Save THEIR Craft: Rolling Meadows Brewery

Posted on April 28, 2011 by Ryan under Save The Craft

In central Illinois there exists, what we would consider, a craft beer desert. Sure, you can find beer from the likes of Schlafly and Boulevard – two Missouri based breweries – on store shelves and on tap at bars, but there is no local brewery or brewpub in the state’s capitol of Springfield. In fact, in order to find locally brewed beer you would have to drive at least an hour and a minimum of 75 miles in any given direction from Springfield to find it. But that will soon change. Rolling Meadows Brewery, which is located on a family farm outside of Springfield, has been ramping up plans to open a production brewery and – depending on how the current craft beer distribution legislation in Springfield pans out – hopes to have its beer on tap at bars and restaurants in central Illinois in a month or so.

Rolling Meadows is a family run brewery, operated by a mother and son – Caren and Chris Trudeau. According to the breweries website they’ll initially be brewing three different beers:

Lincoln’s Lager: They’ll be producing two versions of this beer, a dark lager and a golden lager. The golden lager is described as a, “clean, crisp and refreshing lager,” while the darker version has hints of caramel.
Abe’s Ale: This is a high ABV brown ale brewed with maple syrup. Rolling Meadows calls it a, “drinkers friend for life.”
Springfield Wheat (pictured below): Described as an “imperial hefeweizen,” this beer is brewed with hops grown on site and is citrus-y enough to keep the fruit out yer beer, “There’s no need for a stupid lemon slice or orange slice.”

photo courtesy: David Spencer/The State Journal-Register

Along with the hops grown on site Rolling Meadows will be plucking other goodies out of the ground to be used in their beers, including vanilla beans and coriander. Continue reading →

Review: Goose Island Bourbon County Vanilla Stout

Posted on April 27, 2011 by The Guys under Beer Review

Goose Island says:

“Bourbon County Brand Stout spiced with fresh vanilla beans.”

Goose Island Bourbon County Vanilla Stout
Imperial Stout, 13% ABV

Sayeth the Guys:

Karl: It’s a shame that Goose Island doesn’t plan on making any more of this, because I’d love the chance to bust out a vertical of it. That’s one way of saying that right now it’s not bad, but in a few years, it’s got the potential to be freaking great.

Ryan and I had our first taste of the BCBS Vanilla at the Sheffield’s Goose Island takeover and immediately went mad blending it with everything else. There it was a well developed, nicely balanced and intelligent stout, creamy and luscious and sexy. In the bottle, it’s gonna need a little time to get back there, but I think the groundwork has been laid for it to end up being equally as good.

At first glance, one would be hard-pressed to find any of that promised vanilla. The smell is all liquor, and the taste is about 83% bourbon-y stoutness with just a few percentage points of vanilla lingering at the end. (Yes, that’s thoroughly scientifically tested, proved, hypothesized and theorized. Okay, it’s not.) That is, until, you take a swig, swallow, and then exhale strongly while catching the scent simultaneously. Sounds weird, but it works – that’s where you find all that vanilla. It’s trying to escape however it can. Continue reading →

Do We Still Need “Dark Lord Day?”

Posted on April 26, 2011 by Karl under Beer News

KARL: When I first heard about Dark Lord Day in probably 2006 or so, it was a time far in advance of my craft beer epiphanies, a time when I was barely aware of things like porters and IPAs, let alone something like a Russian Imperial Stout. Indeed, Dark Lord was the only example of the style I’d ever heard of at all, and making it available only on one single day during the year was a fun way of getting a little press for a crazy beer style and a little exposure for this microbrewery called Three Floyds, which was apparently just over the Illinois border from me in Muenster, Indiana. I liked the idea. It seemed like a good time.

Now, I should probably preface this whole piece by saying this: I’ve never been to a Dark Lord Day. So take all the following words with that particularly large grain of salt. But I prefer to think that it means I can look at the situation with a bit of distance. Further, I don’t like crowds, I especially don’t like completely wasted crowds (you can generally find me hiding out in some lonely undisclosed location every St. Pats and New Years) and I don’t particularly enjoy being made to jump through hoops to get things. That’s who I am as a person, and as such I’m the first to admit that maybe Dark Lord Day has never been for me. And considering we didn’t particularly love our foray into Dark Lord the beer, maybe all of this is for the best.

But allow me to continue. Continue reading →

(Belated) Earth Day and Beer: Bring On the Mini-Keg!

Posted on April 25, 2011 by Karl under Beer News

KARL: When it comes to “drinking green,” we’d like you to first put aside all thoughts of whatever terrible swill you may or may not have ingested around St. Patrick’s Day. Sure, we maybe have missed Earth Day by a full weekend, but we figured it might be high time anyway to acknowledge and further request a couple of the things we’d like to see more of.

I drank this. No, I'm not proud of it.

Obviously, drinking beer straight off the keg is going to have the least environmental impact out of all the different ways to get your brew – no bottles, no cans and the delivery system is naturally recycled when it’s sent back to the brewery and filled up with more beer. Since owning a full bar system or even a single-tap kegerator is out of the financial range of most beer lovers, we thought we’d give an underutilized idea a little credit where it’s due.

When we heard about the mini-keg being given a shot by MillerCoors, of course our initial snarky response was something like “oh, good, so now we can get even more tasteless beer easier.” But after that two seconds of knee-jerk beersnobbery, we started to think of it as a potentially revolutionary vehicle for beer delivery.

Consider, would you, a box of Franzia.

No, seriously. Consider it.

Personally, I’ve got a big box of their “Crisp White” (whatever that is) in the fridge right now. It’s not great, of course, but it’s a nice change of pace – and it is a significant improvement over standard wine bottles in terms of low-impact alcohol transport. The plastic pouch and the cardboard box are way easier to recycle, it takes less energy to create, and it’s far easier to transport thanks to its easily-stackable shape, meaning less wasted cost in shipping.

The mini-keg has a lot of the same advantages – fully recyclable, potentially reusable and far easier to deal with than a pile of bottles or cans in the trash. Continue reading →

Sparging the News, Saving the Craft: How Indiana Handles Craft Brewery Legislation

Posted on April 22, 2011 by Karl under Save The Craft

KARL: Far be it from me to agree with just about anything Indiana does ever, but they do seem to know a thing or two about handling their craft brewing scene. The Times of Northwest Indiana reported recently that Three Floyds was creeping in on the current 20,000 barrel limit for microbreweries.

According to BeerNews.org, in Indiana that designation comes with certain tax breaks and distribution rights as well as on-site sale privileges. Rather than muck around with a big argument over what constitutes a barrel or what defines a craft brewery or who can self-distribute, it appears that the IN legislature is just going to raise the cap to 30,000. Nice of them, huh?

Here’s basically the whole piece, as reported by Dan Carden: Continue reading →