Corridor Brewery & Provisions (2020)

Thanks, those are pretty notable misses by me. I was in a work meeting so gave up after a few.

I haven't had FR's stuff in a while, but they were top tier for me a year or two back, and Hubbard's has always been solid. I've also definitely like the St. Errant stuff I've had.

The main point here isn't whether Corridor's hazy stuff is better or worse than everyone else's (everyone pick up a 4-pack of Cosmic on Friday and decide for yourself how you feel), it's that the hazy landscape has changed pretty dramatically, even in the last year. A year or two ago picking up a 32 oz. crowler made sense because a lot of weeks I couldn't scratch my itch with a good NE IPA 4-pack anywhere else. Now I can.

Ate? No, but I can still remember how salty that shit was to this day, since I did lick it.

 

It is a LONG list nowadays. Just waked into Binny's Schaumburg and picked up Gummy Vortex for $14.99. However, I could have chosen 10 other great NE DIPA's that they had there. It has changed drastically in the last 1-2 years...

 

NEIPAS still seem to have that peak ripeness where it may be too resin hoppy, but as time passes subsides and the fruit notes comes out, and then more time passes and it's all too muted. With 4 packs of NEIPAs, if I don't like the flavor, I wait a week to see what fades and what comes through. I've waited 2 months for one Hop Butcher beer to improve at which point it was awesome (think it was telehopic). With a 4 pack I can sit on the cans to possibly improve and re-judge. With a crowler I can't save something to see if it improves which means I'm judging the Corridor beers at one moment in time that is usually to fresh vs stuff like Hop Butchers where if it isn't good fresh I can re-evaluate every few days with a 4 pack.

 

there are a lot of solid options out there, but there is so much beer being churned out that "solid" just doesn't cut it for me anymore. we should want brewers to "be better" if you will.

i think a telling exercise to undergo is to imagine walking into a store with every NEIPA producer named in this thread. you don't see which beer is for sale, just the name. which 4 pack are you choosing?

as of today, how many votes are going towards noon whistle, Hubbard's, FR, corridor, alarmist, burnt city, phase three, pipeworks, half acre, transient, etc? i'd wager very few, but perhaps I've completely missed the massive uptick in quality which those places have experienced recently.

 

I keep refreshing Bitter Pops' feed to see if they've gotten in Burnt City's newest Kveik NE IPA (Kveik Minded III), so there's your answer.

It honestly sounds like the debate here is between people who think there are "good enough" options to scratch their itch at beer stores vs. people who only want exactly what they want. If I can't get BCBS in my local beer shop, I'm not driving to GI to grab a crowler (pretend you can do that), I'm grabbing another good BA beer on the shelf.

 

I dunno, I think all of the above mentioned are behind Hop Butcher and Corridor in consistency, quality or both.

 

Looks like someone didn't follow the rules!

No, but seriously, that's the whole point of this discussion: different strokes, different folks. For people like HouseofWortship, Shriner, myself and others, there's plenty of better offerings readily available on shelves whereas for others there is not. Ours is a perfect example: you may consider Hop Butcher quality and consistent above all others in the area, but those two words (quality and consistent) don't belong in the same sentence with Hop Butcher to me. For me, Hop Butcher brews trendy and gimmicky beers which are predominantly over-sweetened and unbalanced mess and they wouldn't be on my top 25 brewery list in Chicagoland. Again, preferences.

 

This whole discussion is why I need cans of Corridor stuff in distro (or at least readily available at the place itself).

 

If Corridor distro'd like HB I'd be buying their stuff up like I do HB. Same with FR- if they didn't just stick to the 3-5 same beers, I would be all over the latest thing to try. As people mentioned, is the majority of NEIPA competition available in Chicago at Corridor's level? Probably not. Is it close enough to satisfy a thirst for a good NEIPA? Yes.

 

Well, Cosmic Juice Box cans today at 11. Looks like I picked a good day to work from home

 

But the distance between that top tier and next level is closer than it was a year or more ago. It's like saying something like KBBS is at another level for barrel aged stouts. Does that mean you don't drink other barrel aged stouts because they aren't at that level or are there ones that are close enough for you to enjoy? Either way I get it. I can find a lot of good ba stouts to drink these days on shelves, back in the day it was BCBS or bust ofn thin body pretenders.

 

I don't get FR. A couple years back they were cranking out some of my favorite NE IPAs as one-offs at the brewpub, and yet fast forward to now...and they're still only offering those at the brewpub.

I know the actual taprooms themselves are where the money is at, it's just very interesting to see places like (the group behind) Corridor and FR opening new locations in lieu of expanding distro.

 

Putting beer into distro isn't like snapping your fingers and deciding to do it. It costs money, you have to find the right partner, and there's the chance that it dilutes your brand when your Hazy IPA is still sitting on a warm floor at Binny's in Waukegan or whatever six months after release.

 

I'm not sure why everybody is bad mouthing the 32 oz crowler cans and preferring the 16ozers. I personally love opening one of those crowlers and even though I have spilled them all over the place every single time before, I tell myself "you know what's going to happen, pour it better, try a different method" and it still manages to get everywhere.

 

But I would imagine it's a lot easier to do that once you already have a brand, a product and a consumer demand for it than it is from scratch....

 

We have 8 people on beeradvocate who live within 4 miles of Corridor saying they would buy it if they saw it in a store. Not a super compelling reason to send your 3bbls of hazy IPA out into a 50 mile radius.

 

We also have a majority of people in the Corridor thread saying they are one of the top hazy producers in the state...given the amount of hazies being sold in stores in IL, wouldn't being better than the competition be a compelling reason to contract brew and distro them?

#LessGoodBeerHuntingandMoreGoodBeerDrinking