This is Beer in Front, part of the Oddpods Media Network. Every week
i'll talk about a beer that maybe we've forgotten along the way while we get
those check ins and badges. Some weeks, i'll talk about a new beer
that has potential to be a classic. Being the Chicago beer Guy, I'll
also talk about great craft beer in craft beer news in the city of Chicago.
And remember sometimes the beer in front of you is the best one yet.
It's Beer in Front and it's coming up now. Welcome to episode one
hundred and sixty of Beer in Front. I'm your host, Dave's ELLATORUS and
Beer in Front is a proud member of the Oddpods Media Network. This episode
is coming out on May seventeenth. Happy anniversary to my beautiful wife Ruby.
I'm not sure what Emily Post has to say, but I think the fourth
anniversary gift is podcast equipment and beer. On the show today, I'll be
talking to Doug Wise. He's the director of Beveridge at Bottleneck Management. Bottleneck
operates the Old Town Poorhouse, and we'll chat about a new beer school happening
at the Poorhouse starting next week. The beer I'll be having this week is
the newest gold medal winner of the American Style Logger category at the World Beer
Cup. This is Bruski from Noonwhistle in Lombard, Illinois. As my friends
at fuck it, I'm forty like to say, don't be a dick.
The Craft Beer Conference was held last week in Nashville, and there were again
report of people who look like me not making everyone that doesn't look like me
feel welcome beer, and frankly, every industry should be for everyone. The
more people that feel welcome will enjoy your product and buy it. I'm not
an Ivy League graduate, I'm a Chicago Public High school clown. But you
jagoffs that refuse to embrace everyone, explain this to me like I'm five.
How is alienating women, people of color, members of the LGBTQ plus communities,
and deliberately pissing people off. How is that good for business? Everyone
I've ever met in beer has been cool. But now I start to wonder
how much of that is because I'm just a straight white guy with a beard.
In Beer News this week, I mentioned a few weeks ago that Guinness
is going to close one of their production facilities in Baltimore. Now I was
reading an article over on Brewbound. There's an official in Baltimore that wants to
invest five hundred thousand dollars so a local brewer can keep brewing the Baltimore Blond
from Guinness. So there's a few places that are thinking about doing it.
And I guess it's up to Guinness if they want to give up the recipe,
and I'm sure there's going to be money exchange. But there's an official
that wants to drop five hundred g to keep Baltimore Blond on tap in the
city of Baltimore. Goose Island opened their doors thirty five years ago last week
and they're having a month long celebration at their Clyborne location. So head over
to Goose Island's website to find out more details. The World Beer Cup was
last week and there were seven medalists from the Great State of Illinois. Also
last week, the winners of the Crushy Awards were handed out. I had
Jim mcunan we talked about the awards. I was a voting member again this
year. I voted on the Best of Beer Cans. That was hard.
There's a lot of great work over there. I'm going to include the link
in the show notes so you could check out the winners of this year's Crushy
Awards. Last week, Beer Advocate put something out over on Instagram and I'm
not sure if this is bullshit or whatever, but allegedly Perdue, the chicken
company, Perdue is gonna come out with a beer can chicken beer that's going
to have some spices in it. And and according to this Instagram post,
they're supposed to be a press in Bargo until the seventeenth, so this show's
coming out of the seventeen so look for that. I don't like I said,
I don't know if this is bullshit or not, but Purdue Chicken and
a beer and beer canned chicken. I'm a big fan of beer canned chicken.
I don't know if I want a beer with spices in it, but
look for that. Finally, in Canada, I'm gonna tell you a story
about Ferguson Jenkins. Ferguson Jenkins was my favorite cub player growing up. Fergie
Jenkins was the man great pitcher. I was a kid, a young pup,
a teenager out in the bleachers. I was out with my buddy Sean.
We were out the front row of the bleachers. We'd get there early.
Actually, I remember that day out a batting practice home run off the
bat of the great Keith Moorland, and I got a couple autographs on it.
