Here in Chicago, we just wrapped up our annual
Craft Beer Week.
During that time, I scouted out and, indeed, drank some of the finest
craft beers I could find. Being a specialty coffee enthusiast, however, I
decided to pursue a specific kind of craft beer: those that are infused
with coffee. Today I present to you a brand new offering from two of
Chicago’s longstanding craft beverage heroes, and a handful of other
great coffee beers from the great
City of Chicago.
When it comes to Chicago-based craft imbiberies, two companies immediately come to mind:
Goose Island Beer Company and
Intelligentsia Coffee.
These two titans have storied histories, possessing nearly 50 years of
combined brewing and roasting experience. Further, the two companies
have been working together for over 10 years; most notably on their
renown annual collaboration,
Bourbon County Coffee Stout.
Most relationships that have been carrying on that long, even if
still strong, are bound to go a bit stale unless both parties are open
to new sparks. Unfortunately, this has arguably been the case in recent
years with Goose Island and Intelligentsia. The BCCS remains an
incredible beer, but coffee stouts and porters are somewhat old-hat as
collaboration between players in the craft beer and coffee industries
has become decidedly more experimental and adventurous.
For their spark, Goose Island and Intelligentsia recently
re-collaborated to create an undeniably adventurous coffee golden ale
called Fulton Street Blend, which leads off our list of seven great
Chicago coffee beers (plus one honorable mention).
To create the beer, Goose Island’s Brewing Innovation Manager Mike
Siegel soaked Intelligentsia’s whole bean House Blend in the beer base,
similar to the way a brewer will dry-hop a beer. Intelligentsia changes
the components of the blend seasonally based on what coffees are fresh
off harvest, but the profile remains remarkably
consistent. (Intelligentsia’s current House Blend is comprised of
coffees from El Salvador, Rwanda, and Tanzania.)
This beer can be appreciated on two levels. First, it’s a novel
approach to golden ales. Craft beer and specialty coffee lovers alike
can fully geek out over this one. But it’s also a really great option
for consumers looking for an introduction to experimental coffee-beer
styles. It has a really low ABV, making it very sessionable, and it
displays a great balance between beer and coffee, not going too far in
either direction. It is both challenging and inviting, different yet
familiar. Moreover, it is, in my humble opinion, delicious.
We can’t do a roundup of Chicago-area coffee beers without first
giving credit where credit is due — to Goose Island’s other
collaboration with Intelligentsia: Bourbon County Coffee Stout.
2014 marked a sea change in how craft breweries approached the way
they create coffee beers. Before, breweries weren’t really looking for
coffee profiles that complemented their beers —they were just looking
for “that generic coffee flavor” as an individual note in their beer.
Further, we tasted coffee predominately used in stouts and porters. In
2014, though, craft breweries and craft coffee roasters teamed up for a
wide variety of styles — even IPAs and golden ales!
While BCCS is a traditional coffee stout, its profile and the amount
of thought that went into creating that profile show there’s still
plenty of room to innovate in the style.
Mourning Wood is a coffee amber ale from the demented minds of Local
Option Bierwerker and Dark Matter Coffee Company. After being infused
with Dark Matter’s El Salvador San Jose pulp-natural coffee, Mourning
Wood is then aged in American oak barrels.
Despite this being an oak-aged coffee beer, don’t expect its flavor
profile to blow you away — this is, first and foremost, an amber ale,
which means it’s focused on the malts rather than the hops. The coffee
component is definitely present throughout the glass but it’s not
overwhelming. Amber ales are famous for their subtleties and balance,
and Mourning Wood is a tremendous example of coffee complementing the
style rather than overtaking it.
In 2013, Spiteful sourced coffee from
Halfwit Coffee Roasters for
a coffee stout called I Hate My Boss. Last year, Spiteful Brewing
decided to release another coffee stout and set about finding another
roaster whom they philosophically aligned with. Being a nanobrewery
themselves, they wanted to work with a roaster who produces a
high-quality, small-batch product here in Chicago.
Since Halfwit shares a roasting space with Gaslight Coffee Roasters,
Spiteful immediately thought of collaborating with Gaslight next.
Brewing the beer with Gaslight’s Mexico Comon Yaj Noptic, Spiteful
created G.F.Y. Coffee Stout — a caffeinated variation of their immensely
popular G.F.Y. Stout.
One experiences the Arcade Brewery and Dark Matter Coffee’s
Graveyard Shift Coffee Pale Ale in
three stages: 1) “This beer is weird and it makes me feel weird and I
don’t like it;” 2) “You know, this beer is a very complex and
interesting experiment in coffee-infused beer brewing;” 3) “This beer is
freaking delicious.”
It’s different, it’s weird, it’s unorthodox, and it’s pretty damn
tasty. No frills, no gimmicks. Graveyard Shift Pale Ale is just a very
unique collaboration from two of the most different, weirdest, most
unorthodox craft beverage producers in the City of Chicago.
In a world-class city like Chicago — a city with a host of
world-class breweries and roasteries — it’s easy to forget about the
suburbs and their contributions to Illinois’s overall craft beverage
scene. But in the town of Addison, just 45 minutes due West of Chicago,
resides a roaster, Tugboat Coffee, who recently teamed up with
Schaumburg’s RAM Brewery to create a Guatemala Finca El Injertal-infused
IPA.
I honestly wasn’t expecting much from this beer, but I was surprised
to find that Big Red Tugboat was incredible. What this beer got right
wasn’t just its flavor, though; its balance was absolutely spot on. It’s
a very hoppy and citrus-heavy IPA, and the coffee element acts as a
backbone to support it.
Craft coffee and craft beer — yin and yang; AM and PM; breakfast and
dinner. The two go hand in hand. It makes sense, then, that breweries
started infusing their oatmeal stouts with coffee to make full-on
breakfast stouts.
Begyle Brewing recently went down this road while creating an
imperialized version of their famous Flannel Pajamas Stout. They teamed
up with Ipsento Coffee and infused Flannel Pajamas with Ipsento’s
Wildfire Espresso blend to create the big-bodied, full-flavored, and
very boozy Imperial Pajamas breakfast stout.
Honorable Mention) Dark Lord – 3 Floyds Brewing Company and Dark Matter Coffee Company
One thing you probably noticed over the course of this list is the
multiple entries that included Dark Matter Coffee Company. The reason
for this is twofold. For one thing, the folks at Dark Matter hang their
hats on collaboration and experimentation. Moreover, their coffee is
regarded as damn good and everybody around here knows it. Because of
this, craft breweries are lined up around the block to work with them
(metaphorically speaking, of course). DMC regularly collaborates with
multiple breweries at once, including the likes of
Half Acre,
Revolution,
Arcade,
Local Option, and
Pipeworks.
None of their collaborations, however, are quite as famous as the coffee beer they produce with Munster, Indiana’s
3 Floyds Brewing Company: Dark Lord.
As a disclaimer, I should tell you I have never tried Dark Lord. But
the reality is that very few people have. This incredibly limited-run
coffee-infused Russian Imperial Stout is available only one day per
calendar year, and its release is celebrated as something of a national
holiday by craft beer enthusiasts both near and far — Dark Lord Day.
April 25 marked Dark Lord Day 2015, and it was celebrated in grand
style: a festival, complete with live music, food, beers from around the
world, and a long line of attendees who even camped out and wrapped
around the block, eagerly awaiting to enter the grounds to get a taste
of Dark Lord. Those lucky enough to obtain a bottle for themselves often
sell the beer on Craigslist for up to $800 for a set. Some even sell
the empty bottles as collector items for $50.
