This is Beer in Front, part of the Odd Pods Media Network and the
Beer Media Group. Sometimes the beer in front of you is the best one
yet. I'll talk to people around the beer world and get their stories all
about beer. That's Beer in Front, and it's coming up now. Welcome
to episode two hundred and fifteen, the June sixteenth edition of Beer in Front.
I'm your host, Dave's Alatorus and Beer in Front is a proud odd
Pods Media Network member and a charter member of the Beer Media Group. Midwest
Coast Brewing Company, located at twenty one thirty seven West Walnut and the Great
City of Chicago, is opening their new all season rooftop with retractable roof this
Tuesday, June eighteenth. On today's show, I'll talk with Ryan and Tim
from Midwest Coast so you could hear more about this great new project. After
we talked, I went to the soft open last week and I'll share my
first hand experience if this one of a kind gem in the Chicago brewing district.
I'm releasing this episode on Father's Day, so for all the fathers out
there, Happy Father's Day. If you didn't listen to it, a couple
years ago, I did a Father's Day episode where I talked to a lot
of my friends in beer and podcasting and they were reminiscing about the beers that
their dads drank growing up. So I'll include the link in the show notes
if you could check that one out. But that was a lot of fun.
I think it was like two years ago I put that out, But
that was a lot of fun reminiscing about old school beers like Schlitz and old
style beers like that. So give that one a listen. In Beer and
beverage news, the Kelsey brothers, Jason and Travis, they're now the majority
owners of Garage Beer. This was started by Braxton Brewing. They become really
big now. They kind of had that Montucky Colt snack vibe where it's a
macro tasting beer but it's a craft made So I mean, I had the
Garage Beer folks on the show last year. I thought it was really good.
So but they have two new owners in the Kelsey brothers, so look
for them to be doing a lot of promotions for Garage Beer coming up.
Athletic they acquired the Ballast Point facility in San Diego and that's huge. So
they're gonna be making it's gonna be the second facility they have in San Diego.
But now Ballast Point is going to be contract brood. So I keep
saying that needs to be an episode because that's just so wild. Like ten
years ago, you could get sculpin in like grapefruit sculpin, and that was
ten years ago. There was fourteen ninety nine to six pack, but you
still bought it because it was really good. And then they sold for a
billion dollars and then you add the Kings and Combics buying it for pennies on
the dollar. They closed the big facility in the West Loop that they had,
they closed other locations, and now they're just gonna be contract browed.
So it's a wild story. But Athletic they are buying the Ballast Point facility
in San Diego. New Amsterdam Vodka and the viral show Hot Ones. They've
come out with the new hot pepper infused vodka called heat Check. Now I
love Hot Ones. I don't know if this is based on the Wings of
Death at the end, but if you like something with a little kick,
you could check out heat Check from New Amsterdam and Hot Ones. If you're
a fan of gin, Maplewood here in Chicago is coming out with a new
gin called Brewers Gin. It's a really nice looking bottle, nice green notes
on it with the maple Wood logo. But according to the release that they
have, this is going to be a citrus forward modern American gin with bright
notes of juicy orange and fresh marmalade. This is also going to be finished
with Moses Isaiah and Citra cone hops. So that sounds really interesting to me
and I'll have to go pick up a bottle of this. But if you're
a fan of gin, check out Brewer's Gin from Maplewood. The barrel age
program, the deep Wood series from Revolution is second to none in my opinion.
They're going to have one coming out later this year in collaboration with Firestone
Walker. This is going to be a barley wine aged in rye whiskey and
red wine barrel so that sounds really interesting. It's going to be called Opocalypse
later, so keep an eye out for that later in the year from Revolution
and Firestone Walker. And finally, they must have had some new money from
ticket sales, but the Ravinia Festival is updating their lawsuit against Revinnie of Brewing.
There was an article on the Tribune. You know, once again,
it's my opinion. I'm not a lawyer. It seems like it's bullshit to
me. But you know, it's not cool. So if you're around,
you got to support a great local business. And you know it doesn't sound
good. I mean, you can't keep paying your lawyers and run a business.