Ferguson Jenkins was one. I got Leon Durham's autograph on a baseball and
Bump Wills, so I still have that baseball with all three. But Fergie
Jenkins, and I'm just a young, impressionable teenager. I'm like, Fergie,
when are you a pitching I'm trying to make small talk. I have
no game, but I'm just a young pup and I'm like, Fergie,
where you pitching next? Fergie looks up to me, young man. You
ought to read the papers and signed my baseball, and that was good.
But Ferguson Jenkins, he has a new beer coming out from the Sons of
Kent. This is only going to be available in Canada. The beer can
looks phenomenal. This is a classic pilsner. I've already reached out to Rob
from the Internet Talks Beer to see if he get this in Canada. But
if you're a Canadian listener and you find this, get a hold of me.
I'll definitely pay you to get a couple cans of the Ferguson Jenkins beer.
My Way Budweiser is coming out with a new limited edition can featuring Harley
Davidson motorcycles. This one looks really cool, so we'll see if the anti
woke people will buy this one. Finally, locally here, I mentioned a
few weeks ago that there's a Brewers Triangle. This includes Maplewood, Metropolitan and
Ravinia. They're having a block party this Saturday, May twentieth, and they're
also having a special joint beer from the three breweries. It's called Brewers Triangle.
It's a dry hopped Hellas. So definitely if you're in the Chicago area
check out the Brewers Triangle block party this Saturday. Okay. The Old Town
Poorhouse is located at fourteen nineteen North Wells Street in Chicago. It's ranked as
the top beer bar in Chicago in one of the best in the country.
They have over one hundred and forty tap handles featuring ninety different beers, local
craft beer, as well as cider and non alcoholic beer for those who want
something different. It's not just a beer spot. They have a full liquor
bar and food menu that is second to none. Joining the show is Doug
Wise. He's the director of Beverage at Bottleneck Management. Bottleneck operates the Old
Town Poorhouse, amongst others, And today we're going to talk about a cool
new series of beer classes they have coming up starting next week. Doug,
thanks were chatting today. How's everything going? Things are going great? Thanks
for having me. The Brew You Beer School kicks off next Wednesday, May
twenty fourth and features some great local Chicago breweries as well as national ones.
How did this come about? Well, We've been trying to think of in
person events that computer to our audience, and knowing how much knowledge we have
to share about beer and the breadth of beer that we have on tap,
we figured this would be a fun and inexpensive night out for beer enthusiasts.
You mentioned inexpensive. You can't beat the price event, that's correct. I
believe we set the price at one penny because I think we have to charge
for an event where we're giving out some free beer. But I think if
you go through event right, it ends up to around two dollars, a
pretty good deal for what you're going to get at our school. Yeah,
normally I work Wednesday evenings. But I'm off the week of May thirtieth for
my birthday, so I already bought tickets for May thirty first, so I'll
be seeing you with that one. Happy to have you should be a good
night. That's our beer styles and character as six class, so going to
be going through a variety of styles and talking about JCP and whether breweries care
about that or not, and it should be a fun night. Now,
what are some of the other classes that you have? So the first week
is tasting and evaluating beer. So when we were putting this together, something
I was really thinking about was how each class could build on the last class.
So of course there'll probably be a lot of guests who come just to
one night or two nights, but if you were to attend every night,
we wanted this to be progressive. So we start out tasting and evaluating,
just thinking about beer as you're drinking it, you know, appearance, a
roma, taste, mouth feel. Second class we're talking about styles. That's
kind of the next thing you might dive into. And when you're thinking about
the beer drinking. Then the third class we're talking about some world and US
regional styles as well as the brewing process. So that'll be a great class.
I believe we have half acre coming in to talk about that. And
then the final class we're going to talk a little bit more in depth about
hops and also beer and food pairing, so that'll be an especially fun one.
We've got two beer and food pairings for each guest to try that night.
Yeah, all look good. I don't know. I'm gonna have to
see if I could weasel another Wednesday off head to another one of those.
