Chicagoland NE IPAs (2018)

Personally...no one's that close.

Mikerphone is probably the closest as of this moment, but my money long-term is on Corridor. I'd love to see them open an all-haze facility...and since I'm dreaming, if they could put it in Rogers Park near my apartment that would be great.

 

About the size of Corridor's current brewing set up, unfortunately!!

 

Can you elaborate? What goes into being a Tree House or Monkish?

 

Very unlikely. NE IPAs are popping up everywhere so less trade incentive. As far as the beer, yes, Chicago brewed NE IPAs will be as good.

 

I think if we are talking about Treehouse's regular offerings, than yes, for Chicago is on that map with Forbidden Root and Corridor. Even Noon whistle, Mikerphone, and hop butcher have had one or two on par, but I would say they are far more inconsistent than the previously mentioned. If we are now putting up Chicago NE IPAs against Juice Machine, King Julius and so forth, than we do have our ways to go (or so I am told, never had Juice Machine so if anyone wants to help out with that lol).

 

For starters; most days Treehouse, on a Wednesday afternoon/early evening, pushes over 1,000 people through those doors. People will line up for Treehouse (or Monkish for that matter) with zero clue as to what is being released. There is basically zero risk of either of those two breweries putting out a bad beer.

 

I think it's getting there. I picked up Skrap Metal because folks on here gave it the thumbs up - glad I did, it's really good. Dangerously drinkable.

I personally haven't had much Chicago-specific that I would put up with Tree House - I thought the last batch of Juicy (from the day Shaun left RAM), and OG Squeezit are what I can think of that got the closest. One or two of the batches of the Mikerphone Special Sauce were really good last year, too. It's so hard to that

That said - one that is up there is Old Nation. My friend from Ohio stopped by last night. He travels throughout MI, WI, IL, MN, IA for work and picked up a couple 4-packs of M-43. Did a side by side with Haze - both about a month old - and they were clearly on the same level.

 

I have been seeing so much hype for M-43 and I was not impressed. Although I did enjoy it, it was more on Maplewood's level in my eyes. Not a bad thing, by any means, I enjoy Maplewood. But it's no Treehouse.

 

Interesting - shows how different palates can be. I liked the Haze better, but side by side I thought the M43 held its own. Clearly different hop profiles, and weirdly I thought the Haze (DIPA - 8.2%) was more drinkable than the M43 (IPA - 6.8%), but both were what I think of for a NE IPA.

 

One of the reasons I'm so high on Forbidden Root is that all their NE style IPAs are very different from each other, at least to my palate. Each one takes a different approach, adds something different, which creates quite a cool and unique line up like Radio Swan, Snoochie Boochies, Atomic Child, etc.

 

If that is the case, then no Chicago won't. Chicago is a much more mature market and has too many options. Treehouse and Monkish have fewer options around them thus the hype cycle is through the roof on them. You put those in Chicago without the hype and they wouldn't sell out. There is nothing unique about Zombie Dust anymore just like we are heading to with NEIPAs, yet people still go bonkers over it because of word of mouth from 5 years ago....

 

Not so sure about 'too many options' in Chicago mature market point. Monkish is in LA, Trillium is in Boston, Other Half and Interboro in New York, Bissell is in Portland (which has a ton of breweries)... all relatively mature markets. And plenty of places that aren't in big cities just make 'good' beer. I could argue Chicago has a mature market but still has no demand for their offerings because I barely see any ISO listings in the trade forums for offerings of NE style IPAs. And the hype thing... If there's a place that can (over)hype the beers with the best of them, it's Chicagoland. I don't think that's it.

 

You seem to have gone off on a tangent that I don't follow. We were talking about Tree House and Monkish. Please focus.

It completely is. LA wasn't on the craft beer scene until fairly recently in the whole scheme of things. Everything coming out of CA was coming out mid to north CA... The Bruery, RR, Lagunita, Sierra Nevada, etc. 3 years ago people would be hard pressed to even name an LA brewery....Tree House isn't in Boston- it's an hour outside it. If you want beer without driving into the city, you have to go there. If it sells out quick you have to go same day...It's necessity. Remember how quick the first Galaxy Bowl disappeared? First Juice Pants? Holy cow, now we have 5 places doing acceptable styles so there isn't a need to go line up for one since you know you can grab one at the other places as very few beer nerds are hitting up every NEIPA release. Who are the Tree House alternatives in Canton, MA? Drive an hour plus into Boston?

 

To speak of Monkish and L.A., L.A. has had no sort of competition for NE styles. (Monkish isn't even technically in L.A. city, but a suburb called Torrance). It's only been Monkish. That is until recently though. There is now Mumford out of downtown L.A., Brouwerij West out of San Pedro, and even Highland Park Brewing (out of Highland Park) all doing the style and doing it reasonably well in the L.A. region. As they dial theirs in more, then *maybe* the Monkish demand will settle down a little bit as well.

As more and more places will take on this style nationally and if they do it at a reasonably well level, I think the demand for NE overall will eventually go down.

Maybe I'm wrong though. I guess the demand for Pliny never really went down despite there being plenty of big west coast IPAs in the world, right?

Regardless, I'm extremely happy with what I consider Chicago's top and best two, 1. Forbidden Root, 2. Corridor. I don't trade beers and with those two breweries specifically, I don't feel like I am missing out as I fully believe they are on the level.

I kind of actually like how this thread always comes back to this topic.

 

Trillium. Tree House is in Charlton.