Two Brothers Taps Into Chicago's Brewing History In Collaboration With French Brewery Castleain
By Chuck Sudo in Food on Jul 13, 2012 9:35PM
William Haas and Conrad Sulzer came to Chicago from New York and opened the city’s first commercial brewery shortly after, Haas & Sulzer in 1833.
By 1841 Haas and Sulzer sold their stakes in the brewery to an English immigrant, William Lill, and a Frenchman who ran a dairy in the same building, Michael Diversey. The renamed Diversey & Lill brewery went on to become the largest brewery west of the Atlantic seaboard in 1861, producing 45,000 barrels of beer a year in a variety of styles, their most popular being a cream ale. Diversey died in 1869, the brewery became a victim of the Great Chicago Fire and Lill was never able to rebuild. He died in 1875.
Fast forward to the modern day Chicago craft beer scene with its growing number of breweries, an educated and voracious consumer base, and is rich with talent imbued with the spirit of collaboration. Over the winter Two Brothers co-founder Jason Ebel reached out to Wendy Littlefield of Vanberg & DeWulf, a noted importer of Belgian and other specialty ales. (Vanberg & DeWulf helped build New York’s Brewery Ommegang.)
Littlefield and her husband Don Feinberg put Ebel in touch with Brasserie Castelain, a noted brewer of the biere de garde style. Littlefield told Chicagoist it was an inspired pairing: there’s renewed interest in French country ales and Two Brothers’ Domaine DuPage is a strong interpretation of the style. And since Brasserie Castelain is located near Lille, capital of France's Nord-Pas de Calais region (aka "French Flanders"), the Franco-Chicagoan connections became even more clear.
The aptly named Diversey & Lille should be reaching local liquor stores, restaurants and the area’s better beer bars in time for Bastille Day. What makes Diversey & Lille stand out is it’s dry-hopped, which gives the beer very prominent citrus notes on the nose, and toasted almond and spice on the palate. It will be available in 750 ml bottles and in 20 liter kegs. As a bonus, this will be the first Two Brothers brew to be available nationwide.