Latest Chicagobeer Podcast Episodes
Episode 532 - Carolina Sauce
ABV Chicago Craft Beer Podcast - April 17, 2024 12:30 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 87 ratingsAs the third in our recent unplanned trilogy of Carolina shows, this one proves that sometimes the B-sides are better than the album. We have five beers from various Carolina locations, thanks to listeners Benji & Suzanne, and each drink finds a way to impress us in unexpected ways. What else co...
Episode 531 - Straight Barleywine
ABV Chicago Craft Beer Podcast - April 10, 2024 12:30 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 87 ratingsBelieve it or not, there was a time when breweries would release barleywines that were not aged in any sort of barrel, and the biggest choice you had to make was American-style or English-style. For this episode, we have four local takes on the barleywine, two of each style, none with any barrel...
Episode 530 - The TX Show
ABV Chicago Craft Beer Podcast - April 03, 2024 12:30 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 87 ratingsBecause we heard that things tend to be bigger down in Texas, our 35th State Show features six beers from Craig’s recent travels. We try our best to span the Lone Star state (despite being a little Austin-heavy), and the focus on perfect execution and maximum drinkability is clear. Also, Craig t...
Episode 529 - Back to the Barrel 5
ABV Chicago Craft Beer Podcast - March 27, 2024 12:30 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 87 ratingsJust as the season can’t decide if it’s going to get warm or stay cold, we choose to get nice and toasty with four barrel-aged stouts we’ve gathered over the past few months from local sources. The four beers on this show ascend in adjuncts, and Craig and Ryan don’t see eye-to-eye on the ranking...
Episode 528 - Heavy Riff Brewing
ABV Chicago Craft Beer Podcast - March 20, 2024 12:54 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 87 ratingsSt. Louis’ Heavy Riff Brewing has built a strong local following since 2013, and their mix of experimental styles, barrel-aged beers, and rock-n-roll sensibility has started to make its way up the state of Illinois. Craig talks with co-owner Rick Hagen about the past and future of the brewery be...
Episode 527 - Local West Coast DIPAs
ABV Chicago Craft Beer Podcast - March 13, 2024 12:30 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 87 ratingsA decade-and-a-half ago, West Coast DIPAs were changing the craft beer curious into full-on obsessives, and breweries were in an IBU arms race to melt faces with hop bitterness. Recently, now that some of the haze has settled, breweries are returning to the aggressive style again - with some bri...
Episode 526 - Asheville
ABV Chicago Craft Beer Podcast - March 06, 2024 13:30 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 87 ratingsThe city of Asheville may not even be in the top ten most-populated cities in North Carolina, but it might be the state’s capital for breweries. Thanks to the generosity of listeners Benji and Suzanne, we drink five beers from Asheville (and the surrounding area) that represent a wide amount of ...
Episode 525 - Baltic Local
ABV Chicago Craft Beer Podcast - February 28, 2024 15:37 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 87 ratingsThe Baltic Porter is making some more regular appearances in breweries’ seasonal lineups, so we find five local examples of the robust lager style to sample for this episode. We also ponder the benefits and drawbacks of barrel-aging this particular style, throw around the word “creamy” a lot, an...
Episode 524 - San Diego
ABV Chicago Craft Beer Podcast - February 21, 2024 13:30 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 87 ratingsIt’s been over a decade since Craig and Ryan have been out to beautiful San Diego, and thanks to listener Dave Adams, the podcast gets a lovely flavor vacation with beers from five of the city’s breweries. The lineup is stylistically diverse, the rankings deviate in the middle, and at least one ...
Episode 523 - Stout Me Up
ABV Chicago Craft Beer Podcast - February 14, 2024 13:30 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 87 ratingsSometimes you want a stout that’s not sweet, adjunct-free, and stripped down to just the base style interpretation, and we were so excited to find five readily-available local examples. (No barrels, coconuts, vanilla beans, or cacao nibs were harmed in the making of this episode.) In addition to...
