The Experts Pick The Best Beers In Chicago

By Anthony Todd in Food on Aug 19, 2013 6:00PM

Illustration by Jamie Ramsay/Chicago Magazine.

Here at Chicagoist, we believe in populism in our beer drinking. Or at least we did during our best beer bracket competition earlier this year, when we narrowed the field of local brews down to the one big winner. Populism, however, is also code for "can't really afford to hire expert judges," a problem that Chicago Magazine does not have. They got a panel of Chicago's beer geeks together to pick the 62 best beers in Chicago.

Helmed by former Chicagoisto and current GuysDrinkingBeer guru Karl Klockars, the panel picked the best beers in 10 different styles. Most notably, they did a blind tasting of 18 different pale ales to find the three best of the best. The winners? Akari Shogun by Half Acre, Gamma Ray by Lake Bluff and Irie IPA by Tighthead. For the winners in the other 9 categories, you'll have to look at the feature yourself.

If you're a real beer geek, checking off every beer on this list would be a wonderful accomplishment. We've got about... 20 of the 62. What about you? Check out the whole thing, which also includes home scorecards, wallpapers for your computer and more.