Flossmoor Station Brewpub and Restaurant has this nice little luau-themed brewmaster dinner planned for next Tuesday at 6 p.m. The guest of honor for the event will be Wil Turner, the extraordinarily talented brewmaster for Goose Island's Clybourn brewpub. Andrew Mason, Flossmoor Station's head brewer, said in an e-mail that Turner will be bringing along Goose Island's 20th Anniversary Celebration ale and a Belgian black ale called "Noire." Having attended a couple of Goose Island......

Leading into next week's "Reader's Choice" selections, we figured we'd stick local. You'll remember that last month Flossmoor Station Brewpub launched a bottled beer program. One of the three selections they bottled also happens to be a longtime favorite of ours whenever we take the Metra Electric down that way. For folks who think brown ales start and stop with Newcastle you are in for a treat with Flossmoor's Pullman Brown Ale. This monster ale......

The listed events were chosen by the editors of Chicagoist and brought to you by the 2009 Toyota Corolla. Hip Hop The duo of Ant and Slug, more commonly known as Atmosphere, are one of the standard bearers for Minneapolis hip-hop, with a fervent following throughout the Midwest. Their latest album, When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold, is another solid offering of strong rhymes and creative samples. Atmosphere is in......

Don't those bottles look pretty? We've been in contact with Andrew Mason, brewer at Flossmoor Station Restaurant & Brewery has been keeping us abreast of some of the things that he brewmaster Matt Van Wyk has been working on since the start of the year. Now we can finally tell the big news: the award-winning brewpub is set to enter the bottled beer market. On April 5th, 75 years after the repeal of Prohibition,......

This week has been all about finding a good turkey, ordering that dinner to go, or cooking at home. But Chicago's intrepid food bloggers were still all over the place this week. Bridget Houlihan and Tammy "Zesmerelda" Green at Chicago Bites took the time to head to Devon Seafood Grill in the Gold Coast. Both of the ladies enjoyed the meal immensely, but to get the full effect, you should listen to their podcast. Meanwhile,......

This year's edition of the Great American Beer Festival is in the books, and Illinois breweries racked up an impressive 16 medals. Both Pabst (their corporate headquarters are in suburban Woodridge, so they qualified as an Illinois beer company) and Goose Island took home four medals each. Pabst earned respective gold and silver medals for Lone Star and Old Style (American-style cream ale or lager), and repeated the feat for Old Milwaukee Light and PBR......

In business, one rule holds true: “money talks, bullshit walks.” When you’re talking about a multi-billion dollar industry as alcohol, that old adage takes on an often literal meaning. In the past twelve months, we’ve seen a series of issues that have shed a light on the seedy underbelly of wholesale liquor distribution, most notably in the lengths the state’s liquor distributors go to acquire and maintain their business. They’ll lobby Springfield to pass......

The Great American Beer Festival was held in Denver over the weekend, and local area breweries came up big again. Goose Island brought home a gold medal (English-style Summer Ale) for their "312" Wheat Ale. Piece Pizza and Brewery took home the gold (Rye Beer) for its "Worryin'" Ale, and Flossmoor Station earned top prize (German-style Schwarzbier) for its "Black Wolf" Schwarzbier. Flossmoor Station and brewmaster Matt Van Wyk also were named Small Brewpub Company......

Last week in Seattle, brewmasters from around the world gathered together to have their frothy malts, potent elixirs, and hop-laden potions judged in the 2006 World Beer Cup. We found while reviewing the winners list that: - we don't drink nearly enough beer - area breweries accounted for all 10 of Illinois' medals, good enough for sixth place overall among American brewery entries. We already knew that Chicago had some pretty good breweries, but the......