Local Brewers Reflect On 25 Years Of Goose Island Beer

By Chuck Sudo in Food on May 15, 2013 9:40PM

Goose Island Beer Company enters Chicago Craft Beer Week on a high, celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. Two years after Anheuser-Busch/InBev bought Goose Island in a $38.8 million deal, Goose Island has continued to turn out innovative, quality beers, even as founder John Hall stepped down as CEO and some of the brewery's best talent have left for new projects, and Goose Island is being positioned to be A-B's national craft beer brand.

For those of you still mourning the merger, we're aware Goose Island is most likely dead to you. But there's the possibility Chicago Craft Beer Week wouldn't be as big as it is today if not for the trail blazed by Goose Island, if it would exist at all. The family tree of brewers who trained at Goose Island is a pool of talent any brewery in America would be happy to choose from... and has.

The 15-minute video below features, Hall, son Greg (Virtue Cider) and brewers such as Josh Deth and Jim Cibak (Revolution), John Laffler (Off Color), John J. Hall (5Rabbit), Phil Wymore (Perennial Artisan Ales), Matt Brynildson (Firestone Walker) and others talking about Goose Island's beginnings, the innovation it brought to American craft brewing and the debt owed to it by small breweries everywhere.