January 11th is National Milk Day and if you ask us, that calls for celebration. And how else to celebrate than with a milk stout or four? Milk stouts are made with lactose, a disaccharide sugar that is not fermented by yeast during brewing. This process is what’s used to sweeten the beer; resulting in that sweet sweet milk stout goodness we love so dearly. Watch as our fearless trainer and educator, Chris Kolodziej, explains milk stouts further. Read More
Now that we’ve passed the winter solstice, everyday is one day closer to spring. And after several months of dark and heavy beers, January is the perfect time for something lighter, something new, and something that will keep us looking towards baseball season. Leave it to Chicago’s own Goose Island Beer Company to fulfill those notions with their brand new seasonal, Preseason Lager, a Vienna-style lager made with both German and American hops. We sat down with Goose Island’s Retail Development Manager and Advanced Cicerone, Beau Forbes, for a private tasting of the new beer.
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In our last post we showed you our gift guide for everything but the beer. Well, a certain someone paid a visit to Chicago to let us know some fantastic stocking stuffer ideas for the beer lover in your family so obviously we had to make a video. We hope you enjoy it and have a wonderful holiday season! Read More
The highly anticipated and coveted Bourbon County Stout lineup from Goose Island is set and ready to go. Scaled back to just four variants this year, Goose is going back to the basics with this release, focusing on the four styles that are at the heart of this brand. Bourbon County Brand Stout, Bourbon County Brand Barleywine, Bourbon County Brand Coffee Stout, and the Chicago-only Bourbon County Brand Proprietor’s Stout make up the four offerings. As is tradition, BCS will release on Black Friday, but we were graciously invited to a special media preview of the lineup on a cold and rainy fall evening in October. We’d have it no other way. Read More
We get it, pumpkin beers can be a bit divisive. Most folks either love them or hate them. But before you write off pumpkin ales for good, consider the fact that some of the first beer brewed in America was made with pumpkins. That’s right, 18th century colonists used them as a source of fermentable sugar due to the cost and limited supply of barley. History is neat! Anyways, here are three distinct pumpkin beers we hope you’ll enjoy this fall. Read More
Of course we all love summer, but there’s nothing quite like these first days of autumn in Chicago. Crisp evenings and leaves on the ground mean it’s time to swap out citrus for spices and start pouring these malt-forward favorites. So bust out your flannel, watch too many horror movies, and start putting together that epic Halloween costume. Here are our fall beer picks to keep you warm this season. Read More