Forge Brewhouse

 

Excellent selection and quality of brews. My favorite is the black ipa, Coal Dust. Salad and pizza is wonderful. My only negative is the friendliness of the owners and some staff. Not extremely welcoming. Can't argue with quality though!!!

We had a very bad experience here.

The moment we sat down, a waitress dropped a tray of food, and splatted both my wife and I with marinara sauce. It got on our clothes, and even in my wife's hair and on her face. Accidents happen, though, we understand that. We did not raise a fuss, figuring the situation was awkward enough as it was, with us cleaning sauce from ourselves at the bar. But they did nothing for us to make up for the mistake..they did not comp us for even a single round of beers. All we got for our troubles was a pile of napkins to clean ourselves off with.

The 4 different beers we tried were marginal to bad. The Sunrise Hefe is OK, but lacked the body and mouthfeel I expect from that style of beer...being very light on the tongue. The Great Western APA tasted exactly like an IPA that had sat in the back of your fridge for 2 years...barely any hops aroma, and no hops flavor at all...but there was that strong, unpleasant bitterness that develops when an IPA is stale. We also tried their Berliner weisse. My wife ordered it 'with the raspberry flavor' on the first round...and it was decent, but this flavor is added right at the tap...so she ordered a tasting of it without it to get a good idea of the beer. Without the flavoring, it tasted like sour water. It was bad.

And we ordered their pretzels, and they burned them.

All in all it was a horrible experience, and I do not recommend this place.

The Forge is in the far outskirts of Chicagoland. It's in a large industrial like building that has a loyal following. The quality and selection of food and beer is great. The service was friendly. The pizza I had....buffalo chicken....was incredible.

 

 

Decor is a little stale and a bit cold. The bar is nice and the woodfire oven area looks quaint, but the rest of the place could use some TLC.

The bartenders and staff were very nice and willing to talk shop. Offering information and taking criticism in stride.

The beers left a lot to be desired. There were off flavors found in all of them. Some had the taste of burnt grains that got stuck on the heating coil in the tun. Others were unbalanced and needed more character.

I was told that all the beers that were on were the first run batches from the system and the owner/brewer was still trying to figure out how to use the system. That begged the question out of me of why they would decide to put a bad beer on draft since this is the first chance to make an impression. I tried everything they had on draft and was waiting for that one that I could say, Ok, this is a good one. Never found it.

I'm hesitant to give this place another go because it was a bit of a trek, and the beer was very sub par. Perhaps in the future, but it will have to be well into the future after they have had a chance to figure out their new toys.