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 eighteen, the July fifteenth edition of Beer in Front.
I'm your host, Dave Zalatoris, and Beer in Front is a proud
odd Pods Media Network member and charter member of the Beer Media Group. Ravenswood
on Tap is a great festival that's happened in this weekend, the twentieth and
twenty first of July in my neighborhood. It's in the Ravenswood neighborhood. It's
at Ravenswood and Burteaux. I'm going to talk to Amy's ark House. She's
the events and programs manager of the Greater Ravenswood Chamber of Commerce, and we're
going to talk about the festival the area. Later on, I'm going to
have the Beer in Front that's going to be from Beguile, one of the
breweries of malt Row, a favorite of mine. So that's all coming up.
If you listen to last week's show with Revolution and their deep Wood series.
Don't forget this week is going to be the start of the deep Wood
series, and starting I believe it's Tuesday, you could go online and pre
order the first round of the deep Wood series, so don't sleep on that.
Those should sell out right away, so be on the lookout for that
starting this Tuesday. Somebody asking Dave, you haven't talked about your back in
a while. What's going on. I'm still in limbo now, going back
and forth with the company I work for, my attorneys, Workmen's comp.
No one knows what's going on. They're trying to get me to have what's
called like a functional capacity or like work conditioning, to one make sure I
could handle what I'm supposed to do at work, which is to lift seventy
pounds. I don't feel I can. One doctor thinks I can. So
whatever put me through these tests to see if I can do it. Great,
fantastic. I can go back to work and come up with something else
to talk to you about every week. But everything's up in the air.
So my attorney's trying to get a hold of the adjuster from Workmen's cop he's
not answering any calls. My attorney's calling the attorney for the company I work
for, like what's going on the adjuster and not returning his calls either.
I call work, like, all right, I'm not getting paid. Somebody
needs to put me back to work. Then if you know, I don't,
and they're like, I don't know what's going on with you. So
everything's up in the air. So hopefully by the time you hear this,
but it just really frustrating. Somebody figure out what I'm supposed to do.
If you know, if my back can hold up and lift seventy pounds,
great, that's what I want. I don't want to sit here and not
be able to do anything. I want to go back to work. But
somebody figure out what I'm doing. It's just very frustrating, and what little
hair I have, I'm pulling it out because I'm at my wits end.
So that's enough about my back. Let's talk about beer festivals and beer didn't
beer. In beverage news, Sierra Nevada is adding a cryo hopped beer to
its Little Thing line. Cool Little Thing should be available nationwide as we speak.
Allagash is coming out with the new hop Water. Plans are for right
now for this just to be a tap room own, but hopefully it'll get
wider distribution if it goes well. Bob Peace, the President and CEO of
the Brewers Association, is retiring in twenty twenty five once his successor is named.
I talk many times about the blurring of lines between non alcoholic companies that
are coming out with Seltzers and everything else. Well, now Welch's is coming
out with the ready to drink vodka concoction. I couldn't tell you the last
time I had Welch's or anything Concord Grape labored, so I don't know what
are you gonna do next? They have like Caprice Son pouches filled with booze.
I don't know. But if you like Welch's and Concord Grape, there's
a vodka drink out there for you. There's an influencer claiming that Hulk Hogan
and his Real American Beer that they dropped her once they found out that she
was black and replaced her with a white woman. Now, Hulk Hogan and
the beer company deny this, but it's not the first time Hogan's been in
trouble for racist action, So you do with that as you will. Athletic
is raised fifty million dollars in financing from a private equity firm. Now,
if you're younger than fifty, you probably don't remember Seagram seven and seven up.
That was huge back in the day as seven and seven. They're bringing
back ads for the iconic seven and seven And I said it was huge back
in like the seventies, maybe the sixties. And I can't ty you last
time I had either a seven up or Seagram seven. But I might have
to pick this up now. Gingling is finally going to make it to the
Chicago area. Look for that locally here sometime next year in twenty twenty five,
Lineup Coogle will have their summer shandy available year round, So don't hoard
it in August they can, you're not gonna be able to get it.
