Revolution Brewing & Shedd Aquarium 'Penguin Hops' Returns

By Lisa White in Food on Oct 7, 2013 6:00PM

Photo credit: ©Shedd Aquarium/Brenna Hernandez

After the success of their collaborative brew Penguin Hops last year, the Shedd Aquarium and Revolution Brewing are teaming up again this year to produce the popular harvest ale made from hops grown in the Shedd’s sustainable gardens. “We’re excited to continue our collaboration with Revolution’s brewers to offer a truly local, and flavorful, taste of our organic practices,” said Christine Nye, Shedd’s manager of horticulture programs.

The Shedd grows a wide variety of sustainable plant life on the aquarium grounds, and after realizing last fall that the hops needed to be harvested, they formed a partnership with local craft brewers Revolution Brewery. The outcome, Penguin Hops, ended up raising $2,500 in funds for the Shedd.

“We jumped at the chance to continue our collaboration with Shedd this year,” said Josh Deth, Chairman of the Party at Revolution Brewing. “With the overwhelming success of last year’s brew, we were excited to help the city’s aquarium craft a new batch of Penguin Hops to support the important conservation work they do.” We wrote last year a bit more about how the beer is produced and look forward to tasting the latest batch later this month. We highly suggest grabbing a pint while you can, perhaps after meeting a penguin through the Shedd's Penguin Encounter program? Sounds like a perfect plan.

The brew will go on sale Oct. 16 at Revolution’s Brewpub (2323 N. Milwaukee Ave.), Revolution’s Tap Room (3340 N. Kedzie) and at select local establishments to be announced in the future. For every pint sold, Revolution will donate a dollar to help support Shedd’s global and local conservation initiatives.