Distributor Locations
Photo Credit: Urban Chestnut
Lakeshore Beverage is proud to welcome Urban Chestnut Brewing Company to the family. Urban Chestnut is an unconventional-minded yet tradition-oriented craft brewery with a a “new world meets old world” brewing approach that pays reverence to classically-crafted European beer styles, while contributing to the modern American craft beer scene. Their sentiment of reverence to old world beer is of second nature to their German-born brewmaster, Florian Kuplent, who views the chestnut as a symbol of the tradition and heritage of beer.
I sat down with Urban Chestnut’s Head of Sales Operations, Jon Shine to talk about the brewery, the beer and the super-secret launch party.
It’s 7:30 in the morning and I’m drinking gas station coffee while flying down the highway and cursing myself for the now-empty bag of Taco Bell’s breakfast tacos greasing its way into my passenger seat. Despite this, spirits are high because I’m heading to Virtue Farms for a unique blending session with Virtue’s Cidermaster Ryan Burk and Chef Chris Consentino. No amount of bad breakfast decisions can take that away from me.
Chef Chris Cosentino, winner of Top Chef Masters, is known for his incredibly unique nose-to-tail cooking and offal dishes. He’s adventurous and award-winning with, as his website claims, “meat as his muse.” Today he’s visiting the farm to work with Ryan and the Virtue Cider team to construct a beverage with food and flavor in mind. By the end of the day, he’ll have created a custom cider to complement his unique cooking.
Stop us if you’ve heard this from us before but we’re really passionate about the way that beer elevates a dining experience. Which is one of the reasons we get so excited when Chicago Restaurant Week rolls around. I mean, is there anything better than 250 restaurants offering special prix fixe menus? That’s an almost uncountable number of opportunities for beer and food pairings.
To celebrate the beginning of Restaurant Week, we joined 1,500 fellow foodies at First Bites Bash, the official kick-off event produced by Choose Chicago. Hosted inside the magnificent Great Hall at Chicago Union Station, it was a night of savory and sweet tastings from over 50 of Chicago’s most celebrated chefs and restaurants… all paired with Goose Island beers. Check out this post to see what we paired with our Goose Island beers and learn more about how you can win a VIP tour of the Goose Island brewery!
If you’re anything like us, you’ve been waiting for Chicago’s Restaurant Week with bated breath. There are few things nearer and dearer to a Chicagoans heart during the winter months then a great meal. Restaurant Week, the annual 14-day culinary celebration is a chance for city-dwellers to climb out from their warm apartments and venture to one of the 250 participating restaurants to experience special prix fixe menus starting at $22 for lunch and $33 and/or $44 for dinner. Amazing.
Because we firmly believe in the power of beer to elevate a dining experience to a whole new level, the beer experts at Lakeshore Beverage have assembled a beer and food pairing guide with the help of Goose Island’s fantastic craft beer.
We’re pleased to announce that Motor Row Brewing Company, the brand new South Loop brewery, has joined the Lakeshore Beverage family and will begin distribution across Chicago this month. Who is Motor Row? Well, they’re kind of small. I mean, there’s only three people there… but don’t let their size fool you, they are mighty and make mighty good beer.
In a time when the Festival of Barrel Aged Beer is the hottest ticket in town and most every brewery worth its salt has a barrel aging program of some kind, it’s hard to imagine a time before barrel-aging beer was a thing. But that was the case in 1992 when the Goose Island Clybourn Brewpub set out to brew its 1000th batch. Read More