This is Beer in Front, part of the Odd Pods Media Network. Sometimes
the beer in front of you is the best one yet. I'll talk about
some old school beers that maybe you've forgotten about, some new beers that have
the potential to be a classic. I'll also talk to various 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 the November twenty first edition, episode
one hundred and eighty seven of Beer in Front. I'm your host, Dave
Zalatorus, and Beer in Front is a proud Odd Pods Media Network member.
On this episode, I'll discuss Metropolitan closing in Chicago, and I'll have one
of their beers. I want to thank everyone who listens and watches the videos
on YouTube and other social media channels. If you'd like to support the show,
head over to patreon dot com slash beer in Front for more info.
It's Thanksgiving week. If you're a longtime listener, I hope you're fucking stuffing
is not. Try Ruby's out of town this week visiting family, so I'll
be home with Moira Rose and have my mom over for Thanksgiving. I'm not
going all out this year because there's only a couple of us. I'm gonna
soueved some steaks, I will miss the sides and desserts. So if anyone
has any extra spare stuffing laying around, you know how to get a hold
of me. I mentioned in the intro that if you're a longtime listener about
your stuffing. I realize after I recorded that some people might not be longtime
listeners. So at the end of the show, if you haven't heard my
grandmother's stuffing story, listen all the way to the end after the closing credits,
and I will tell you my grandmother's stuffing story. In beer News,
it's Thanksgiving week, which means people will be lined up to grab Goose Islands
Bourbon County brand stout all over Chicago Land. I'm not one of those people.
For the past couple of years, bottles can be had fifty to seventy
five percent off if you wait a few months, so I think I could
hold out. Twisted Tea is going to be sold cheaply on the black market
in the Memphis area thirty two thousand cases. That's thousand and thirty two thousand
cases, which is around eighteen truckloads of twisted tea went missing from a warehouse
recently. How the hell do you steal eighteen truckloads a twisted This puts the
Luftanza heist from Goodfellas to shame. If you're the security guard, you have
one job. I can imagine a Memphis version of poly Walnuts and Silvio orchestrating
this caper and trying to sell twisted tea at the bottom, bing like,
hey, Tone, we got some twisted tea. Why do you have that
many kes? Well, there's antioxidants in tea, you know, Tone and
Silvio just selling it at the bottom ban how do you steal that much product?
A group of former Anchor Brewing employees have formed a cooperative and raised over
one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. They're going to focus on assets and intellectual
property from Sapporo, which shut down the iconic brewery earlier this year. Brooklyn
Brewery and Four Roses have come out with the fifth edition of Brooklynn Black Ops.
This is a twelve percent Russian Imperial stout aged in four Roses bourbon barrels.
I've enjoyed pass versions of this. Four packs retail for about twenty bucks,
so it has a reasonable price point compared to some of the other barrel
age stouts that are out there. Voodoo Rangers Imperial Ipa is now the number
one craft beer in dollar sales at convenience stores, overtaking Blue Moon. Sam
Adams seasonals have gone up now to number two in sales at grocery stores.
I just hope they don't store that stuff in Memphis. Like the Twisted Tea,
Goose Island and More Brewing, they're teaming up for a new barley wine
that's going to be double barrel aged. The new beer will be called Tusk
and Grain. Good news on the labor front, the Teamsters and ab in
Bev have reached the Tentatives Settlement to restore health benefits for active and current workers
and end the two tiered healthcare plans. Church Street Brewing out of Itasca,
Illinois is opening Barley House where you could dine while having some great beer.
They had a soft open this week, so look out for that. Sad
news. Out of Chicago, Metropolitan Brewing is closing its doors on December seventeenth.
They filed for Chapter eleven last month, but cited a rent dispute that
has been going on now for years, and low sales in the retail market
is reasons for this. The owners claim that the landlord came into the brewery
while they were doing some renovations and hurried them into signing a lease with an
extra nine thousand square feet of space, which they did. They signed this
without their attorney present. I'm not going to dispute that one bit, but
something just is never sat right with me while reading this story over the past
couple of years, even if you didn't have your attorney president, no one
looked at the lease's square footage in monthly rent before signing and said, this
is not what we agreed upon earlier. And after paying this for a few
years now in twenty nineteen, before the pandemic, you discover this discrepancy and
then stop paying rent altogether. No one said, this rent sure is much
higher than we agreed to the footage and I'm assuming the rent is more than
a third higher than what they claim they agreed upon before they sign this lease.
They stop paying the rent altogether, saying they've been overpaying. I don't
know. I'm not a lawyer, but I can't see how just not paying
your rent is going to end up. Well. I'm not saying the landlord
is an angel by any stretch, but I'm having difficulty buying the brewery story
in this. They were either extremely naive or had poor representation in the whole
affair, and it's a shame. They put out some great, great beers.
The facility was second to none in the Chicago land area. If you're
in the area in the next month, you got to stop by pick up
some beer. Before they closed for good, they had a statement on social
media saying they have no current plans to relocate or revive the brand, and
I don't know what's going to go into the spot. I mean, it's
a great location overlooking the Chicago River, but I can't see, for like
the landlord, how you're going to fill this space. I mean, they
still haven't put anything into the Ballast Point location that closed down. I think
it was the west Loop they closed that down after the pandemic. That's another
huge facility brewery that's been open. So I don't know what's going to go
into the old Metropolitan Hi. I'm Tina ha Demio and I'm Hillary Doherty,
and we host the Muck Podcast where we discuss the dark and sometimes weird true
stories in American politics. E Tina, did you know that Elvis crashed the
Nixon White House for the sole purpose of getting a Dea badge and it worked?
