The Beer Blog

The 15th Annual Festival of Barrel Aged Beers (FOBAB) is the world’s largest celebration of wood and barrel-aged beers, hosted by the Illinois Craft Brewers Guild. This festival of epic proportions has been known to pour some of the most sought after and prized beers from across the country and this year looks to be no exception. FOBAB will take place over three sessions on Friday, 11/10 and Saturday, 11/11. Saturday morning’s session is sold out, BUT, we have a pair of tickets for that session to giveaway — ay oh!

See the list of Lakeshore Beverage participating breweries below and enter to win a pair of tickets to Saturday morning’s sold out session. Read More

The 13th annual Festival of Barrel Aged Beers (FoBAB) was this past weekend at the UIC Forum. This festival for strong, delicious, barrel aged beers, put on by the Illinois Craft Brewers Guild (ICBG), boasted 363 beers from 157 breweries. We had a few friends pouring beers over the weekend: 3 Sheeps Brewing Co., Against the Grain Brewery, Atlas Brewing Company, Bell’s Brewery, Brooklyn Brewery, Central Waters Brewing Company, Goose Island Beer Co, MKE Brewing Co., Moody Tongue Brewing Company, Schlafly Beer, Sweetwater Brewing Company, Tallgrass Brewing, Upland Brewing Co., Virtue Cider and Widmer Brothers Brewing.

Congratulations to our friends who won some shiny hardware at FoBAB: Bell’s Brewery Expedition Stout – Silver in Strong Porter/Stout, Goose Island Brewpub Cherry Run – Silver in Fruit Beer, MKE Brewing Gin Barrel Aged O-Gii – Gold in Specialty/Experimental, and Virtue Cider Percheron – Gold in Cider/Perry/Mead.

A big thank you to the Guild for putting on such a solid beer festival year after year, to the breweries for creating delicious beers and to the people who volunteered their time over the weekend to make this fest such a success. Cheers to next year!

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Just Enough of a Good Thing: The 12th Annual Festival of Wood & Barrel Aged Beer

I’ve never been to Comic-con. I’ve seen photos and read articles but I’ve never actually been there. Yet I think I might have a pretty good sense of what it’s like. If one were to take all the limited-edition merchandise, summer blockbuster previews, movie star panels, and passionately costumed cosplayers, and replace them with beer, beer, beer, and passionately bearded men, then the experience would be just about identical to that of attending FoBAB. Read More