It's gonna be a year round thing. Finally out of Chicago and the Chicago
area. Short Feuze Brewing out of Schiller Park. It turns out that they
were the brewery that acquired the Metropolitan name, the recipes, everything else back
in January. Now a lot of people were skeptical in myself included when the
news broke because they're not known as a lager brewery. They do hazy IPAs
they do sours, and they've won medals for doing it. I'm not knocking
short FEUs at all, but they're just not really a lagger brewery. Guys
drinking beer talked to Nick Tigue, the owner of Short Fews, and he
seemed, according to this interview that I read online, he seemed respectful of
the name and the legacy that Metro has in the area. The thing that's
weird now, they were supposed to have a release of some of the Metropolitan
line at Short Fuse last Friday, but according to their release, due to
unforeseen circumstances, it's gonna be pushed back into August. So this makes me
think that they might not have dialed in the recipes of the Great Metropolitan Laggers.
So we'll see what happens with the Metropolitan name coming out of Short Fuse
in Schiller Park. We turn up this program to bring you a newsplash.
Michael Jackson's ghost scene at a Yankees game. Cinnamon does crunch now with a
shrimp in every bite, lil Uzi Vert's head diamond has been sold on the
dark Web. Stories like this and more can be found at the ever Trending
Story, a podcast where we peruse the news and write a fun fictional story
for you. Find us wherever you download pods and follow us on the socials
at ever Trending Pod and we are proud members of the odd Pods media network.
All right, welcome back. Explore the diverse malt Row in the Ravenswood
neighborhood, home to a variety of award winning breweries, most within walking distance
of each other. That's the best part. No matter your beer pallette,
You're gonna find something to enjoy in this wonderful area. Ravenswood on Tap is
happening this weekend on July twentieth and twenty first, at the intersection of Ravenswood
and Bertow. Ravenswood on Tap is one of the best beer events of the
summer. Right now, I'm talking to amy's Arkowski. She's the Events and
programs manager of the Greater Ravenswood Chamber of Commerce. Amy, thanks so much
for talking today. Of course, thanks so much for having me. I'm
always to talk about Ravenswood and Maultro Technically I'm on the other side of the
tracks, like by Western is it? You know, you're not gonna get
upset with me if I call it like say, I'm in Ravenswood. It's
not like a Schomberg Chicago thing, not at all. We get along all
with all the neighborhoods around us. And it's so the lines are so skewed
in this area. Way you can be in North Center, Ravenswood and somehow
Lincoln Square all the same time. Yeah, so we're all one big family
around here. I mean, I love this area and everything that it has
for as a resident. If you're a consumer a visitor, what do you
like most about the Ravenswood area. Yeah, I mean this is the first
neighborhood that I ever had a like a big kit apartment in. I graduated
college and my now husband and I got our first apartment here in twenty fifteen,
and we have always lived in Ravenswood since then. We absolutely love it
around here. I love how it's kind of quiet, but it's surrounded by
exciting, louder neighborhoods. Obviously, we have here. We have breweries,
we have bars, we have restaurants, we have as music but if I'm
not here, I'm in Andersonville, and it's a spy And it's also a
great mix of people. There's going to be people who have been living here
for decades, they are going to be people who've only been here for a
couple of years. There are people who have families, they are single people,
and everyone cares about the neighborhood. And I think that's a really special
thing about Ravenswood. Everyone is wanting to get involved in greening initiatives. Everyone's
wanted to come out to the events and just really support local and that's fantastic.
How did you wind up getting started with the chamber? So? I
actually worked at a local brewery. I worked at Empirical Brewery over Rip missed
Bear very much, but yeah, I worked there for about four years.
I started as a bartender and I ended up working my way up to being
events manager. And then when COVID hit and I no longer could do events
anymore, I switched back to bartending for a little bit, and then I
heard that the GRCC was looking for someone and I had been working on tap
from the brewery side, so I knew how they operated and kind of what
they were up to and I always thought it would be really fun to work
with them, so I ended up moving over there. So I can still
work with all the breweries and all the other neighborhood businesses that I had relationships
with previously, but it's just a different capacity now. Yeah, just a
couple of blocks down the street. There you go. Yeah, Well,
Rowe features excellent breweries including Big Gle, Cultivate By, Forbidden Route, Demo,
Dovetail, Half Acre Hot Butcher Is was Inspiteful. Plus Covild Distillery meets
Home here as well. What do we have in the water, what's in
the pipes? Amy? That makes this a great area for brewing and dispilling.
It's I mean, so much of the wonder of malt Roe can be
attributed to the Ravenswood Industrial Corridor. In late eighteen hundreds early nineteen hundreds,
Ravenswood saw a huge boom of industrial manufacturer moving in and infrastructural development, and
so we have all these gigantic spaces along Ravenswood Avenue, and those manufacturers started
moving out of the neighborhood or just closing due to reception and just changing times.
