This week, we hopefully compare tasting notes. Two weeks back we wrote about a sampling of Moloko, a milk stout brewed by Three Floyds, that was happening at Smallbar in Wicker Park. Milk stouts are typically made with lactose sugar; the resultant brew is sticky sweet. Moloko isn't your typical Three Floyds hop bomb. Actually, it's the complete opposite. Moloko is far and away the sweetest beer Three Floyds brews. Nick Floyd and company use......

If you want to have an informed opinion on what we've already selected as "Beer of the Week" in a couple weeks, head to Smallbar (2049 W. Division) this evening from 9-12. They'll be serving Three Floyds Moloko, a sweet stout, on draft.......

The featured chef for tomorrow's cooking demonstration at Green City Market is Susan Goss of West Town Tavern. West Town Tavern is long a fave of the Chicagoist food and drink staff; Goss is one of the few to get us to eat fried chicken in the summer. The demonstration starts at 10:30 a.m. Hard to believe that when we mention pinot noir to casual wine drinkers, they still start quoting from "Sideways" three......

We've got a Taste of Chicago preview for you later. In the meantime, here are some things around town to check out in the coming days. The Red Witch Pirate will set sail this evening for a 2-hour cruise and dinner with food catered by Bonsoiree. Cost is $45 and interested parties may RSVP here. The churrasco-meets-slow-food restaurant ZED451 (739 N. Clark St.), which has become one of the hottest destination restaurants in town largely......

The Day After: Don't expect to see foie gras back on menus immediately after the repeal of the ban yesterday. The earliest that's going to happen will be June 11th. What did leave a bad aftertaste was the end-around used to repeal the ban and how Mayor Daley put Alderman Joe Moore's dick in the dirt in the process. If you don't know after that why Daley is often referred to here as "His......

Those of you heading to Millennium Park this evening to see Don Giovanni might want to head to the Artisan Cellar at Merchandise Mart from 4-6 p.m. this afternoon for a free tasting of Andre Clouet Champagne, which the Artisan Cellar touts as their most popular sparkling selection in recent memory. a member of the Clouet family will be on hand to discuss the champagne. Saturday at Provenance Food and Wine's Logan Square location,......

Beer is made from four ingredients: water, malt, yeast and hops. It's the hops that provides bite and spice to the mix. Hops also help preserve beer, making it last longer. Back in the days when the sun never set on the British Empire, brewers working in India would add extra hops to their English bitter in order to survive the trip home around the south African Cape Horn and ensure its drinkability when it......

We had our gripes about DarkLord Day, to be certain. But there were some good things about heading down to Munster and waiting for four hours in line with nothing to show for it except a farmer tan. For beer lovers it means getting to hang around with your own for a day, sampling from folks' private collections. At times, the combination of beer and the crowd made DarkLord Day resemble "Heavy Metal Parking......

For Three Floyds fanatics, it's the equivalent of a high holy day. DarkLord Day is the one day of the year where the venerable Munster, Indiana brewery releases their highly anticipated Russian Imperial Stout. Craft beer fans from around the world travel to either buy or barter from their personal collections for a bottle of the prized beer. Fans of good ales get to meet each other, sample each others wares, and get to......

The photography of international wine consultant Anna Pakula is currently on display at the Merchandise Mart as part of “The Artist Project.” Her work reflects the true essence of the art of winemaking and the finished wine by not only through capturing the faces, labor and passion of those who tend the vines, harvest the grapes and work the cellar, but also depicting the forces of nature at play in determining the direction of......

The results from the biennial World Beer Cup (held this year in classy San Diego) are up. Goose Island represented yet again, earning silver medals for "#12" (English-style summer ale) and Matilda (Belgian- and French-style ale). Other local winners included Emmett's Ale House in West Dundee, earning a silver medal for their Belgian-Style Dubbel, Rock Bottom Brewery's downtown location (a Gold medal for their Terminal Stout in the American stout category), and Three Floyds (a......

