Chicagoland NE IPAs (2018)

Whoah, I didn't know or forgot there were different hop lineups for this beer - my niece grabbed me a 4-pack from Bitter Pops, and I thought it was great - better than either Gummy I grabbed from NW last week. Just checked and it's the Wakatu batch. Guess I'll have to find the other sometime!

 

Had a glass of Wake Up Neo at the brewery when I was passing through on my way home from my bachelor party. That beer was absolutely delicious. Im hoping to see more and more Triptych making its way up here.

 

Wrong. People argue whether Tree House or Trillium are better all the time there. People drive from all over to visit Tree House. It's not just Boston people and other locals lining up. People regularly make 4+ hour drives to go to Tree House. Just read the Tree House thread on here.

What competition do we have here? Half Acre, Pipeworks, Revolution, etc. aren't competition. Right now, Forbidden Root and Corridor are the only competition and only 1 of those 2 cans their beer right now. Noon Whistle and Mikerphone are fine. More is dialing it in. But none of those is on the level of Tree House. We'd have people driving from Indiana, Michigan, St. Louis, Iowa, and Wisconsin to come get the beer. No one is doing that for any current Chicago area breweries.

 

Closest thing is really people driving out of Chicago to Transient or Old Nation then, right?

 

I think Transient is the closest to that reputation we have in this area. When I traded some Juice is Loose packs earlier this year I had New York, Boston and Ohio people looking to send me some good hops from their areas.

Edit:. Now that I think about, I also had a number of people asking about available Mikerphone releases, so they have some decent national recognition too.

 

To be fair, FR and Corridor do not produce enough beer to make people travel. FR can releases sell out in less than two hours and are usually on a Tuesday. That would definitely turn off travelers. If they made more beer and had releases on a Saturday, yes people would travel to Chicago.

 

Yep, exactly.

Put Tree House where Transient is (similar to their proximity to Boston now) and they'd sell exactly the same amount of beer they sell now (i.e. everything).

 

Of course. But people travel during the week for Tree House. They rarely ever even have cans on Saturdays.

Let's say FR produced 200 cases of Snoochie and sold it all out of their taproom. It would last quite awhile. Tree House goes through well over 1,000 cases per day.

 

Let's not forget that we are comparing a company that has had time to build that reputation. FR has just started. Now again, I do think Treehouse is amazing and they are the top in their game. Give Chicago time to build the style reputation and then you will see people asking for our hops. I'm sure of it. I have people asking for Hop Butcher, and we all know how we have had our ups and downs with them.

 

Then we're in agreement. My response was to the guy who said Tree House wouldn't sell out here because we have a mature market.

My intent was not to put down FR or Corridor - they are both making fantastic beer. FR is where Tree House was a few years ago.

I send Chicago hops out east all the time. It's just silly for someone to say that Tree House wouldn't continue to sell out if it were here.

 

People here argue whether Corridor and FR are better than Treehouse on here all the time, doesn't mean Treehouse isn't universally regarded as a front runner of the style.... People regularly make 4 hour trips to FFF....it's called hype. People aren't driving 4 hours out of there way because they don't have to, there are acceptable options that are close enough to what they want that they don't have to....

 

Ahhhh I totally missed that haha. Treehouse will always sell out, wherever they are. Totally in agreement with that. I thought you were one of the guys who thought it was so absurd to compare any of our breweries to TH.

 

Of course treehouse would sell out. But at this point, that's based on the name, just as much as much as the quality of the product. They're an established brand that's synonymous with quality. Just like the min Bells went to the west coast, Two Hearted was flying off the shelves, and there are 1000 comparable IPAs in California (but few superior).

If you put Julius out in the market under the 350 Brewing name, and called it "squeaky" it would take some time before it was an instant sell out

 

Nope! I think FR and Corridor are absolutely crushing the style!

 

LOL. Apples to oranges. Of course Chicago people argue that. The better comparison would be Chicago people arguing which was better: Forbidden Root or Corridor.

Have you been to Tree House? People drive 4 hours because they want the damn beer. People trade for Tree House and Monkish ALL the time. They pay ridiculous secondary prices for IPAs.

You are going to continue to argue that it's all because of "hype". That's like, your opinion man. Thousands of other people think it's more about the quality of the beer.

 

This argument is getting pretty tired.

 

Agreed. There is no independently sanctioned Tree House Committee which judges NE IPAs around the country and scores them on the Tree House Scale. So asking 'are NE IPAs from local brewery ABC getting close to Tree House's level?' basically results in getting an opinion from 5-10 people on BA. Of which these 5-10 people have different experiences, perspectives and mostly importantly, taste preferences. The popularity of Tree House is a function of many things, not just how much people may enjoy their beers to drink. An entire book could be written on the subject, really. I don't quite understand the need to validate local NE IPAs in relation to how close to Tree House they may or may not be or whether people from other states are clamoring for them. If one enjoys a particular beer, drink the beer & enjoy it. It's the point of beer after all, isn't it?

 

Well I'll hopefully be doing my own comparison of the hazy beers from Corridor and FR this weekend. We'll see how it stacks up to Modern Times, MIkkeller, Pure Project, (the 3 in SD), Monkish, Tired Hands, Trillium, and Other Half. It will be fun to share some cans of whatever I get with my San Diego friends after I get back.

I haven't been able to get my hands on Tree House hazy stuff because the one time I got cans they were selling one that wasn't hazy but IMO Monkish and Tired Hands double IPAs are in a world of their own and the hype is based on pure quality. Trillium is great but a different style of beer that tends to be a bit more hop acidic and punchy as opposed to pure aroma over a creamy soft base.