So it's not good for Veny you're brewing. But if you're around in
either the Highland Park or the Diversity location in Chicago, you know, grab
a beer, grab a bite to eat. That's really good. But yeah,
they're getting their lawsuits being updated from the damn festival again. Midwest Coast
brewing company Nestles at twenty one to thirty seven West Walnuts in Chicago is on
the brink of unveiling it's much anticipated all season rooftop tomorrow June eighteenth. This
is not just any rooftop. It's a game changer for the city's tap room
scene. Has breadth making views, an extensive selection of beer, and a
retractable roof that defies Chicago's weather. It's a spot you cannot miss. Joining
me now or general manager Ryan and Brewery manager Tim to delve into the story
of one in Chicago's Find This Breweries. Gentlemen, thank you so much for
coming on today. Thank you. We're excited to be here. Thanks for
having us man. Oh yeah, anytime. Wait, retractable roof. Who's
been playing with the on and off switch? Just watching this go back and
forth? Oh wow, that's a great question. The on off switch is
both of our two arms. That's amana retractable roof. So all right,
it's either Tim on one side and me with a big stick or vice vers
So can you share some details about the new expansion. What can people expect
when they step onto the new rooftop starting tomorrow? Yeah, So basically we've
expanded into our second floor. It's a rooftop that's, like you mentioned,
completely enclosed in a glass that can retract back and forth. We pride ourselves
on our taproom that we like to think is kind of an elevated tap room
experienced, and the second floor is just taking that literally to a different level.
So we like to think it's really polished up here. It's got,
as you mentioned, just incredible views of the city. Currently in the summer
months. Right now, we're surrounded by trees. So it's kind of this
green oasis, which is really cool and on you know, great summer days,
we can have it all open air and you just truly feel like you're
outside and this cool oasis on the west side of Chicago. Here here you
said, you're surrounded by trees. How were to cicados? Are they popping
in to check it out? Knock on? Yeah? Yeah, I would
it jets ourselves. But yeah, so far, so good. Yeah,
that would suck for the grand opening, just to get Inundata with cicado's falling
out of the trees. I'd be lying if I said that wasn't one of
our fears. Yeah, just being here. Well, I mean between the
pandemic and I'm sure you've been dealing with city permits and all of that nonsense,
this couldn't have been an easy project. No, it took quite some
time, and you know, really it started with the zoning and our particular
neighborhood that that really kind of delayed us. Working through some of that red
tape took a while, and then finally, you know, when we got
the red green light rather to start the construction project. The build itself was
actually pretty fast. I think they're gonna surprise us both. Yeah, I
mean they came in, they did a little bit at demo, and then
I mean, I don't think the construction once the demo was over, I
don't think the construction took six months. I mean they went they got nice
quick up here. Yeah. Yeah, it was basically they broke around or
roofed in October and then wrapped up the project in you know, late January.
So after that it was just kind of the process of dealing with the
city, which is, you know, it's very fun process. We'll say
that. Yeah, but we're across that finish line thankfully, so yeah,
it's but you're right, it had been a long time in the works,
kind of since we opened this space in twenty nineteen. We've always envisioned this
rooftop and it's been a part of the plan. So just to have it
now in twenty twenty four still seems like a daydream a little bit. But
we are so pumped me across the finish line and finally have it open.
This is going to come out the day before you open, and then the
SWFT open is next week, so I'm really looking forward to checking this out.
After this interview on the show, I'll give the full review of the
SWFT open. So, but yeah, I'm really excited about checking it out.
The pictures and the renderings look phenomenal. Yeah, I think you know,
both of us two are are shocked at how close it came to looking
like the renderings. I think off the time, those renderings just look so
sweet and polished, and then the finished product can look different. But honestly,
the finished product has just blown us away. So we are just pump
to up to see you man, I'm to open our doors to everybody.
Do you guys have any new special beers that are coming out for the open?