This week we look east to Burlington, Vermont. Vermont is home to Ben & Jerry's (yeah!), Phish (ugh!) and the Magic Hat Brewing Company. We've been fans of Magic Hat for quite a while, owing to their inventive brews and off-beat sense of humor, both reminiscent of Three Floyds. A few weeks back we received an e-mail from Magic Hat's Dave Obenour, who pointed us in the right direction (to Morgan's on Maxwell, specifically) to......

when we made it a Unibroue weekend a couple weekends ago, we were floored by the quality of their 2002 Quelque Chose ale. Prior to either of the dinners we attended we thought we had tasted practically everything Unibroue had to offer. There's a movement among some craft breweries to blend and age their beers, like wines or spirits. Three Floyds and Goose Island both do this with their stouts and darker ales (see DarkLord,......

As the old saying goes, "Leave 'em wanting more." So we shall by wrapping up this "BotW" for 2006 on a high note, with the beer that we consider the best we've tasted this year. One of the biggest mistakes we made in 2007 was skipping Three Floyds Dark Lord Day in favor of risking possible food poisoning at Kiki D's Carnitas. That we did not come down with salmonella was of little solace, especially......

If you don't like hoppy beers, just scroll past — this week's installment isn't for you. Just trust us on this. It's been a solid thirty minutes since we drained the bomber of Three Floyd's Fantabulous Resplendence X Anniversary Ale (known only as "X" from here on out), and the spice from the hops is still lingering in the back of our mouth. Speaking honestly here, we feel as though we've been intubated by ale.......

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......

Rather than go out to participate in last Sunday's national toast to Michael Jackson, we decided to stay at home and raise a glass in honor of the "Beer Hunter." Earlier that afternoon we finished the remaining bottles of Goose Island Harvest Ale during that debacle of a Bears game and were left with a varied selection in the fridge — a couple brews from Three Floyds, a bottle of Unibroue 16, two cans of......

Like the circle of life, this week we revisit Warrenville's Two Brothers Brewing Company nearly a year to the day that we featured their Prairie Path Ale in this column. This time around, they've got something special for us. A bragot (or "braggot"), by definition, is a mixture of beer and mead. In olden days, the mixing was done by the bartender. Today, craft breweries tend to do the honors by putting the honey directly......

It's been nearly six months since Bell's Beer founder Larry Bell pulled his product from the Illinois market in a dispute with distributors over the Beer Industry Fair Dealing Act of 1982. Readers will remember that that specific law, enacted at the time to protect distributors from the loss of a giant beer account on the level of Anheuser-Busch or Miller should they decide to move to greener pastures, doesn't give mid-level craft breweries like......

It wasn't our intention at the beginning of the month to feature three stouts in succession, although the timing, in hindsight, turned out to be fortuitous. Thick beers, particularly stouts, are a great way to keep one from freezing his ass off when the world around him is sent headfirst into a deep freeze. Besides, we're close enough to St. Patrick's Day to have our appetite whetted for a good pint of stout. Additonally, Goose......

Domestic beer specials don’t typically blow our kilts up, but we were pleasantly surprised by the craft beer selection offered at Mrs. Murphy & Sons Irish Bistro (3905 N. Lincoln Ave.), which happens to serve all of its American-made beers for $2.50 on Thursday evenings. Sure the name is a little long and confusing (what the hell is an Irish Bistro anyway), but the place has a banging beer list. For a measly 10 quarters......

We'll be the first to notice the (un)fortunate timing of this week's "BotW" post, just sniffing distance from our post about Forbes' naming Chicago America's sixth most drunken city. But duty calls and, if we're to take the study seriously, we couldn't file this. The local breweries all tend to load their brews with hops, like they're engaged in some sort of brewmaster pissing contest. Warrenville-based Two Brothers Brewing Company doesn't get the press of......