The tap list that you have has something for everyone. Going over everything you
have on tap, there's no way I could list it all. He or
how challenging is it for you to make sure that you have something for everyone's
palette When you have ninety beers on draft or we have ninety plus beers on
draft, it's not that challenging. You know. We live in a time
where craft beers in abundance all over the country and especially in Chicago Land,
and so of course balance and styles and flavors is crucial to a great beer
list. But the brewers in Chicago Land are making things easy on us.
And you're right, we do have, you know, everything from laugers to
stouts and IPAs and beers with adjuncts and classic German styles and really anything you'd
be looking for. How many of your tap handles are like local ones from
Illinois? So at any of our locations and including Old Town for our Chicago,
we have over thirty tap handles dedicated to local beer. I believe there's
even more at Old Town Poorhouse Chicago. There's likely forty to forty five.
If I'm ballparking. If you ask me to list every beer on tap,
I might be able to do it, but it would take a long time.
So yeah, the show's not that long. It would be like a
four hour part two miniseries to list everything that you have. If you want
me to put your listeners to sleep, you know, we could do that
later. I'm not sure who the social media person is, but every week
they put out a picture of this French toast and I'm like, oh,
I need this. So it's not just beer. You also have great food.
What kind of stuff can people expect when they go to eat this Old
Town Yeah, so our food is classic American food with some chef driven twists.
The French toast you mentioned is stuffed with nutella. You know, we
have a loaded baked potato flat bread, an ahi tuna blt or you know
my brunch favorite you brought up the French toast is we have a new chicken
chicken and waffles dish, but we use our popcorn chicken and so kind of
the classic bone in chicken breast. I find that makes it a lot easier
to eat personally. And we've you know, smothered with this hot honey maple
syrup, which is just unbelievable. I had brunch at Oldtown Borehouse on Sunday
and got to eat that and it lives up to the hype on for your
brunch now. I know, like last Sunday was Mother's Day, but on
a normal Sunday, do you need reservations for this? You can make reservations.
That's probably the best way to do it to ensure that you get a
spot. I made a reservation and it went really smoothly, so would I
don't have any pull you had to make a reservation yourself. I'm just you
know, a lot of my job is trying make things easy on the restaurant,
and that includes making a reservation when I want to come in. Besides
the beer school, do you have any other type of events like this.
I noticed on the website that you can rent that out for meetings, parties,
things of that nature. Absolutely all of our restaurants do have space that
you can rent out for personal or private events. You know, businesses will
rent it out and individuals can do parties. We also are doing features for
American Craft Beer Week, where we've got a locally inspired dish in every market
paired with a local beer. For Pride Month, we're partnering with New Belgium
and they're brewed for all initiatives, so we're donating two dollars for every New
Belgium beer. Soul to Glad, which is an organization that insures fair,
accurate and inclusive representation that rewrites the script for LGBTQ acceptance. At Oldtown Poorhouse,
Chicago, we host trivia every Tuesday at seven pm, and there are
theme trivias once a month, and then, as we already talked about,
there's rock and roll Brunch every weekend. I think on the weekend of the
twenty seventh, we're going to be launching Mimosa towers for our rock and roll
brunch. So for groups that are looking for large format mimosas I know that's
popular. We've been testing them, so we have that coming and we're going
to start doing a DJ at Oldtown Poorhouse for brunch as well. So we're
looking to kind of pick up the energy a little bit at our Oldtown Poorhouse
Chicago Brunch. I'll definitely have to pop in one Sunday this summer and check
that out. Yeah, you mentioned you have other locations of Old Town.
