Yesterday, the American Home Brewers Association listed the 50 best beers in America. Everyone loves a list, so of course we started looking for our hometown favorites. This was not a list of only craft beers (according to the site, "The only rule is that the beer has to be commercially available somewhere in the United States") and the poll considered 1306 different brews. It's a reader-driven poll, so feel free to argue with it. more ›

I've said it once and I'll say it again: the evolution of Half Acre from a contract brewed label to their own growing local brewery is one of the feel good food and drink in the past two years. I'm on record as declaring Daisy Cutter the best local beer available. The shift from the contract brewed lager they originally launched the company with to the Chicago market to aromatic ales is part of that story. more ›

For obvious reasons, there was no "BotW" last week. Which wound up being a good thing for this week's installment, actually. I had some questions about this beer that only a brewmaster could answer. more ›

Goose Island Clybourn is hosting a ginormous festival Saturday focusing on Belgian ales. In addition to some of the many fine Belgians pub brewer Jared Rouben has crafted like his Golden Jet collaboration with Paul Kahan, Chicago Saison with C-House's Nicole Pederson and (if you're lucky) a certain saison spiced with lemon tea. more ›

Tyranena Brewing, besides being one more reason to road trip to Wisconsin, has been expanding its offerings locally. Had the opportunity to buy a draft of Tyranena's "Rocky's Revenge" a couple months back at Uncommon Ground Devon. more ›

While doing a deep cleaning of the kitchen and pantry over the weekend, we bought some ceramic magnets and crazy glue at our local hardware store, then glued the magnets to some bottletops we'd saved over the years in a Chinese takeout container atop the refrigerator. When we were done we had 43 brand new bottletop refirgerator magnets. more ›