If you’ve been following the world according to twitter lately then you know that events for Chicago Craft BeerWeek have been absolutely crazy-pants. The opening night at Map Room had lines out the door, and Rare Beer Night at Small Bar looked equally as nuts. So it was nice to wander into Fizz last night with room to breathe, and even better to request a Metropolitan India Pale Lager and have them pass us pints on the house.
Now, before we stopped by Fizz we looked to see what went into this beer — you know — for market research.
Just for kicks, we hopped on the band wagon (ha! see what I did there?) and brewed a very small test batch of a single-hop beer using German Tradition Hallertau hops. By “single” we mean: a crapload of one kind of hops, added 3 different times during the boil. We call it an IPL. The *only* place you’ll get to try this beer… ever… is at Fizz on Wednesday night of Chicago Craft Beer Week.
Color us interested. Very interested.
The IPL was definitely a deeper copper color than we’re used to compared to most Metro brews. While we were expecting a real hop-bomb, we instead found a beer that was dry, light and far less hoppy than expected. It fell somewhere between an IPA, pilsner and a lager. Yet another example of what Metro excels at — creating craft beers you can drink a half-dozen of without dying of alcohol poisoning. Session beer extraordinaire.
This one-off would be an excellent choice for an afternoon spent outside with — say — other Metropolitan beers. It’s different enough from their other offerings that you’ll notice the changes but not so disparate that it’d be a shock to the system if you threw one into the mix with a Dynamo or a Krankshaft.
Unfortunately, you’ll probably never be able to as this was a once-only brew for Chicago Craft Beer Week — one barrel only (which probably was a nice return to Metro’s homebrewing roots). Although, beers have a way of coming back when people request them enough (editors note: hint, hint).