Who or how a gun control advocate senator out of California engaged in gun
trafficking with Notoria's gang leader, shrimp Boy. Shrimp Boy I remember him,
Okay, So you know. We cover all of that and more for Maladies,
madness, mischief, and murder in the US politics, and we also
host a bi weekly interview segment called Lil Muck. We interview politicians, journalists,
activists, and others who share their experiences in politics. Find The Muck
Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts, and check us out on social media at
the Muck Podcast. All right, the beer that's in front of me is
from Metropolitan. This was their flagship crank Shaft. It's a kolsh beer checks
in at five percent alcohol twenty two. IBus Untapped only gave this an average
rating at three and a half bottle caps, but over on Beer Advocate it
was rated very good at eighty five. I've always enjoyed this, so this
will probably be the last time I get to have a crank shaft, so
let's bust open this can. Crank shaft has a nice, beautiful pale straw
color, good foam on here, really smells nice. It just smells like
a delicious old school beer. They use a little wheat in this, so
I think that's why it's a little bit lighter in a little easier than normal.
But it looks and smells phenomenal. Yeah, that's really good. This
is something you could drink this or you could in the past, drink this
all day. It's just a phenomenal beer. It's true to this style.
It's just something that you could have every day. It's nice and light,
good hop finish here, good malt taste of this, everything about this is
just rock solid. Yeah. Just tastes like an old school beer should like.
This is something hopefully Metro comes back in another life or another you know,
brewery of some kind, because I'd love to see this beer again.
It's a delicious beer. If you're in the Chicago area and you get a
chance to head over there, maybe they still have this on tap, or
you know, maybe a grocery store will still carry it. But definitely pick
you up some crank shaft. All right, try something a little different right
now. I was at my grocery store, Mariano's, and they had in
the ready to drink a cocktail section a Gray Goose Classic Martini cocktail. This
is made by Gray Goose. It's in a Gray Goose bottle, smaller bottle.
It's a three hundred and seventy five milli liter bottle. This is Gray
Goose vodka blended with French vermouth. I do love a good vodka martini,
and they had this on sale. It's normally twenty two ninety nine. They
had this nine bucks off, so for thirteen ninety nine. It's in the
cart now. It says it makes four to five martini's probably gonna be about
three. But let's bust open this Gray Goose Classic Martini cocktail and try this
out. I didn't have it in a cocktail shaker, you know, doing
shake in, not stirred. So I'm just having this over one of those
nice big giant ice cubes. Smells really good. Smells like just your classic
vodka martini. I guess I should say the color the color is clear,
but no, it really smells nice. If you're a martini drinker. I
think the smell is pretty good. It's not bad, pretty smooth. I
think I would probably add a little more of amouth if I were to make
a martini at home, but it's definitely drinkable for the price point. I
mean, if you get it on sale for fourteen bucks in the cart twenty
three eh, I don't know. I mean, it's not bad. I
guess if you're like me, you like Martini's, but you don't want to
have giant bottles of vodka and for mooth laying around the house all the time.
This would be something that would satisfy your desire for a quick martini without
having all these bottles of booze laying around. So if you see the Great
Goose Classic Martini cocktail, you could do a lot worse. It's really not
bad. I would make mine a little different, but I think definitely this
is drinkable. A couple of months ago, I mentioned that I'll be branching
out and occasionally doing different shows unrelated to beer. It seems like those shows
do a lot better the one that I did. It was almost two years
now on Stax Records, that still has legs, and that's still one of
my top downloaded episodes months to month. So I'm going to branch out and
do a couple different things. I talked about a while ago up that I'm
going to do a show on the Oakland A's and there was some news last
week in regards to that, so I'm gonna finish writing and record that episode
this week. I have another episode on Tom Petty that's going to come out
probably earlier next year. But I'm going to branch out and do some different
things unrelated to beer. The beer podcast is not going anywhere. It just
might not come out every week in the near future. All Right, that's
gonna wrap things up for this edition of Beer in Front. I thank you
very much for listening. If you want to get a hold of me,
you could email me day that'sbeerinfront dot com. You can find me on all
the social media channels at beer in Front. I hope everyone has a great
Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday, so I hope you enjoy it with your families,
and I'll talk you down the road on Beer in Front and remember sometimes
the beer in front of you is the best one yet. I love Thanksgiving.
It's my favorite holiday of the year. As a child growing up,
my parents were divorced. Some years I went to this parent, some years
I went to that parent. You know how it goes. But when I
was stayed home with my mom, we would have Thanksgiving at my grandmother's house
and every year she would do the whole thing, the turkey, the stuffing,
sweet potatoes, you name it, my grandmother did. It went all
out every year, never failed. She's in the kitchen making this, and
my grandmother's like, the fucking stuffing is too dry. It never was.
The stuffing was always great. It wasn't I'm sure it wasn't home made.
It was probably stovetopper. Domini's was the grocery store we went to back then.
But the stuffing was always great. But every year, without fail,
the fucking stuffing is too dry, and we would like laugh at her,
and of course then you know me, I'm a ball buster. So she
would ask how the stuffing was, Oh, it's really fucking dry. Nada,
I don't know what to tell you, and then she would get mad.
But the stuffing was never dry. So wherever you're spending your Thanksgiving holiday,
I hope you're fucking stuffing is nice and moist