This Week's Mountain-Hiking, Hemp-Beverage-Drinking, WTTW-and-FOX-Chicago-Contributing Beer Events & Socials
Whew. That's a lot.
Happy Friday, friends! Man. What a week. Let’s get things wrapped up early and get outta here.
First up, a little pre-holiday-weekend admin: Due to the Memorial Day holiday, we will not be publishing a beer news email on Monday, but we will be hoping you can enjoy a little time off, presumably with a beer or three. As always, thank you for being here and we’ll pick back up on Wednesday.
On Monday, we shared something special with our Premium Subscribers, and now that they’ve had the chance to get an exclusive first look, we’re opening it up to our entire audience.
GDB co-founder Ryan recently penned a 4,000 word Outside Magazine-worthy story about what he learned about backpacking, about beer and about himself after his first (very rainy) trip to the Porkies in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
It’s a pretty great read, and even though it’s not like anything else we’ve done at GuysDrinkingBeer in the past, I really hope you enjoy it. Click here to get to the site:
Following yesterday’s breaking Lagunitas news (available here if you missed our email), I had the opportunity to join Fox 32 Chicago for a brief conversation about their plans to shutter. To see me on TV for about 6 seconds and to see what my bookshelf at home looks like, you can check that out here.
This weekend sees the return of one of my favorite Chicago springtime beer gatherings: Begyle & Dovetail’s Mayfestiversary. It’s got its own URL!
If you aren’t already planning to spend part of your weekend afternoons drinking some awesome beers in between the Metra and CTA lines in North Center, you should. Related: WTTW asked me to contribute some thoughts for this story about Dovetail’s beer styles and services, which I was happy to provide.
Oh, there’s more? You bet there is. Here are some other upcoming…
If you happen to be in Milwaukee tomorrow night, New Barons Brewing Cooperative is hosting a “Millennial Beer Prom” so go get an awkward photo taken, dance to some 2000s bangers and get a little sideways without worrying about sneaking in after curfew.
Don’t have plans for Memorial Day? Moor’s Brewing is giving people a first taste of their new Kolsch at Hyde Park’s Sophy hotel.
Remember last week when we showed you the rebrand of Not Your Father’s Hard Soda Pop? If that interested you, you can attend their relaunch event at Emporium Arcade Bar in Logan Square on the 29th.
On June 1st, you can head to Grand Rapids to celebrate the 7th birthday of City Built Brewing, as they host their Mason Street Blast 2024 La Cultura.
Also on June 1st, Greenstar Brewing celebrates ten organic years of beermaking at Uncommon Ground.
Get ready to party with Imperial Oak a week later, as they’re celebrating a decade in business themselves from June 7-9.
And a week after that, Maplewood’s celebrating their own 10th birthday with a massive party on June 15th at their Lounge.
…but you should also save time to wish Daisy Cutter a happy 15th birthday on the 15th (golden birthday!) at Half Acre.
Wow - that sure is a lot going on. Our Friday emails remain free and unrestricted thanks to the help of our Premium Subscribers, because we want to give you new reasons to visit a local brewery each week. If you want to help us spread the word about the cool beer stuff that catches our eye, we invite you to become an annual Premium Subscriber for just over $1 per week:
Huge thanks to our incredible Premium Subscribers for helping to keep this whole email series up and running for over a decade!
There was a big social push this week, headed by the Illinois Craft Brewers Guild and supported by multiple other breweries, to raise awareness of a potential piece of legislation that could ban hemp-based beverages in Illinois. (Crains has their own story here.) Naturally this would have a big effect on Marz and on Hopewell, both of whom asked their followers and friends to send an email or make a phone call to their state senators and representatives “to vote NO on SB0776 Senate Amendment 1 and SB3926 and any bills that ban the production and sale of hemp beverages.”
Half Acre collaborated with Sierra Nevada to create a special Daisy Cutter Select Double IPA in celebration of the beer’s 15th birthday? And there’s a special Daisy 15 out there as well? I gotta get my hands on these.
Breaking this afternoon: Lakefront Brewing is acquiring Kenosha’s Public Brewing a month after they announced a Chapter 11 restructure.
Noon Whistle introduced cicada Malort and I think we’ve officially taken things way too far. Enough. Please. No more.
On the other hand, Triptych brewed a beer in honor of the arrival of the cicadas and incorporated a “yeast scream” on the behalf of these loud bugs. No cicadas were used in the brewing process, thankfully.
If you can’t check out the new kolsch from Moor’s this weekend, you can check them out (their can, at least) in the latest episode of Showtime’s The Chi, where a tallboy appeared in a scene.
This story about the birth of a Windmill Brewing owner’s first kid (on Dark Lord Day!) is pretty heartfelt and we wish Luelle a happy first birthday.
The barrels are speaking to Gnosis Brewing, and they’re saying “LET’S GO.”
It must have been “review Chicago area beers month” at Craft Beer & Brewing because they gave high marks to Phase Three, Solemn Oath and Maplewood beers.
If you need a destination for your Memorial Day weekend brunch, the patio at Peckish Pig looks pretty nice right now.
In the works for Goldfinger’s fourth Lagerversary: A new collab with Bierstadt Lagerhaus.
Cheers also to Garage Band Brewing, who recently celebrated their fifth anniversary.
Cheers as well to 20 years of Rockwell’s Neighborhood Grill, which now has its own pale ale from Pipeworks to celebrate.
Here’s a big birthday: Get ready to celebrate a full 30 years of making beers at Mickey Finn’s. Wow.
Destihl’s social team clearly had fun getting ready to release their two new Evel Knievel beers.
Finally, thanks to FoGDB Ryan who, following Wednesday’s label email, kindly let me know that Tonality Brewing already had a can for their Tube Screamer pale ale, as well as a few others that are also already in the world:
That green is a little more Frankenstein’s-Monster-y than I’d envisioned but still, green nevertheless. We always appreciate intel, even when it means we were sorta wrong about something! Better to be right, since y’all trust us to be an authority on this stuff. Much appreciated.
If you found anything in this email informative, enlightening or entertaining, it’d be wonderful if you considered joining as a Premium Subscriber:
Or, just send this email to whomever you’d want to try one of those new Totality Brewing beers with:
Until then, see y’all next week! Have a great holiday weekend.
~Karl