Chicagoist's Beer Of The Week: Surly Furious

By Jason Baldacci in Food on Dec 6, 2013 8:20PM

Now that it's December there's no more denying that the holiday season is fully upon us. Everywhere we look, we see plenty of decorations and even more advertisements for holiday shopping. It can all be a little overwhelming. But at times like this, we like to remember that we always have beer. This week, we were very happy to taste something that any lover of craft beer in Chicago can consider a gift to have in his or her local bar.

Furious is an IPA from Surly Brewing Company. It pours a copper-red color in the glass, a shade or two darker than a typical IPA. We easily forgave the deviation of style as soon as we caught a whiff of the aroma that uniquely mixes citrus and pine with a touch of caramel. If we had one complaint about the nose of this beer, it's that we'd like to be able to smell a little bit more of it. Luckily for us Furious shines on the palate. The pronounced hop profile lends prominent notes of tropical fruits that hit right up front and come across in the form of pineapple pulp, coconut husk and orange rind. About mid-palate the malts come in with a hint of English toffee and fresh baked nut bread before we pick up a more floral hop tone on the finish. At 6.2 percent alcohol content, Furious is a wonderfully hoppy beer but it's certainly not a one trick pony. The hop profile here is complex and all over the spectrum while still very balanced against the rest of the ingredients in the beer.

Surly is based in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota just outside of Minneapolis. They just relaunched in Chicago last month after pulling out of the market a few years back. At the time they weren't able to meet demands for their beer up in the Twin Cities, so they stopped distributing outside of their home state. Fortunately the brewery has expanded quite a bit over the past few years and is currently in the process of constructing a significantly larger facility, so they've finally gotten to a point where they can spare a little beer for the good people of Chicago. They're saying they'll only be providing Illinois with "limited amounts" while the new brewery is being built. Yet they have already sent us their signature tall-boy cans this time around, a good sign for the beer drinking public since Surly beers were only available on draft in Chicago when they were in the area a few years ago.

Surly Furious is available on draft and in 16-ounce tall boy cans. Check beermenus.com to see who's carrying it in your neighborhood this weekend.