Thanks to the recent explosion of microbreweries, there’s no shortage of places where you can find great beers and other brewed drinks. With all the ways you can brew beer and all the ingredients you can add, there’s no limit to the flavors you can find. Chicago is certainly no slouch when it comes to offering excellent brews you can’t find anywhere else, so if you’d like to really appreciate what you drink on a pub crawl you should add some of the following places to your bar list.
Goose Island Beer Company
Image via Flickr by david.dames
Goose Island Beer has sat on West Fulton Street since 1988 and has won all kinds of competitions in the three decades since then. With so many years and so much popularity under its belt, Goose Island has plenty of brews to offer and you can find their bottles in stores across the Midwest. When you visit their Chicago location you’ll get all their beers, plus the kind of food that perfectly pairs with each one. And if you show up in November, be sure to get the Bourbon County Stout, the original bourbon stout.
Another thing Goose Island has is extra Chicago locations, including a few places where you can get their beers and brew foods at O’Hare International. So if you’re visiting one of Chicago’s busy airports, make sure you stop by a Goose Island restaurant in the terminal and taste what Chicago beer has to offer.
Revolution Brewing
Image via Flickr by BierDoctor
The Revolution Brewing taproom sits on North Kedzie Avenue just north of the Kennedy Expressway. It was the idea of a Goose Island employee for many years, and in 2010 he made that dream come true. Revolution Brewing claims to be the biggest independently owned craft brewery in Illinois, and with a name like that, you can imagine it’ll stay that way for at least a while. Be sure to try their flagship India pale ale, Anti-Hero, and save room for seasonal offerings like Sun Crusher and Fistmas.
Half Acre Beer Company
Half Acre Beer has two locations, including the original on North Lincoln Avenue near Welles Park and a newer location up in Balmoral. Half Acre doesn’t really have a story — its founders wanted to make their own beers locally, so they bought an old warehouse on Lincoln and started brewing. Oh, and they hired someone who had a lot of fun in designing their cans. The brewery’s big draw is the Daisy Cutter pale ale, an offering with a bitter bite much stronger than the color would have you believe.
Chicago has no shortage of local breweries or bars that will serve some excellent beers made throughout Chicago, Illinois, and beyond. So while this list is a good way to get started, you should do some research on your own and discover all the unique flavors the Chicago area has to offer. The next time you visit a liquor store and you don’t see cases of anything good, take a chance on a new brand and find out for yourself what makes local breweries so popular.