Yes. So back in the day we first opened they we the city
required us to have an elevator, even though we didn't have anything on the
second floor, and so we named one of our hazy I PA's elevator to
Nowhere, funny play. People would ask us all the time, where's the
elevator going or like nowhere? Yeah, but now that it goes somewhere,
we named we made a new beer. We made a double version of the
elevator to Nowhere. All the Elevator to Somewhere. I get those names fixed
up. All the time. Basically they're really close. But yeah, so
we have a double version of that that's going to be an upstairs, exclusive
only on the only on the rooftop beer. And then we got a bunch
of beers actually timing out pretty well. We should have another new kind of
just like regular heat. We should have our new American Lagger, and then
we've been pumping out. We kind of workshopped the shandy last year and we
brought that back this year. We think that's gonna do really well, and
it's like two and a half percent. We actually we made the next batch
today. We had to make one hundred gallons eliminade and then blended with a
beer. So that was fun. It's always a fun day. Yeah,
yeah, but yeah, I mean, so outside of that, so we
have you know, when you do sixteen beers downstairs on draft, we're doing
twelve upstairs. So most of them are most of them are going to make
appearance upstairs with cheese. What we're gonna do seasonally, you know, maybe
not have a lot of stouts up here during the summertime, but winter time
when it's snow and you know, you might have a couple of stouts kind
of flowing upstairs. So we'll we'll see kind of what how that all works
out. But that's that's what we're looking at now. Cool, like the
expansion is a new chapter, but Midwest Coast have been put now some great,
exceptional beer for five years. Can you share the story, guys on
you know how this journey began. Yeah, so I actually I was brought
on day one back at employee one June twenty nineteen. We started brewing first
week of July and soft opened the whole month of August and then had a
great opening in September. And yeah, when I came in, let's talk
with Cameron and our owner at brewer, and there the interview processors chat about
beer and kind of realized we both have the same opinion on beer and that
we just kind of like beer flavored beer. It's kind of one of our
official unofficial mottos here. We do, like I said, you know,
we maga shandy. You know, we do some fruited variations of stuff,
and you know, we do some some different things, but our our core
focus is just let's make good beer. Let's slick beer styles we want to
make, and let's make them as good as we can as traditional as we
can, uh, and and that's just kind of what what we've become.
It's always kind of funny look at a lot of different postings. Articles will
talk about like, oh, they're really known for their German lockers and they're
a really good I PA, Like, I don't really think that we're any
of those things, but I think we just kind of do. I think
we offer a wide variety of options across the whole spectrum of beer, from
American styles, German Belgians, Sayson stouts, I p as, I mean,
you name it. We got a California common rock in the tanks right
now. I mean that's just kind of we kind of just that's what we
do, and that's what me and when we when I interviewed, that's what
we liked. Like, we're just like, we just want to make beer
the right way, sat shortcuts used, you know, German ingredients for German
beers, all that kind of thing, and that's just kind of where we've
where we've landed. Yeah, I think that's kind of where I came to
as the general man. You're one of the things that I really liked about
this brewery was that there's offering for everyone, and that the brewers didn't want
to pigeonhole themselves in a certain kind of style or category. So it's important
to me running the tap room that everyone who walks through the door there's there's
a beverage for everyone, and that there's a seat at our bar for everybody.
And I think that over the last coming out of five years now,
we've really really nailed that, from beer to staff to the guest experience.
I think that this is a place for everyone, and that's really our goal
is to ingrad ourselves in the community here in West Town and offer bar stool
for everybody. Like I can't I can't imagine, like who would call you
like an IPA brewery or a Guerman brewery. I mean, I know you
have vaguely stylish and I saw a couple other like IPAs on tap, but
you know, I would think you're more known for like a traditional European style.
I know you have like brown ales cream ales out, but yeah,
I don't know if I would call you an IPA brewer. Yeah, I
don't. It's just one of those things where I think when people try to
get I get why people are you want to say breweries get something at which
I get. You know, you got breweries that are good at making German
beers or breweries that are known for their i pas. But I think we
just kind of we're so widespread and it's kind of hard to pull us into
something. So I think people kind of just well, like, well,
I like the German beer they make, so they're a good German. I
like their IPAs here, which is kind of a good thing. I mean
that people don't really know what to call us. I mean, yeah,
I think it means for doing a lot of things well. And that's also
just like like I said, like Ryan was saying, kind of curate that
top list, you can't ever please everybody, but with sixteen taps and try
and not go heavy on on certain styles and trying to make sure it's pretty
spread out and kind of offer as much as we can within reason. All
Right, Who was responsible for friends giving? Because I need to give that
person a hug that it's like one of my favor for it, if not
Beaver Holiday beers, that comes up. Yeah, so we the first iteration
of that, I think if I remember right with, I think Cameronon made
that his home brewing days they wanted to bring it in and the first time
we made it it was just a traditional American brown. It was about I
think it was like four and a half five percent and still had cinnamon,
nutmeg or to feel on it. But kind of after we did that,
it was good. But we kind of sat down one day outside and we
were chatting over beer. We're like, what if we I kind of want
to change this beer up. I like where we're going with it, and
he was kind of he was kind of in the same boat, and so
we kind of ended up kind of just on I like a seven percent,
call it like a strong ale, but it doesn't really have a style.