That left us with a range of spaces that are perfect for artists,
startups and then more current kind of businesses like breweries and distilleries. So the
spaces around the Ravens Industrial Corridor make it really cool for breweries to be able
to get the space that they need close to everything else. Okay, a
really great experience I think for the breweries to open up in this neighborhood and
just be able to be surrounded by not only that, but also they can
you know, say, yeah, my building, they used to make zip
ties here back in the early hundreds. Like every brewery has a story like
that where you can what exactly was used for before was a brewery, which
is really fun. Yeah, are all of the breweries going to participate in
the Ravens wo antap this weekend? Yes they are? And is that a
super exciting year because not all. We have a kind of one slightly newcomer
and one completely newcomer. So we have the newcomer is Demo Brewing over here
at Ravens Wooden, Bertou. They just opened earlier this year and they have
a relatively small spades, but very small and mighty. They have delicious beers.
I can see them from my office window, which is really nice.
And then is Was Brewing is joining us again this year. They were only
with us one day last year, but we're going to be with us for
two days this year. And they are actually working on opening up their own
space and tap room over at Ravenswood and Foster in the old Urban Brew Lab
space. Oh okay, where I was over at Empirical. They've been working
out a beagyle space for a little while now, but they're going to be
opening hopefully in the next month or so to the public to be able to
have a whole brand new tap room also themselves. Oh that's awesome. Yeah.
I was just at demo last week with the friends of mine. They
were in from Philadelphia. I'm like, oh, you got to come to
the area, so we did the tour. Yeah, what else can people
expect it? Ravens What on tap this year? We have a lot going
on on tap this year, probably more than any other year. Actually,
we have a full schedule of bands. They're going to be playing both Saturday
and Sunday. We're gonna have homebrew tastings from nome Brew, which is our
local homebrewing shop over at Montrose and Sealy. They're fantastic. We're going to
have sort demos from the Chicago Sword Playguild and Gosaika and the Kendo Dojo.
We're gonna have self defense demos from Titan Him. We're gonna have a live
painter, John Arrow, who anyone who has been in Ravenswood may have seen
Blind Love, the big blue guy at Ravens Wooden Berto who's doing the sculpture
that has a hand in the shape of a heart. That's the same artist.
He's gonna be doing some live painting. We're gonna have plenty of local
artists and arsons who are going to be selling their stuff, and obviously a
lot of beer and great food, so can't go wrong with anything. Are
there going to be food trucks there. We're not gonna have any food trucks,
but we won't have food venders, Okay, so we're gonna have plenty
of different options we'll have. I'm particularly excited for Bad Johnny's wood fired Pizza.
They had them well, and they card out a pizza oven onto the
street and they make the pizzas right in front of you. They're usually over
in They operate out of the Long Room on Earth Park, which is incidental.
My favorite bar so I very well and they do amazing pizza and we're
going to have fifty four eleven and banadas, Maldo Isalian or Maldo Lack and
grill, and a bunch of other different options, and so there should be
a little something for everyone depending on what you have here in for that afternoon.
All right, that's cool. One thing I'm looking at your website ax
throwing are like, are we talking like a real axe or like cans of
teenage boys body spray that we're gonna throw? What is ax throwing? Yeah?
I mean, what better activity to do is the beer than throwing an
ax. We will have so we work with a ax throwing company and they
bring out a trailer that has fencing around it so you don't have to worry
about a rogue axe going into the crowd or anything like this. And tickets
are going to be available for purchase at our tickets tents as well as a
part of our hophead pre sale bundle that we have on our website, and
you're able to get multiple throws per tickets. I believe it's six throws per
ticket at always a really fun time. It's a great way to just let
off the steam of the weekend. I got yourself a beer, throw a
couple of axes, and then groub a few more beers. It's a great
time. All right. Well, I'm a little leery about this, but
I trust you, Amy, so I want I don't want to get hit
by any stray axes of course, all safe first, All right, I
was looking at like there was a Spotify playlist that the Chamber put out,
that these bands looked really good. And what I liked about them they all
looked like they were original bands outside of like the one Beastie Boy cover band,
which is cool because most festivals are all just cover bands. All of
these acts were really good with the original music, so that's pretty cool.
Yeah. Our associate director, Gene takes care of booking. All the bands
were on tap and he has awesome He knows a lot of people, and
people just come to work with us year to year because we are great to
work with. Must be the case if they keep back. Like you said,
we're having She's Crafty, which is Chicago's all female BC Boys tribute.
