Energy City Brewing was one of the early pioneer breweries in the Fox Valley area, and gained quite a following from craft beer drinkers. David Files, along with his wife Heidi, first opened in Batavia IL and sold their limited number of styles from a small location beside the Fox River, so small that people had to line up outside and they only opened one day a month for to-go sales. Six years later, things are very different with the expansion to a taproom, a wide range of beers with one they are particularly known for, and their customers can now get their beers through a wide range of distro channels.

We have long wanted to meet with David and find out more about him and ECB, so when an opportunity came up we jumped at it. The Brit’s co-host for this episode is Chuck Fort from Church Street Brewing, who has known David since their days in Urban Knaves of Grain, and now professionally as ECB brews their production runs at Church Street.

We find out about David’s background, the early days in the small river location and how they came to the current taproom, and of course we are sampling his beers. Their range of fruit ‘smoothie’ beers and pastry stouts have been big sellers, and The Brit challenges his tastebuds with a couple of these. What we do find out is that David and ECB are producing high quality beers, and being very successful at doing it. Oh, and he will tell us about his extra-long shuffleboard table that stands in the taproom! Cheers!

Beers Sampled:

• Westphalia Jump Start, Dortmunder lager with Saphir hops, ABV 6.5%
• N9nth Circle, Baltic Porter (collab with Church Street Brewing), ABV 9.5%
• Bistro Smoothie – Mango, Banana & Pineapple, Flavored Berliner-Weisse Style fruit beer, ABV 6.5%
• Bistro Grape PB&J, Flavored Berliner-Weisse Style fruit beer with Peanut Butter and Grape Jelly, ABV  8%
• Marmion Abbey Quadruple – Batch 2, Belgian Quadrupel, 11% ABV

Here’s out short video from the visit to the brewery…

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