I think it's just kind of a it's a seven percent. I think strong
al is the best way because it's still kind of English English backbone, but
it's not It's not a brown ale any more by any means. But I
we think that that kind of bumping that ab b up. And then we
added a lot more of the set of a nutmeg orange peel the second time
through as well with that apop, and it just turned out we're like,
this is what we want the spear to be. It hasn't really changed since
then. And I'll say to you, Dave, it's hands down our favorite
brew day of the year, just per the smells that. Yeah, I
mean it is like I send a message out to front of house stand to
say, if anyone wants to just get into the holiday spirit, be at
the brewery this day and duck your head in the brew house because it's just
like a blast of holiday spirit. It's amazing. Yeah, we pull the
bags out of the oiled kettle and it just it smells awesome. It's it
is the best smelling. There are bad smelling brud is, but there are
definitely favorites, and that's probably top tier. Oh yeah, you have that
the send me a note before you do it so I could be in the
neighborhood. You got it. You mentioned like die that recipe. How often,
like when there's an idea for a beer, how often are you like
going back tinkering with the recipe? Has there ever been a time where you
just hit it out of the parks? You know? First Batch? Yeah,
actually the first beer Cameron and I collaborated on. So when we opened,
Cam had a few beers that he wanted to make that he had from
his homebrew days. Some of us stuck around Westom Brown. But that beer
has gone through a lot of iterations and changes. It's still the same bear
at its core, but we you know, made some alterations, changed some
grain, changed some pops, amounts of pops, just trying to you know,
trying to perfect it. So that beer has gone through some iterations.
But the first beer that Cam and I ever made, he had his six
beers he wanted and we're sitting down and he was like, all right,
like what do you want to make? And I was like, I want
to make an ESB. That's just my favorite style. And so we sat
out, we did our research. We we're like, all right, here's
the recipe, and that beer hasn't changed in five years and it's kind of
what It was probably the first beer that really put us on the map.
I think the Brown Nail has actually done a lot of leg work lately,
but ESB was kind of our first kind of bread and butter, just like
what we were known for. We won the Metal GBF in twenty twenty,
I believe, and so that was cool, but that was one we nailed
right away. We just made a Mexican logger. It just ran out last
week. That was one that everybody said we nailed on the first try,
so that was good. I like, I'm the teaker. Whenever we make
something, I'm always like trying to find a way to make it better,
and I think I'm never pleased. I always want to try and tweaks things.
But there are like those two beers A beers that we haven't really messed
with, and we're like, cool, that's not normally the norm. You
know, it's not what we expect. It's what you go for. But
until you try it, and you never know what goes wrong on a brewde
Yeast is East is living organized and so sometimes I have the mind of its
own and it doesn't behave like we would like it too. But it's when
you feel like you nail one on the first shot. Oh yeah, and
especially scaling up from you know, a five gallon homebrew badge to the full
scale production. Yeah, there's a lot that could you know, go wrong
or you know, even if you scale it up perfectly, something's going to
be different about it. Yeah. I mean, because I had, you
know, I back in my homebrewing days again like five gallon scale, and
then I worked at at brewery in Atlanta, it was ten barrels, but
I was like an underling, really do a lot of brewing, still a
little bit more brewing on a thirty barrel system before we came here ten barrel
system. And so even then, scaling in my mind scaling down Ermon's mind,
scaling up. That's always kind of hard to you got to figure that
out. But I think too, like I don't know. One of my
favorite parts about brewing, the brew process from home brewing to you know,
what we're doing on our level is just the Bob Ross happy accidents that happened
to talk about the hell a shouto oh yeah, so yeah that was Uh,
I'll throw keV under the bus a little bit here so nobody listens.