There's obviously the City one, but there's also a location in oak Brook,
Naperville as well as Maryland. Is are there different frings between the four or
is it just the same concept just maybe slightly different beer list. It's it's
largely the same concept with slightly different beer lists. And that's true for our
City Works brand as well. We have City Works and Schomberg and Wheeling and
Vernon Hills and then of course Pittsburgh and King of Pressure, Pennsylvania and Disney
Springs and Frisco and Fort Worth, Texas and Watertown, mass So there's a
lot of places in the country you can come in and get that rock and
roll brunch and taste you know, thirty plus local craft beers. Of the
other locations of like just say, the Poorhouse are you planning on doing like
a beer school type event or something similar at one of those two. Yeah,
this beer school, we're really looking at at it as something that could
be a launching pad to go to our other locations. So if this goes
well, we've created, you know, some good bones for this event and
we're hoping it's something that our other restaurants could kind of pick up and execute
all over the country and especially at you know in Naborville and Oak. On
the website, this is limited to fifty guests per class. That is correct,
Okay, so if you're looking to do this, well, there's only
forty eight left for the May thirty first. I think I was looking the
first one is sold out, so I'm going to include a link in the
show notes for the event bright link, so you could definitely click on that.
But I would get tickets as soon as possible before the rest of them
sell out. Absolutely. I'm not sure if the first one is sold out
for sure, but we were getting close and getting close for all of them,
so if you're looking to come, hop on it. Yeah, like
you said, I'll include the link in the show notes. I bought tickets
for the thirty first I think Saturday night and I thought I saw the first
one sold out, but now no, I'm looking forward to going to the
thirty first. Now you're the director of beverage, what kind of trends do
you see happening in the beer or you know, beverage industry. Is there
anything that kind of surprising you or you know, what do you see happening
down the road to the next year or so. So, I think one
big trend, you know, to talk beverage overall, this includes beer.
There's a trend in health consciousness. I think, you know, coming out
of the pandemic, people were taking a look internally to see, you know,
what is it that we're doing here, and so you know, you
see more low ABV beers, sessionable beers doing really well. I know,
when I personally go out, if I see a Metropolitan Crankscheff Coles or a
dovetailed Vienna lager, I can drink that and not feel like I'm way down
and I feel like I'm getting drunk. I mean I'm getting old. So
yeah, I can drink less and less and so lowering that ABB helps me
stay in the game. And you know, along those same lines, you
know, We're seeing a lot of nonalcoholic beer pop up at all of our
locations. We sell Athletic Brewing Company. They make some great any beers.
We have run Wild Ipa and Upside Down Upside Down Building Nail. That's my
personal favorite. Um. You know, those beers are great for people who
are sober, but I think we're finding more people that do also drink turning
towards nonalcoholic. Whether you're just spacing drinks out, or you're the designated driver,
or you're you know, going to be out all day with your friends
and you just want to hang out for longer, those are good options.
And you see that on the on the cocktail side as well. We added
mocktails to our cocktail menu last year. They've been going great sales are I
would call it a pleasant surprise, but they're definitely here to stay. So
I mean that that's a big trend. And then on the just the beer
side, I'm seeing a ton of prominent breweries turning their flagship beer into its
own brand. So you see that with you know, New Belgium in their
Voodoo series, we have juicya'son tap. You know, they have a double
ipa available all the time Juice Force is out, and then they also have
a seasonal line of the Voodoos. Nineteen eighty five is coming out in June,
so that's big, and you know, even even more locally, three
Floyd Zombie Dust has always been a giant in horror in our city, but
now they have Zombie Ice. They've got a double Zombie Dust. Basically,
Bell's too hearted now they do coal hearted and lighthearted and black hearted, and
so, you know, I think breweries are seeing that people like to go
back to what they're comfortable with and that may be a brand and if they
can kind of give you a little bit of variety within that comfort, they're
finding success in that. Yeah, even like Sierra with their Hazy Little Thing
now it seems like one whole shelf is all the variants that they have of
that as well. Definitely, I like the I think it's called sour Little
Thing or tart little Thing. Yeah, I'm sorry to see her Nevada.
I didn't know immediately, but it's a good beer, so people should try
it. You were talking a few minutes ago about the non alcoholic beers.
Are those available on draft or is it just like candis or bottles for those.
