The Medal Winners: Chicago's Beer Scene, Part Deux

Last weekend was the Great American Beer Festival, the annual showcase of American beer in Denver that brings together nearly 500 breweries, 49,000 festivalgoers, and more than 3,300 beers. The event is included in the book 1000 Things to Do Before You Die, and if you go to the festival, you're given a tasting glass and can sample away and try some of the most innovative beers in the world. It's also a competition, and winning a medal as a brewer at the GABF is akin to winning an Oscar as an actor--it's not why anyone goes into the job, but it's a pretty big deal.

Living in Colorado, I was lucky enough to go to the festival in 2005, 2006, and for two marathon sessions with Andy, my old homebrew partner, in 2007. The last two years I've been left to watch the results come in from afar, and Chicago's breweries pulled in an impressive seven medals this year. In fact, three breweries in the city brought home all three, so I took some time this week to go back and see what I thought (or re-thought) of the winning beers.

Rock Bottom is a national chain, the second largest "brewpub group" in the US. The Chicago brewery is the third largest brewpub in the Midwest, besting my favorite Fitger's Brewhouse in Duluth by about 15 kegs annually. The Chicago outpost of the Rock Bottom Brewery got two medals, one in the specialty category and one for its Belgian Rye Pale Ale "The Crow and the Sparrow." This latter medal is especially interesting because the category it won in "American-Belgo-Style Ale" not only requires an unnecessary amount of punctuation but also is one of the most recently developed styles. Brewers across the US are trying to take an American IPA and blend it with the yeast-derived scents typical of Belgian golden ales and tripels. Great Divide's Belgica is my personal favorite, and I was surprised to see it shut out of a medal. Getting to taste one of the winners made checking out Rock Bottom's version that much more enticing.

I made it to Rock Bottom twice in the past week, first to have a birthday beer with Jake Kessler and then with some of the brew school guys and instructors. The brewery is in a prime spot downtown, just north of the river, so it makes for a good gathering place on the weekends when we want to head out elsewhere in the city. After several rounds yesterday, the general consensus was that "The Crow and the Sparrow" was a good beer, maybe not the second best Belgian IPA in the US, and it does mix a lot of complex aromas between the hops, peppery rye, and clovey phenols from the Belgian yeast. The crowd favorite amongst the RB beers was Simcoe Smackdown! IPA, an India pale ale brewed entirely with the ultra-citrusy simcoe hop. The beer smelled and tasted like a grapefruit bomb, and it prompted many of us to start geeking out about what hop varieties will and won't remain popular in the next few years for craft brewers. Simcoe is sacrosanct for the time being.

Piece Brewpub also took home two medals. Piece is a frighteningly popular pizza-and-beer version of the classic American brewpub over in the Wicker Park/Bucktown area. I had heard about Piece for years because the pizza they serve is New Haven style, and I've long confessed that the one thing I miss about the East coast is being able to go to Sally's, Modern, and BAR. Last Thursday, I dragged Caroline McKenna out of her new apartment, and we slogged through the autumn rain over to Piece, where we ordered a pizza far too large (and a shockingly good take on a New Haven pie). As for beer, they were out of Fornicator, their lager which had won in the bock category, and I found the gold-medal winning hefeweizen to be too sweet for my tastes. Both Caroline and I opted for IPAs instead (a recurring pattern by now), which were unfiltered and had a nice balance between malt sweetness and a lot of piney hop aromas. We tasted a handful of other Piece beers that ran the gamut from average to solid. Many have a lot of residual sweetness that helps them pair well with the food, especially that delicious New Haven-style red sauce and that might be less appropriate if they were drunk without pizza as their co-pilot.

That leaves Goose Island, the local giant, who took home three medals this year. Goose Island has two brewpubs in Chicago, one of which is about two hundred feet from Siebel. Study sessions at "the Goose" are pretty common, so I was surprised that I hadn't had their biggest winner: the Goose Island IPA took the silver medal in the English-style IPA category. As we buckled down (seriously) to study for Friday's test on yeast, I found myself wowed by the floral hops and pronounced biscuity flavors in the beer. English IPAs are far less bitter than American versions, and Goose's gets that right. It took one sip before I was all smiles, and as it made the round for others to sample, the rest of the brew school boys had the same reaction. It was curious: for no good reason, I had assumed that Goose Island's "regular" beers were only so-so, and I was way off mark! Goose Island makes some other fantastic "big" beers and Belgian styles--Bourbon County Stout effectively kicked off the barrel-aging craze in the craft brew world, and Sofie (a saison with brettanomyces) is one of the best new beers of 2009, so it was a welcome surprise to see that one of Goose's flagship brews is just as good as their more outlandish brews.

Those three visits are as close as I'll get to the '09 GABF, and, while it's not like being in Denver for the real thing, I was more than happy to go and support the winners on their home turf. I'll continue to do so for the next month as well. Plus, I shouldn't fret missing the GABF too much--with any luck, I'll be pouring beer there come 2010.

Keep your fingers crossed; cheers!