Yeah, it's fine. So our elite, our elite for we brought him
on, uh two or three years ago. Now he's awesome. He's the
nerd of the group. He knows that he does our he runs our East
management, which Cam and I before we brought him on. Uh, but
he does a lot better job at it than we do. But uh,
we're making our hellish holsting hellis. And I popped into the cooler that day.
It was a twenty barrel back. So we're a double brute. So
I popped in the cooler and I'm like, snow German lockings in here.
And so I come back out and I'm like, hey, keV, where
are you uh pitching in that beer today? And he's like he's like,
oh, the East that we used for october Fest. And I was like,
that's like an Octoberfest. He's it's not like a German loggers if it
East, and he's like they're they're different, and he was like I thought
He's like, I thought they were the same. He's like, I didn't
realize we used because like the Octoberfest is in the East that we use a
lot, so one off we use it for Octoberfest and that's pretty much it.
Yeah, he was like, oh, I'm just gonna use that East.
I'm like, so, do we just not have any German logger East
at house? He's like no. I was like cool, and camera to
read the first match and had gone off for the day and so tip him
a call and I was like, so we're gonna prop them, uh,
And we're like, well, let's just pitch the German Yeast. We'll get
some lot, we'll get well, let's picture October Fest East. We'll get
some logger yeast for the next match and just kind of call it a day
and see what happens. Came out and it actually came out really well.
It's the same exact as the whole steam all. It's. The only things
changed is the yeast kind of that bars. It's like a it's like a
r vie, a little fast, little best beard kind of lighter in like
fest year, but like it's not quite that either. So this kind of
we called it a hybrid logger know what else to call it? Yeah,
but we had to figure something out. We had twenty barrels of warp and
you know, we had to had to get East in there somehow. Yeah,
calling up like Omega like, hey, do you guys have anything I
could use? Yeah exactly, And they're like we do tomorrow. We're like,
well we need it today. Yeah. Yeah. So that was that
was the happy accident. U don't try to make a habit of those,
but uh, it's nice that it worked out for us. So yeah,
that was a good that one's uh I was running a low too, that
one's about to about to stick the can and then we can get our our
German pills there, uh rolling again. We've had it in cans for a
while, but it's been it's been out on it hasn't been undrafting about six
months, and people clamored for it to come back. So you've always been
a dog friendly, family friendly spotted Midwest Coast. Is this going to continue
with the new rooftop or are there any restriction because of the route dop.
Oh, Yeah, we're I mean it's basically the same thing on the second
level. Still family friendly, still super dog friendly. We're trying to ramp
up some more dog friendly events and just do more stuff in terms of that,
partnering with local rescues and whatnot. So that's really been our MF since
the start. And I mean I think part of me when I'm interviewing people
to join our front of house staff is like, do you like dogs?
Is maybe question one or two that yeah, people, because it's kind of
requirement. Ears So we're just we're super dog friendly and yeah, that's that's
definitely gonna be the case of the second floor. Awesome, Yeah I need
well mine's kind of leash react that we're also I'd bring her, but yeah,
I love going to brewery, tamp rooms that are dog friendly. Yeah,
I have the same issue my my dog. I got her. She
turns four this summer and I got her. And when I first got her
here Covid, I bring her to the brewery all the time, and who's
mad at it? Ten week old German shepherd green at the door. But
she's gotten a little too comfortable at the place, And so when I bringure
out about the city, she's awesome. When I take her to other bars,
restaurants, she's great. I bring her here, she's definitely a little
at least she active, so I try to not do that as Much's it's
her kingdom here, so it is queen of the castle, and she knows
is Yeah. It's like it's like, hey, now you're a full grown
German shepherd, you can't be a turd. Yeah. So we're here on
slower days, but yeah, I mean, it's the dogs here great.