Episode 522 - Deep Wood: On Heavenly Jacket
ABV Chicago Craft Beer Podcast - February 07, 2024 13:30 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 87 ratingsDonning our heavenly jackets for this one, we drink the final set of Revolution’s Deep Wood lineup for the 2023-2024 season. Three ‘wines and a stout make up this unsurprisingly spectacular four pack, and even through all of our nit-picking we can’t deny who is making the best barrel-aged beers ...
Episode 521 - The SC Show
ABV Chicago Craft Beer Podcast - January 31, 2024 13:30 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 87 ratingsOur 34th state show is just as sweet as it is sour, as we tackle five beers from South Carolina courtesy of listeners Benji & Suzanne. Even though it’s a bit heavy on the tart beers, we learn about five breweries that represent a pretty good cross section of the South Carolina brewing scene. Als...
Episode 520 - 10 Beers for 10 Years
ABV Chicago Craft Beer Podcast - January 24, 2024 13:30 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 87 ratingsEver since January 22nd of 2014, the ABV Chicago podcast has released a new episode every single week - and nobody could be more stunned about this fact than us. To commemorate a decade of arbitrary beer reviews, brewer interviews, and tipsy shenanigans, we open ten beers from ten breweries that...
Episode 519 - Hop Butcher: Taproom Edition
ABV Chicago Craft Beer Podcast - January 17, 2024 13:30 - 2 hours ★★★★★ - 87 ratingsIt’s been almost three years since the announcement that Hop Butcher for the World would be taking over the original Half Acre brewery space, and it’s been a year since the rebranded taproom opened. So we take time to sit down with co-founder and co-owner Jude La Rose for a long chat about the p...
Episode 518 - Cereal Beers
ABV Chicago Craft Beer Podcast - January 10, 2024 13:30 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 87 ratingsYou don’t turn to us for advice on a balanced breakfast, but we’re happy to spoon up five cereal-inspired beers so good that even Mikey likes it. Through clever use of ingredients (or just throwing the cereal right in the beer), these beers really test the nostalgia influence of sitting a foot f...
Episode 517 - Brandy, You’re A Fine Barrel
ABV Chicago Craft Beer Podcast - January 03, 2024 13:30 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 87 ratingsWe fetch another round of barrel-aged beers for this episode, but with a twist: all four beers are aged in different kinds of brandy barrels. We explore the world of sweet brandy barrels and how they work on different styles, and we are totally surprised by our takeaways. Also, we talk mixed dri...
Episode 516 - Bourbon County 2023
ABV Chicago Craft Beer Podcast - December 27, 2023 13:30 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 87 ratingsRecorded on Black Friday (and previously released a month ago for our Patreon subscribers), this episode is our return to the Bourbon County lineup - after managing to get ourselves uninvited from the Goose Island media tastings. Luckily, we have our own beer sherpa in Beer on the Wall owner Rya...
Episode 515 - WeldWerks Medianoches
ABV Chicago Craft Beer Podcast - December 20, 2023 13:30 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 87 ratingsIn what is likely our most decadent Barrel-Aged December™ episode yet, we sample four enormous stouts from WeldWerks’ Medianoche series that are as complex as they are thick (or thicc, as the kids say). Co-founder Neil Fisher gave us some mic time back during GABF that is shared here, and he hel...
Episode 514 - Marked For Deth
ABV Chicago Craft Beer Podcast - December 13, 2023 13:30 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 87 ratingsThere’s no escaping Deth, so we gather up four of the barrel-aged Revolution stouts from this year’s Deep Wood lineup and drink with reckless abandon. It’s no shocker that Revolution is still running the best barrel program in the city, but even with the bar raised as high as it is, the beers on...
Episode 513 - Metropolitan Forever
ABV Chicago Craft Beer Podcast - December 06, 2023 13:30 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 87 ratingsFor over 15 years, Metropolitan blessed this great city with high quality lagers and traditional German styles. They ushered in a second wave of Chicago craft brewing back when there were next to no options available. It’s safe to say that without Metropolitan, the Chicago craft beer scene would...
