Lagunitas, Goose Island Showcase New Facilities In Style
By Chuck Sudo in Food on May 19, 2014 8:30PM
We're five days deep into Chicago Craft Beer Week and after a muddy and soggy start to the festivities with Thursday's Beer Under Glass event at the Garfield Park Conservatory the weather began to cooperate just in time for the much-hyped Lagunitas Beer Circus last weekend at Lagunitas' new Douglas Park brewhouse.
And a circus it was. Tony McGee and company enlisted in the services of Redmoon Theater and the Vau de Vire Society to put on a spectacle featuring burlesque, contortionists, dancers, jugglers, drag queens, clowns and an amazing Redmoon-built contraction featuring a drum riser that swung in the air that would make Tommy Lee jealous. Most, if not all, of the city's best food trucks were in attendance serving up tasty treats to go with plentiful pours of Lagunitas beer. Music blared inside the brewhouse and in a tent outside.
Over in West Town Goose Island decided to open its 130,000 square foot barrel warehouse to the public for something they called "Sunday Funday." To call the new warehouse massive would be an understatement; I couldn't hear the band playing in the back of the building from the entrance.
There was plenty of Goose Island beer to be consumed. The lines were long and manageable for the Bourbon County Stout variants and the "Sisters" line of sour beers, including the newest release of Madame Rose. Guest brewers including Pipeworks, Half Acre and Temperance were on hand. There was a mini golf course and a "battle of the brewers" dodgeball tournament and the Blackhawks game projected onto a wall.
Enormous does not begin to describe the barrel warehouse. Goose Island has more than enough space to eventually catch up to the demand for Bourbon County Stout, the "Sisters" line and anything else they want to age in wood. But Lagunitas wound up throwing the party Goose Island used to throw back in the day.