Quote:
Originally Posted by Wraths Unanimous
I'm heading to Terrapin/Sweetwater/one other tbd tmrw. Best pictures and writeup wins!
RDH does your brewery distribute to GA?
you'll win on the pics, I only took two and they weren't great. I was having too much fun and too much drinking to take pics (or great notes)
Revolution Brewery trip
I know I've posted about rev here before, but it was just a brewpub then. Not, with a full 35k sq ft space they will fully be a commercial brewery. They opened in feb of 2010 and have become insanely popular in Chicago. I've been going there almost since opening and have had a chance to track their progress. Rev has been the bar that I've easily gone to the most of in chicago since they opened.
I read somewhere that there were 3k people there. While there were a lot of people, I never felt crushed. Granted, hearing that doesn't surprise me given some of the lines. It started at 5, but if you had a VIP pass (which was doing a lot of different places for craft beer week) you could be there at 3. There weren't that many VIP passes, but those people certainly got the big jump on tasting all of the barrel aged brews. They also sold out for this in about a day. I got the tickets right when they went on sale, but originally I thought it was only 1500 tickets that were sold for this (completely made up number I know, but I clearly misjudged how many fans are in the city that would go to this).
I only got there 5:30. I took the train in and traffic was a real bitch as well. Naturally there was a line out the door, but it didn't take my friend and I too long to get in. We got in at around 5:45 but decided to hit up one of the food trucks (insert my own rant at chicago's stupid ****ing laws that make truck operation very tough) when we saw the giant line just to get beer tickets.
They had about 10 food trucks set up from what I can recall. They also had a stage for bands and you had to be there at 5 for the special band. I had been guessing beforehand as it was said that the special band would have a real chicago connection. Naturally I start thinking that there is a slight chance at wilco and possibly company of thieves. It wasn't that
. It was a new orleans-style 2nd line type marching band. It was perfectly fine for the afternoon/evening, but I had the bar set pretty high.
As I noted, the lines were definitely long. My friend and I were glad we got the food first as the ticket line was very shortened and I grabbed my roll of 10. We did some walking around just to get a lay of the land and see what guest taps were pouring. We wanted to start off with the rev brews though before we moved into the other brews.
Since I mentioned it, the guest breweries were all chicago based with the following being there: goose island, haymarket, metropolitan, half acre, two brothers and the new solemn oath.
I realized pretty fast that taking good notes wasn't happening and there were several different places for beers. So, my initial plan of only having the beers that I haven't had went out the window. Obviously I was going to have a couple of brews that I haven't had or taken notes on yet, but it was just too many people. I also realized fast that double fisting beers was easily the way to go.
We looked at the line for the barrel aged brews, so we made sure we got some beer to wait in the line. I took the opportunity to grab an
anti-hero IPA (previous note from september):
pours a nice light golden color with a small and foamy head
fresh and aromatic nose with various citrus tones, papaya, hops, and fresh picked oranges.
medium/full bodied with a good amount of hop tones but they aren't overbearing at all.
a real quality ipa. This isn't an IPA that runs away with the hops and instead is nice and fresh while being slighter bigger. 3.95/5
and a
black power oatmeal stout(note from a few weeks ago at rev):
poured from cask at Rev into a pint glass. Pours a nice chocolate color with a well defined and frothy head.
Well balanced with nice depth and really good aromas of chocolate, roasted coffee beans, and malts.
Full bodied with a nice and smooth feel. Very good flavors of oatmeal, roasted malts, chocolate and some coffee beans.
Glad to see this back on tap, and very glad to have had this on cask. One of Rev's best stouts for me and this was as good as I remembered it. 4/5
We then made sure to head into the giant Barrel Aged line. Seriously, this line had several turns in it from people and it took probably a half hour just to get through the line. On top of that, I found out that you could only get 1 pour per person. So, in some ways it was a bit of roulette as to what was available by the time you got to the taps. I've had a decent amount of their barrel aged beers and was lucky that one of them on tap was one I haven't had:
"BA Baracus"
had on tap at the revolution production party. Had in a small plastic cup. Pours a near pitch black color with a small head.
There is a real nice balance of the bourbon aromas along with some sweet malts, dark and milk chocolate, and some bits of vanilla beans too. Very good depth too.
Full bodied and a beautifully smooth feel. Great depth with flavors of dark chocolate, sweet malts, vanilla beans, a touch of bourbon with a real nice coffee finish.
I was glad to get a pour of this. This has real good complexity and the feel really makes it. This is definitely one of their successes of the barrel aged brews. 4.28/5
We decided not to deal with the barrel aged line again and just wandered around drinking more beer. I didn't do as much wandering as I should've, so we then hit up some of the guest taps. While there was a crowd, there weren't really any lines. I missed out on the galactic double daisy from half acre, but I've had it before plenty of times.
We then made our way back outside to hit up another truck and have some more beer. I talked to a few people and it was then out of there at 10pm.
The space is huge and there is a lot of room for them to grow. I think they were always planning on something like this, but not this fast. It will be interesting to see how much they grow and how much bigger they can get. This was a great day for the Chicago beer scene and I'm really glad I was a part of it.