We have a whole program with our mug Club that we allow. Well,
first of all, we learned the dog name first, and then as we
know the humans, we let them pick out a hop and then we'll make
an I p a name it after the dogs. So we've done a couple
of those as a little give back to our our mug club regulars. A
lot of those kind of helped you get us through the pandemic and they're still
around. Kind of like our Dog I Pa series, Well, we get
to know the regulars and and the beers that they like, and they get
to kind of help shape their own beer, name it after their dog,
and we feature a photo of the dog that the dog beers on draft.
So right now, it's Moxie's Pity Party. Is the hazy dog IPA we
have on right now? Moxie is this pity mix who belongs to one of
our awesome bartenders, Holly, And it's Moxy's Pitty Party because if you're not
dting Moxie, she'll let you know. She just needs et. So but
it's an awesome IPA and Holly and her husband Aaron got to pick out the
hops for it. So it's a pretty cool program that really like it helps
us bridge the gap between the brew house and the bar itself and get customers,
regulars and staff members involved in the brew process and then also feature dogs
and awesome beer they need type. So that's been a really rewarding program for
us. Oh yeah, you hear that, boy Rock, If you weren't
in such a pain in the ass, you could be on a beer.
Yeah, I love that. Yeah. Now, like I know, you've
had like food trucks and stuff. Is there going to be food now?
With the rooftop, we're gonna amp up some more of those food trucks and
food pop ups. But right now it just kind of comes down to the
certain kinds of licenses you can get as a brewer in Illinois. It's something
that a lot of people don't know. If we were to get a commercial
kitchen and become a group hub, we would have to let go of our
self distribution rights so and we lose the dogs inside and we'd lose them.
So it's you know, there's pros and cons, but we're not ready to
stay by to the dogs in the tap room quite yet. And then from
a business perfective, we want to keep that self distribution. Oh yeah,
possible too. So at the Illinois Craft Brewers Guild is awesome and they do
a ton of stuff. Raced Out is awesome too, and they've been making
strides to try to make our licenses a little bit more friendly for just making
money, which would seem like it would just be a no brainer, but
not always in the eyes of the legislate later. So yeah, so long
story short, Yeah, we'll still have food pop ups and stuff up here,
but no kitchen, and dogs will still be welcome. Yeah. No,
that's weird. I didn't know that about losing your self distribution. Yeah
yeah, I mean I think that would be like just really like pulling at
you from both ends, like what do you do? Oh yeah, we
like to say it's so we don't lose the dogs, but yeah, the
piece is the self distribute shit, Like it's just we make more money when
we sell the beer ourselves, so we still you know, we we have
a distributor out in the suburbs. It helps us out for sure. But
yeah, it's nice having having that little extra cash. Oh yeah, absolutely,
especially with you know, the last five years. Every you know,
every little bit helps. Yeah, totally. No, speaking of distribution,
now, you're around all around like the Chicago Land area, you know,
I see you with like bottle shops like your Musku is models and canned You
could be found at binnies. Were you at Jewel for a while, because
I thought I remember seeing you at a grocery store. Yeah. So if
I remember correctly, I think it's we are we're in like ten or so
closest jewels to our location, okay, and so like you're not going to
see us in the fourth side any of the I think the jewels on the
West side, I think are mostly carrying us, all right, cool everywhere,
like around the Chicago area. Is there any like plans to expand to
like other state? Uh not at the moment. I think we we I
think when when we first opened and it was kind of sitting down and planting
out kind of a lot of the future stuff with the orders, I think
there was an idea of, you know, maybe one day opening a second
space more of a production facility, and then maybe trying to become, you
know, a regional brand. I think that was what they kind of originally
wanted. But I think what we've seen in the beer market over the last
five ten years is I think everything's just gone hyper local. I think you're
seeing a lot of those bigger brands pull back. I mean, loganis just
closed their location out here, and we've actually we've seen it a little bit
kind of even in the suburbs where we did well when we were new,
but now that we've been around as much and there are so many breweries that
are opened out in the suburbs all across Chicago, it's just kind of everybody
wants to drink local, and local is getting more and more local. Yeah,
well, like you know your suburbs. If you're living in the suburbs,
you want to drink the beer that's down the street, not a beer
from the big city. So it I think it's I think that's kind of
I think we've kind of pulled back away from that idea of coming maybe a
regional player one day. I don't say it won't ever happen, but I
think just kind of where the market's at now, focusing on kind of the
top room space with its new upstairs, and we still have a decent distribution,
and I don't think you're ever going to see I don't think you're gonna
see us outside of Chicago Land anytime, Okay, but yeah, yeah,
I think, just like Tim said, just the focus on the local,
like anywhere that I go personally, like I'm reaching for, you know,
if I'm I'm in Ohio, if I'm in Washington, Washington State or something,
I don't want Chicago Beer there, you know, I want all whatever
their version of DZ Cutter is up there, So that's certainly the focus.