Episode 512 - FoBAB Winners 2023
ABV Chicago Craft Beer Podcast - November 29, 2023 13:30 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 87 ratingsEarlier in November, the Illinois Craft Brewers Guild put on the 21st Festival of Wood and Barrel-Aged Beers to recognize some of the breweries making the finest wood-aged beers around. We got our hands on five (out of the eleven) Illinois medal winners - and our first-ever Best of Show beer - t...
Episode 511 - Chicago Browntown
ABV Chicago Craft Beer Podcast - November 22, 2023 13:30 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 87 ratingsHop on the Brown Line straight to Browntown with us, as we discover a hopefully-growing local resurgence of the brown ale with five examples from Chicagoland breweries on this episode. Adjunct or not, these brown ales all have a unique angle on the style - and most would absolutely kill on cask....
Episode 510 - Hop Waters
ABV Chicago Craft Beer Podcast - November 15, 2023 13:30 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 87 ratingsCarbonated water treated with hops is pretty simple in concept, but these five breweries prove that there’s a lot of variation and skill that goes into making these “zero/zero” drinks. And it shows that no matter how well non-alcoholic beers have progressed, some drinkers looking for a dry spell...
Episode 509 - The DE Show
ABV Chicago Craft Beer Podcast - November 08, 2023 13:30 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 87 ratingsThough it might be one of the smallest states, the brewing scene in Delaware is mighty, and we’re ushering in our 33rd State Show with a lineup of five flavorful beers from five different breweries. Thanks to Ryan Tracy (and family), we’re able to live vicariously through his travelogue while si...
Episode 508 - FoBABlin’ 5: Return to FoBABlin’
ABV Chicago Craft Beer Podcast - October 30, 2023 12:30 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 87 ratingsChicago’s biggest, baddest and most-barreled festival is back in its 21st year, so we’re eager to FoBABble about it for the first time in four years as a lead-up to the competition. We also open four barrel-aged beers from breweries that have been FoBAB staples (and previous medal winners) to lu...
Episode 507 - Cruz Blanca Luchadors 2023
ABV Chicago Craft Beer Podcast - October 25, 2023 12:30 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 87 ratingsThe seven barrel-aged beers that comprise this year’s Luchador lineup feature styles and ingredients we have rarely - or never - seen in the past, and no local “special release” lineup is getting as experimental as this one. Flavor master Jacob Sembrano is at it again, and we’re here to drunkenl...
Episode 506 - Torture Test: Seven Deadly Beers
ABV Chicago Craft Beer Podcast - October 18, 2023 12:30 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 87 ratingsWe’re indulging in our capital vices for our yearly attempt to destroy each other over bad beers, and this one features some of the most unexpected pours we’ve ever seen. There’s at least one beer here that unexpectedly brings out an extra large dose of wrath for one podcaster, and it’s not even...
Episode 505 - Lager Heads: Welcome to Chi-Taste-O
ABV Chicago Craft Beer Podcast - October 11, 2023 12:30 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 87 ratingsChicagoland is pretty gifted in lager-centric breweries, but now that trends have shifted back towards the more drinkable, almost every brewery is featuring more and more lagers. This is an extremely good thing. For this show, we do a blind tasting wherein we match a local lager-focused brewery’...
Episode 504 - Amberama
ABV Chicago Craft Beer Podcast - October 04, 2023 12:30 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 87 ratingsNow somewhat relegated to an occasional fall seasonal from breweries, the Amber style is essential to the history of American craft beer as we know it. So we’re pumped to see five local breweries dabble in amber ales and lagers, and we fall in love all over again (with the beers, not each other)...
Episode 503 - GABF 2023
ABV Chicago Craft Beer Podcast - September 27, 2023 12:30 - 2 hours ★★★★★ - 87 ratingsWe were just back in Denver for the 41st Great American Beer Festival, and we’ve got an episode chock full of interviews and beer highlights that’s as good as gold (medals). Catch up on our beer-y travels as we hit the festival floor for about 14 total hours and stop into several great Denver ta...
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