We have cans for those. I know some breweries have been thinking about
kegging their NA beers, and some may be doing that right now, but
right now we're just doing cans. I do think that down the line that
will become more and more popular. We have a hard seltzerround taps, so
okay, I know that there's space for you know, non traditional draft items
for sure. Yeah, I don't because I don't think I've ever seen an
NA beer on tap somewhere, and I'm interested to try and see. You
know, I like draft beer better than something out of a can, so
I'd like to see the difference if that even improves some of the n A
beers. Absolutely, I think the more that consumers continue to purchase and show
support for NA beers, the more it'll make sense for the breweries to start
thinking about tagging them exactly. Well, Doug, I really appreciate you coming
on once again Old Town Poorhouse. It's fourteen nineteen North Welles in addition to
other ones. I'll include the link in the show notes, but you should
definitely check out the through You Beer School, and if you're going on the
thirty first say hi to me because I'll be there with my wife Ruby.
Oh, Doug, I really appreciate you coming on and talking about this.
This is a really cool school. I appreciate it, sir. Yeah,
thank you, David. It was an honor. All right, we'll talk
to you later. Take care. Once upon a time, boring. It
was the best of times. It was the worst. You got that right,
what's your problem? We want new stories. Hi, It's Frankie and
Garrett and we host The Ever Trending Story, a weekly podcast where we bring
to life a fictional story created by our own minds and some of the hottest,
craziest trends from the Internet. Find us wherever you download podcast, and
be sure to join the fun on social media at ever Trending Pot. Be
sure to catch the latest from Ever Trending Story wherever you listen to podcasts.
All right, The beer in front of me today is the newest gold medal
winner of the American Style Amber lagger category of the World Beer Cup. This
is from Noon Whistle. This is called Bruski. This is a traditional lagger
checks in at four point six percent and I'm looking forward to it. According
to their website, Bruski is a beautifully copper colored traditional lagger. The malt
makes this beer slightly sweet with toasted, bretty aromas and flavors that are balanced
with saz hops. This is a year round offering from Noon Whistle, So
let's crack it open. That's a gold medal winning can open, sound right
there? Really nice color here, beautiful amber color. This is a lot
of foam here. I'd say a good three fingers of eggshell white foam.
Yeah. The aroma is good. It does smell slightly bretty. No,
that's terrific. Wonderful flavors here, good balance of the hops to the malt.
I get some sweetness when I taste it with a little of the hops
at the end. This is really good. Yeah, if you're a fan
of loggers, traditional style aggers, I would definitely throw this in the cart
from Noonwhistle. Bruski is a winner. I'm really digging this. I gotta
pour some more. If I had to nitpick, I would say it's a
little too carbonated, but that could just be the can itself. I would
definitely not like rate this down because of it. I think it's that good.
Yeah, that's just a terrific or something. I think you could Crush
at four point six percent. You could have more of these on a nice
day sitting outside on the barbecue, you could have a couple of Bruskis,
and I think you're going to be in good shape if you're in the Illinois
area and you could pick this up. I would definitely grab Brusky from Noon
Whistle. I rated this high on the Beer in Front scale one to ten.
I gave it an eight point nine when I scored everything. This is
terrific, So definitely grab yourself a Bruski. This week, I was chatting
with Barry Hummel, who is one half along with Abigail of the Great Pops
on Hops podcast. Barry is grabbing some South Florida beer getting that out to
me. I'll be sending him some Chicago area stuff out for him and Abigail
soon, and we're going to join forces in the next month or so.
For an episode on each podcast, Pops on Hobbes talks about great albums with
beer. I mentioned Smithereens eleven, so look for that soon. The Smithereens
are probably the band I've seen the most, and their classic power pop style
still sounds fresh today. I've been listening to a lot of Smithereens the past
few days. After talking with Barry over on Twitter, I'll include a link
in the show notes if you want to have a list in yourself. All
Right, that's gonna wrap things up for the May seventeenth edition of Beer in
Front. I thank you for listening. I want to thank Doug Wise over
at Bottleneck Management to come on the show and talk about the brew you beer
school. You could get the details in the show notes. I'll talk to
everyone next week on the show. Have a great week, and remember sometimes
the beer in front of you is the best one yet