Mark and Phil head out to Downers Grove and sit down with head brewer, Mark Hedrick, of Alter Brewing Company. Nearly 4 months old, this brewery has a wide range of draft beers available at the brewery tap room, and across a growing number of pub outlets across the Chicago suburbs. We have 2 Marks and a Phil on this show! Listen in to hear Mark Hedrick’s approach to brewing and a sampling trip through several of their offerings. This is a show not too miss to hear the brewer first hand – a good listen while on the journey out to visit the tap room!
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On this show we head away from Illinois and across the Mississippi into Missouri for an interview with a brewery who have quite a reputation there, and will hopefully soon be distributed into Illinois. 2nd Shift Brewing are currently based in Newhaven, MO. and produce several styles of beer, mostly ones that are well-made and highly drinkable. We are reviewing three of them on this show – Brewligans, Katy, and Ratsalad.
Plus we put a call in to brewer Steve Criden, and chat to him about his brewery, past, present and future.
And here’s a link to a nice YouTube video made last year by Feast TV, so you can actually see Steve and his operation.
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This week’s show see’s Mark Naski bringing 2 brews to the show that remain a mystery as we taste them, plus we book-end that session with a beer from Florida, and one from a local Chicago brewery.
Joining Mark and Phil is Chuck Fort, brewer over at Church Street Brewing in Itasca, and as we are recording at John’s Tavern in Winfield, owner John Karwoski joins us.
The first brew comes from Florida brewing giant, Cigar City with their Cigar City Lager. Ram Brewery in Schaumburg, and brewer Shaun Berns has given Mark some samples of test brews, and Mark promptly lost the labels. We turn this into an opportunity to try our tasting expertise, and we guess at what the styles might be. How close did we get? Judge for yourself. The first brew is actually called Woodfield Wild and was inspired by a Belgian Pale Ale, but ended up being a hybrid-pale ale fermented 100% with Saccharomyces trux trois, in American oak and dry-hopped with Galaxy hops. The second mystery beer is called Rabbit Punch, and is also a hybrid, cossing an American Red with an Irish Red, exclusively hopped with Citra.
Finally, and on draft as we record at John’s, is Cahoot’s BrewingBluELiner Berliner Weisse. John also brings out an example of the proper glass to drink Berliner Weisse from, a bowl! One of the best of it’s style that we have tasted, and just right for Spring!
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If you attended the Naperville Winterfest, held last weekend (2/27/2016), then you probably tasted some awesome brews, but didn’t get to chat to the brewers.
Don’t worry – we did it for you! Mark Naski and Phil Clark report from one of the first alefests of the year, on a day when winter took a holiday!
This is part one of two reports, and to help you listen to the interviews you want to hear, here is the handy timeline of the brewers and personalities we talked with. Enjoy!
00:00 – 00:00 Introductions
06:00 – 09:52 Urban Legend, TJ Hagen
09:52 – 15:00 Scorched Earth, Mike Dallas
15:00 – 23:00 Banging Gavel, Walter Ornelas
23:00 – 28:00 Illinois Craft Brewers Guild, Church Street, Chet Brett
28:00 – 35:00 Werkforce, Brandon Wright
35:00 – 41:30 Alter, Mark Hedrick
41:30 – 49:35 Lou Dog Productions, Josh Seago
49:35 – End Outro
Tim Hoerman, 51st Ward
The beer is ‘in-tents’!
Sunny Winter Day
Height of the crowds
Brew time
Mark is a Happy Lobster
Homebrew Tent
MWBF’s Kevin Herbst, left, and Mimi (hot beer chick!)
