer with a bunch of strange-ass adjuncts makes it art. That kind of thumb-fisting makes it naive and green, like too many American efforts. A lot of these beers that spasm with adjuncts remind me of the shit painting and music production and films that are direct heirs of the Surrealist’s and Beats influence of spontenaity and the schizophrenics of subjectivity. While a demon box in the hand of an expert, this kind of open-verse nonsense becomes oppressive in a young voice. Sometimes limitation is the best avenue to towards expression. Sometimes – yes, Virginia – sometimes less is more.

Case in point – Goose Island’s Matilda. Say what you want about Goose Island, but a properly matured bottle (which I’m finding about 10 months is good) of Matilda is about fucking perfect. The wooly coarseness of the brett drawing chords in your tastebuds to gently settle the peach back bone in? Come on, it’s unmatched in America beers. But, to be sure, you can taste the puckered rectum of the Goose in this beer. There is no doubt about that and there is no open-verse in the cinder brick walls of the Goose Island brewery. The Matilda is no work of art, this is science, to be sure. But, Goose Island’s Matilda is where science has become art and they deserve all the recognition they get for it.

In the masterful addition of brett to a beer world, Green Flash’s Rayon Vert is no slouch either. I had the opportunity to try that the other day and was thrilled by how nicely the brett played along with Green Flash’s hop assertion. It reminded me of an infected bottle of Emmit’s pale ale I had not too long ago. Boy was I disappointed when my attempts to find another 6-pack of that failed, realizing my last experience was a fluke of QA issues and not their stable of flavors. Please Emmit, start adding brett to your Victory.

So, yeah, American breweries have a long and compelling path before them until they can truly play ball with the great European brewers. But, why shouldn’t we? Those maniacs over seas have several hundred years of a jump on us. And, let’s be fair here, right now everyone is looking to America for developments in beer. But that won’t last. Once we strike a flare under international interests in beer again, pallettes that know and palletes that are learning will get sick of the fireworks and demand more depth from their beer.

We’re starting to see it now, I count myself amongst those that are learning and ready. And I’m consistantly finding that outside our four American walls. And the reason I’m finding it and finding new and exciting ways to stumble down this slippery slope, past the rabbit hole and into the devil’s playground of great fucking beer is because of the passionate work of so many brewers and also, just as importantly, the proprieters of stores like West Lakeview Liquors, who through owner Kristina Bozic, is making Chicago a better place to enjoy great beer and, in turn, the world a better place to live in. And this world could certainly stand a little improvement on it’s living conditions. So thanks!