They were awesome last year, such a great time, so highly recommend them.
We have a couple of bands that are headed by people who own or
work at other businesses in the area. For exampt Odi Snitch, the owner
of Ravenswood Tavern John that's his band, and Punked is actually Bret from Beguile
Brewery. Out of not only are we working with people who do original music
and are extraordinarily talented, but they're also local and allow of them are within
the neighborhood, which is really Yeah, it was cool because yeah, I
was like really getting into it. I just handed on the background the other
day and I'm like, wait, this is really good? Who this?
Yeah, So I'm looking forward to seeing some of those this weekend. Yeah,
it's going to be really really fun. And the sets are going to
be about forty minutes each with twenty minutes to reset. There's plenty of time
to watch all the bands and then go grab yourself a beer and some food
before the next one's Speaking of beer, are any of the breweries going to
have like a special offering for the festival. Yes, we are going to
have a series of special tappings throughout the weekend. So some of the breweries
who may have some special kegs left over, some experimental kegs that kind of
thing. They are going to be releasing them at specific times throughout the weekend.
So we're gonna have all that information up on our website and then we'll
have signage around the festival let you know what times everyone's going to be doing
their special tappings this year. For example, Cultivate by Forbidden Fruit, we'll
be bringing their Mulligan again Double Dry Hop New England IPA as a special tapping
for both Saturday and Sunday. Could you say that at ten times past?
Yeah right twist yeah, yeah. We should have a few others as well,
and so all that information is going to be able to get tracked down
on our website. Awesome. Yeah, it's quote one of the things I
like. And you know, not just this area, because we had Square
Roots last weekend, we have this this weekend. There's always these little cool
neighborhood festivals and there's always seems to be like the special beer release. So
it's cool that we're going to have that at Ravens What on Tap. Yeah.
The brewery is just they love bringing out special stuff for the neighborhood and
they love get involved in these kinds of events. They love seeing people out
on the street and what better way to get people interested in visiting your tap
room than having something on one of the street festivals. Yeah. Now,
one of the things that I like the most going through the website the proceeds
from Ravens what on tap they're going to help the fund neighborhood projects like common
Pantry. What other neighborhood associations and groups are going to benefit from this?
Yeah, So we as a chamber of commerce, I feel like not a
lot of people realize that Chambers of commerces are nonprofit organizations. So we love
not only obviously working with all the businesses in our neighborhood, but also working
together with the other nonprofits that are around our area. So this year we
have Friends of Ravenswood School is going to be operating our non alcoholic beverage tent,
so all the proceeds go right back to them, so you can stay
hydrated and get your water and juice along with some other different drinks, and
all the proceeds go right back to them to make sure that they can help
their kids get anything that they need throughout the school year. And then we're
also working with the Ravenswood Neighbors Association Jane Adams Resource Corporation, REDUCEWAE Chicago,
Chicago, the Women's Health Center, and like you said, common pantry,
so a lot we'll get help and a lot of people collaborating because we can't
do this without collaborations and other people. So we're over the moon that we
have all these we're willing to work with us. Oh that's awesome. Are
you still looking for volunteers or did you get all the spots filled up?
Yes, we are. We still have a handful of gate volunteer positions that
are available. That's just going to be welcoming people in accepting suggested donations of
ten dollars, but obviously it can be zero dollars, it can be whatever
the people will want to donate to the cause. Because all of that money
also goes right back to the greater rams of Chamber of Commerce and SSA number
thirty one and the rams with Community Council, which are all those three organizations
are the ones that we operate. And that's going to be getting initiatives doing
more public art or around the neighborhood, like for example, there's going to
be a new mural going up later this year over at Lawrence and Ravenswood,
And we want to get as many of these viaducts decorated as possible. We
want to put up sculptures, We want to work with other local organizations to
maybe highlight students or other artists who aren't able to do these large public art
projects themselves. Just really trying to work as much as we can in the
neighborhood and support as many people as we can. Yeah, what I like
about this too, it's easily accessible by public transportation. I would think probably
the easiest would be the Brown Line Irving Park stop, but you could also
take the Brown Line to Montrose if you wanted to stop and get some margis
on the way, Or you could also take the eighty Irving Park Bus,
the seventy eight Montrose bus, and the fifty Gaming bus will get you pretty
close by. Is there going to be like any parking available or would you
suggest taking public transportation or like ouber lyft. I mean, obviously you have
to also keep in mind how much you're going to be drinking while you're at
our festival, and these are these are a little poor. You're getting four
big pores too, Yeah, you're getting twelve ounce pores. If you buy
the special stainlessteel tumbler that we have that's a sixteen ounce por so you're going
to be getting the bank for your buck at well. For sure. If
you do end up driving, there is plenty of free parking along Ravenswood Avenue,
especially North r Festival, you might have to walk a couple of blocks.