And then obviously all of our margins, our main margins are made inside under
our own roofs. So the more sales that we can drunk up in the
tap room, that's the better for us. So that's also why we're expanding
into this massive rooftop space. So yeah, and we mentioned in the intro
to retractable roof, so if the weather's allowsy outside, you could still head
over the Midwest Coast guys, I want to thank you so much. I'm
really looking forward to checking this out to the soft open and I'll hopefully see
you guys there once again. They're located at twenty one thirty seven West Walnut
in the city of Chicago. You need to check it out. Midwest Coast
Brewing Company, Great Beers. I'm a big fan. Guys. Thank you
so much day, Thank you really appreciate it. Yeah, man, thanks
for having us as much. Hey, once this is done, can you
guys like get to work on the Bears, Like, can you help Bob
and get the stadium done for the Bears. We'll start on their rooftop too.
Yeah, all right, perfect, Maybe it will be the sole beer
supplier. That'd be nice. There you go, perfect, All right,
guys, thank you so much and I'll see you in a couple of days.
It's Salt Open. Sounds good. Thank it. If you like fun,
then you're gonna love the Beard Alt Podcast. It's a podcast where we
talk about two of the greatest things in the world, Beer and weird Ass.
And frankly we talk more about weird Out than anything because he's the gift
that keeps on given. So join us as we talk through weird Al's career,
what he needs to us, and we have some very special guests on
to discuss the magic that is Alfred Matthew Yankovic beared Out part of the Odd
Gods Media Network. Oh, once again, I want to thank Ryan and
Tim from Midwest Coast Brewing Company for coming on. That was a lot of
fun talking to them. And then after we talked, I went to the
soft open of the new rooftop over at Midwest Coast and it was outstanding,
mean easy to get to. For me, I'm right down Western so it
was just a straight shot down Western Avenue, but really cool facility, the
downstairs bar, which is actually the first time i'd been to the downstairs bar.
The downstairs bar is awesome as well, but then you go up to
the rooftop. When we got there was a little warm, so they had
it closed initially just to keep the ac going. But really cool. Good
views of the city, well spaced out so you're not cramped. There's a
lot of room to like move around, You're not right on top of each
other. I thought it was really good. They had all of their beers
there to try, which I tried a couple of them, and I have
some that I'm going to talk about later on the show. But I wanted
to try a couple of things that were different, and you know, they
have great beers, but I wanted to try the shandy because I'm like,
all right, it's two and a half percent. I could have a couple
of these. And when you think of shandyes, you think of line and
coogl but this this was a raspberry lemon It's called fine and shandy. This
was absolutely fantastic. Like I had a couple of these great flavor you get
the raspberry, you get the lemon. So this was something that definitely in
the summer, I would grab a couple of those. That was really good.
They also have other offerings. They had some na beers there if that's
your thing. They had guest cider from Airis, so you know, it's
nice to see supporting other local places. So if you like cider, you
could pick up one from Aris. They also had a seltzer that, you
know, some people had gluten issues, so they had a seltzer called Eventually
Someday which was strawberry and watermelon. I loved that as well. I thought
that was extremely tasty. I had more strawberry than watermelon, but you know,
I also had a couple other you know, I had a sour.
