Distributor Locations
Beer Under Glass. Beer Under Umbrellas. Beer Amongst Ferns. There are a lot of names that this event tends to go by, but any way you slice it, BUG is a great way to kick off Chicago Craft Beer Week. It’s also one of my personal favorite events of the year.
Beer Under Glass is great because there’s really nothing quite like sipping beer with a few thousand friends in the beautiful Garfield Park Conservatory. But it’s also a rare opportunity to see such a large collection of Illinois breweries under one (glass) roof. From self-distributed operations all the way up to Illinois’ largest producers, everyone’s pouring beers and celebrating the beginning of the magical celebration of our community that we call CCBW. Read More
Lakeshore Beverage will be hosting a bunch of great events during this year’s Chicago Craft Beer Week but one of the ones I’m most excited about is the first in a new series of meals we’re calling BYOBeer Dinners.
BYOBeer Dinners are custom meals designed to showcase Chicago’s unique BYOB restaurants with beverage pairings provided by Lakeshore Beverage. During the meal, Lakeshore’s beer experts will explain the reasoning behind the pairings, while the restaurant owners and family members tell the story behind the dishes we’re enjoying and the neighborhoods we’re enjoying them in.
Last week, we invited 300 of our closest friends to Lakeshore Beverage Beer HQ to celebrate the Chicago launch of SweetWater Brewing co. Check out the photos below and then sign up for our newsletter for invitations to future parties!
Bernie Murphy of Rappahannock Oyster Company joined us for an evening of craft beer and oysters. He brought with him oysters from his family-run company in Virginia that’s been around since 1899. They harvest to order with a technique called aquaculture which is a sustainable, responsible farming method designed to protect the shellfish population in the Chesapeake Bay. We served the oysters alongside SweetWater Brewing Co’s 420 Extra Pale Ale, IPA, Blue and Hop Hash.
“SweetWater is about a few great things – great people, great beer, solid music and environmental conservation.”
The Lakeshore Beverage team is sitting in a large taproom in Atlanta GA’s biggest brewery, SweetWater Brewing Co as Director of Marketing Steve Farace gets to the heart of who SweetWater is.
“We view the brewery as an all-encompassing concept. It’s a lifestyle, a way of thinking. We’re family here and we all love the same things – having fun, listening to great music and having awesome adventures whenever we can!”
A few months ago, Lakeshore Beverage announced that we’d be welcoming SweetWater to our family and beginning distribution in Chicago in March. To get a better feel for what the brewery’s all about, we’re spending the weekend in Atlanta celebrating the brewery’s 18th anniversary.
Over the two days we spend here, we’ll hear a lot of catch phrases: “don’t float the mainstream,” “we’re not here for a long time, we’re here for a good time,” “drink ’em if you got ’em” but it will become clear that this “brand position” isn’t really a brand position at all, but an honest-to-God reflection of the people that work here. These guys might take their beer really seriously, but they don’t take themselves that seriously.