2019 Visiting Chicagoland Resource Thread

I think it's become more of a local, family friendly spot where you can bring your kids than the hip, cool space envisioned. Never fear though, they are opening a new brewery on Michigan Ave right in the heart of tourist central.

 

Yeah that's what it seemed like, which I don't have a problem with. The bar staff was just not helpful in our case. Hopefully that's an outlier. All other tips from the thread were great!

 

As a local who goes to Corridor, I will say their service can be spotty. It's still my local spot and somewhere I can take the family for a meal and the best hazy beers around as well as good takes on some other styles. If it weren't so close to me, would I still frequent it as much? Probably not.

 

The issue with Corridor (brewing) is that it's in the heart of the Southport Corridor, which is both extremely trendy and packed with young couples and families. The taproom itself has basically always been a hangout for locals first, and a place for beer nerds second, and I say this as someone who has been going since the brewing concept was Belgian beers (Dryhop was meant to be the IPA spot in the family).

Half Acre and Dovetail are places that are laser-focused on beer, with anything edible being an afterthought.

I know we've had this discussion on Corridor's thread, but it still kills me that they keep popping open new places, but have no plans (that we've heard) to do any real distribution of their beer. I love Corridor, but my single biggest problem with the place is that their focus is getting people in to drink their beer (as opposed to getting the beer out to the city), and that's the same case for each and every one of the other places (Dryhop, Roebuck, and whatever this was is called).

 

This sounds like the great situation for any brewery, tho -- especially now. Once a beer leaves the brewery, tap lines are limited, as is shelf and cooler space.

People talk about a "bubble" in craft beer -- is it going to reach oversaturation? But we don't blink an eye when a new restaurant opens in a neighborhood. What if those restaurants were brew pubs? You could have one on almost every city block. Not every beer has to be accessible to everyone. And I don't mean that in a pretentious way, I mean that in a physical way -- New Glarus is a great example. And, so is Dryhop.

 

There are very few Chicago NEIPA producers that are consistent enough that I'll blindly buy their packaged products. Corridor would be one of them if they put them into retail, but they don't. So my money goes to their competitors who do. When the market gets cut throat and you start seeing mass competition for limited dollars they are sure going to wish they had built up those cash reserves even more while they could have. Plus NEIPA quality is catching up pretty quick.

 

Which competitors NEIPAs do you buy? (I'm looking for NEIPAs to buy this weekend).

 

Have you done your homework and read prior pages of this thread? Lol. On page 4, I map out an entire hazy excursion around the city:
https://www.beeradvocate.com/commun...nd-resource-thread.601977/page-4#post-6604088

 

Hop Butcher, Hop Butcher, and Hop Butcher. Non local Toppling Goliath. You could throw in the occasional Maplewood, Forbidden Root, Old Irving Beezer, Alarmist, Phase Three, and Riverlands. Pipeworks has a good hazy series as well.

 

THANK YOU!!!!

 

Thanks, don't know how I missed it. Sometimes these threads get off track and I get lost.

 

I'm not disagreeing that it's clearly working for them, I'm just saying that it doesn't work at all for me personally. And that's fine, I don't expect breweries to always think, "what would Sean like?"

With that said, aside from the fact that my personal consumption of Corridor beer would probably jump 500% if they distributed (because I rarely buy crowlers from them anymore, and only infrequently drink on-site), the success of guys like Hop Butcher and Phase 3 (among others) shows that there's a strong market for the best hazies in the city. And I think that most people would at least put Corridor up there with those guys (I'd personally still rank them #1).

Exactly this, unfortunately. I don't doubt that the group's (Dryhop/Corridor/etc.) strategy is working for them, but in the great tradition of American capitalism, why do what works when you could have even more?!?

 

Yesterday, I made it to Mikerphone, Une Annee/Hubbard's Cave, Off Color, Half Acre, and Spiteful. If I had to do it over again, I'd spend more time at Hubbard's Cave and Off Color, but all of them were good. I'll start out my beer day today with lunch at Three Floyds, and I'll see where I go from there.

 

Glad you are enjoying your tour of our area. 18th Street Hammond is near Three Floyds, is open at 2 PM, might be worth checking out since you are in the area. A perhaps better alternative would be to hit Open Bottle on your return up I-80, many great pours on draft and to go you can enjoy your remaining days in the area.

 

Lunch at Three Floyds was successful (except I was so full from breakfast I only ate a Scotch Egg). From there, I went to Windmill (I was pretty impressed). I tried to go to One Trick Pony, but their door, their website, and Google disagreed about when (or if) they're open on Mondays, and there was no answer to the phone, so I bailed. Bought a four pack of Solemn Oath's Solemn Gardens (solid beer) to eat with Lou Malnati's in my hotel room for dinner; later went out to visit Solemn Oath for several samples (nice place).

Not sure if I'll be able to make it to any more places before the end of the trip -- depends on what work-related evening activities look like. But, I'm pretty happy with my visit even if that's the end of the brewery tourism.

 

Also posted in the 2019 beer haul thread:

4x Solemn Oath - Solemn Gardens
4x Windmill - Memes & Dreams
1x Windmill - Apple Brandy Barrel Aged Hey Mikey!
6x Three Floyds - Lazer Snake
6x Three Floyds - Zombie Dust
2x Une Année - 2018-12 Le Grand Monde (barrel aged kriek blended with whiskey barrel aged imperial stout and vanilla beans)
2x Une Année - 2019-3.1 Le Grand Monde (barrel aged American wild ale with cinnamon sticks, peaches, and vanilla beans)

I'm going to have to drink some of these to make my weight limit for my luggage.

 

I feel like this is something we can all sympathize with.

 

I prefer to think of it as the reason I have kids to bring on trips. More people = more bags = more beer (and we know this is needed due to the kids).

 

Hey all, anyone know of any breweries or beer-related places with New Year's Eve festivities going on? I've checked out a bunch of individual sites and am not coming up with much, so turning to you good people for help. We're staying in River North, but know our way around.
Thanks in Advance.

 

Forbidden Root and District Brew Yards have announced their events.