Sometimes when you get pretty much everything you want, the few things you can’t get take on a much bigger sense of importance than they deserve. This has generally been true regarding beer in Chicago. Home to great local breweries like Two Brothers, Goose Island, Three Floyd’s—and not to mention mega-stores like Sam’s and Binny’s replete with aisles and aisles filled with more craft brewed beers than there are stuffed animals at an FAO Schwarz—you’d think we’d be sated. But, no, we're not. For years, we longed for that Texas export Shiner Bock or the sweet lager of Brooklyn Brewery, and more recently the brews of Bell’s from Kalamazoo, Michigan, when they lost their distributorship. In these parts, securing a...
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Photograph by Robyn Lee Men's Fitness picked five American bars for the beer geek. In Washington D.C., they send you to Brickskeller, famous for having a binder with 1,000 different bottles divided by region. What they fail to mention: most often Brickskeller is out of at least half. Another option, at least if you like Belgian brews, is Brasserie Beck, which also has tasty beer-friendly foods (pork, cabbage confit, mussles). In Brooklyn, they recommend Spuyten Duyvil. Under the same ownership, Spuyten Duyvil Grocery is a tiny shop crammed with imported beers that come with tales of the beer's origins, compliments of the shopkeepers. The piece also lists favorite microbreweries, including Allagash in Maine, Firestone Walker in California, and Rogue...
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Inside Ballast Point Brewery, from the Los Angeles Times. In today’s Los Angeles Times, Jenn Garbee contributed a story that’s sure to resonate with spirits geeks like me: “West Coast brewers pick up the distilling spirit.” Small-scale distilleries are on the upswing nationwide, as consumers take greater interest in locally sourced products and states reassess the tax revenue such operations can generate. And while many distilleries are truly independent startups, many talented brewers who have learned the business from making quality beer are either adding distilleries to existing operations, or working in tandem with like-minded distillers. Garbee spotlights Ballast Point Brewing in San Diego, which has been making beer since 1996. Now with a 600-square-foot distillery, the owners are...
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