What's a couple of blocks on a beautiful stay, either before or after
a few beers. Yeah, I have a Dinity bike station right at Ravens
Wooden Berto and then we have a bunch of bike racks where you can help
up your bike if you end up taking your bike over also Ravens would it's
not just beer. You have the art walk in September, which and I
my wife and I love going to. There's venture throughout the year. And
I I didn't notice, like before I talked to you, I went to
the website and was looking. There seems to be three, four or five
events every week going on. You know where can folks find out more about
what's going on here in the neighborhood. Yeah, for sure, we I
mean we're there's so much to celebrate and highlight in Raven's adonally what we do,
but also what all of our small businesses and breweries and distilleries are always
doing. So between mold Row, our local artists and manufacturers, musicians,
restaurants, everything in between, others a ton of events that we get added
to our calendar. We obviously do a portion of those events like on tap
or art Walk Shameless Plug it's gonna be on September fourteenth and fifteenth, but
we also have a full events calendar where our members can go in and add
in their own so that could be coal tastings, that could be Pono Pause,
does a lot of different related events and so they're all going to be
able to add theirs onto our internal event calendar. So if you go onto
our website, there's gonna be a link to our event calendar and you can
see all of those. But if you want to see exactly what the Chamber
of Commerce is doing, that'll be under the signature events and the things that
we do all throughout the year. That's great. Well, once again,
if you're free this weekend July twentieth and twenty, first head over to Ravenswood
and Briteaux. You're gonna have to check out Ravenswood on Tap. For more
information, you could visit Ravenswood Chicago dot org. I'll include the link in
the show notes. Amy, Thank you so much for coming on to talk
about the festival in the area. Can't wait to see you this weekend.
Of course, yeah you will. If you are at on Tap and you
think that you see just a flash out of the corner of your eye,
that's probably me running back and forth getting stuff done right. It's making it
but not a perfect festival, as perfect as can be for you. All
awesome, Thanks so much again, and I'll see you over the weekend.
Thanks so much to see you then. All right, all right, I
want to think once again, Amy's Arkowski from the Greater Ravenswood Chamber of Commerce
to come on and talk about the great Ravenswood on Tap once again. It's
happening this weekend July twentieth and twenty. First, the beer in front of
me right now is from one of the breweries of malt Row that will be
featured at Ravenswood on Tap. This is Biguile Brewery. This is their Freebird.
This is an American pale ale five point six percent. They use Falconer's
flight hops and it's Freebird. I mean, how do you go along with
the name Freebird? The artwork is really cool. It looks like that big
eagle from the trans Am back in the seventies, so it's got that good
retro vibe to it. I've had this before. I like everything they put
out with this as a classic. So let's bust open Freebird. Free Bird
has a beautiful, nice golden colored good foam. I love the aroma,
big hop aroma right up front. It smells fantastic. Yeah, it's really
good, good combination of the hops and the mault here, nice finish to
it. I mean, it's really just a solid pale ale. I think
I get more sweetness than bitterness here, but it's just a really good payol.
It's something that you could just have all the time. Five point six
percent alcohol, so it's a little higher than some of the other pales,
but not by much. So it's a good, easy drinking beer. Is
I have more of this and it didn't list the IBus on the can.
I get a little bitterness at the back, but I mean, I just
think this is a good, well balanced beer, like everything that Beguyle puts
out. I mean, you can't go wrong with anything that they have their
great location right there on malt Row. Yeah, no, that's good.
If you see it, put it in the cart. Hopefully they'll have this
one on tap at Ravens would on tap this weekend. But if you see
anything from Beguyle, put it in the cart, or if you're at the
festival, put it in that nice stainless steel cup. All right, that's
gonna wrap things up for this edition of Beer in Front. I thank you
very much for listening, and I want to think again. Amy Zarkowski,
the Events and Programs manager of the Greater Ravens Chamber of Combers. If you're
in the area this weekend, head over to Ravenswood in Bertoux and check out
Ravenswood on Tap. Great festival. I think you're really going to enjoy it.
I'll talk to you next week. Have a great week everyone, and
remember sometimes the beer in front of you is the best one yet.