I had the shandy before, so my taste buds could have been off,
but like that was I thought was a phenomenal seltzer. That's something I would
buy in six packs if I were to see that. Their hell Is was
outstanding. The cremail three from the t is excellent. Outside of they have
a double dry hop ear that they were talking about earlier called Elevator to Somewhere
that checks in at eight percent. But everything else is reasonable, so you
could definitely have more than one beer. When you're there, but you have
to go check it out. It's a great facility, great views, you
know, in the middle of the night, like well there. This was
from six to ten. They opened up the roof and it was just really
cool so you get the fresh air. It's a great spot. You need
to hit up Midwest Coast. I need to thank them for inviting me to
the soft Open and thank you to Rachel who set all of this up.
All right, the first one I'm gonna have from Midwest Coast is there West
Town Brown. This is an American brown ale five point three percent alcohol that
use Columbus and willam atte hops thirty three IBus on this. I love a
brown ale or remember I mean, if you're younger than I am, then
forget about it. But when craft beer started everyone had a brown ale and
I'm glad that Midwest Coast has this one out. So let's bust open the
West Town Brown. Really good color on here. The color is brown but
looks nice good foam here, Really get that nice malty a rome me here,
you get like some toffee out of this smells really good. Oh yeah,
how does everyone not have a brown ale out? And why why did
these stop becoming popular. This is so good. I mean, you think
of it, or you look at it, and you think, all this
could be heavier than it is. It's only five point three percent excellent beer.
Really get the nice malt notes there, You get the tawfee, you
get sweetness like maybe it's a caramel Let me have another sip. Yeah,
like a toppee karamelle type taste of that. I don't know if karamelle is
a word, but it is now, but I think it tastes really good.
There's a little bitterness from the hops, not a lot, but you
kind of get it at the back end. This is excellent, Like,
this is something that should be in my refrigerator all the time. It's that
good. And also, while I'm talking, I do want to say that
the guys at Midwest Coast hooked me up with the beer. Normally, like
ninety five percent of the beer I have on this show I buy myself,
but they were kind enough to give it to me and not take my credit
card sell. But I would drink this regardless. This is that good.
I think it's an excellent beer. If you see it around, it's in
a nice dark brown can, gold BoNT down here. It's a great tasting
beer, great looking beer. If you see Midwest Coasts West Town Brown,
you have to put it in the cart. It's excellent, all right.
The next one that I'm gonna have from Midwest Coast, this is their hazy
session IPA called Dune Surper. The can is gorgeous, like they need to
submit this to the Crushy Awards. I love this can. It doesn't list
anything on there, and I went on the Midwest Coast webs and I didn't
see this one listed, so I can't tell you the abbs. But it's
a session, so I'm assuming it's under five percent. But the can looks
great, So let's crack open Dune Surfer. Dune Surfer looks really nice.
It's very light in color, good foam here. Now big notes, big
notes out of the aroma. I think I'm getting some like stone fruit out
of this. It's most really nice. That's really good. Yeah, definitely.
You could tell it's a session so it's lighter. This is something you
could, you know, crush a couple of these. I like the flavor
of this a lot. You do get all those hops right up front.
I don't get a lot of malt here. I'm mostly getting the hops,
but it tastes really good. Now. I get a little malt now,
but I like this. I think this is good. And so everything I've
had from them is good. You know. I talked about it on the
intro with the regular beers that I had there. I had the sour,
I had the Seltzer and in the shandy. So everything is good and even
their hazy game is top notch as well. So if you see this one
around, it's a beautiful can. You've got the silhouette of the Chicago skyline
on here. You've got the lake, you know, because we're all into
like dunes and surfing in here, because you know that's what we do in
Chicago. But no, if you see the can put in the car,
this is another winner from Midwest Coast. All right, that's going to wrap
things up for this edition of Beer in Front. I thank you very much
for listening. Once again, I want to thank Ryan and Tim p Midwest
Coast Brewing Company for coming on and inviting me to the soft open. You
could find them at twenty one thirty seven West Walnut in Chicago, raat location
great beers. I think it's a spot you need to hit in Chicago.
If you're visiting or if you're local, you gotta go. And you just
have to thank you so much for listening. Next week, I'm going to
have my friend Aaron Fitzpatrick. You may know him is Fitzmagic Eats on social
media. We're going to talk about food in the city of Chicago, and
we're gonna share a beer as well, so look for that next week.
Have a great week everyone, Happy Father's Day, and remember sometimes the beer
in front of you is the best one yet.