Goose Island - Clybourn

At lunch today we got a quick tour of the Goose Island Brewpub on Clybourn. Being a quick tour wasn't a problem because what you can see from the restaurant is pretty much the entire thing. I think I say this about every brewery I have blogged about, but once again it was really cool. Not cool in the same sense as many of the other new breweries that I have been to recently, but cool because of how old (relatively) the equipment and facility are. They are still making beer on the original 10 bbl system put in 21 years ago at Goose Island, with slight modification and jury-rigging of course. Right now they produce about 700 bbls a year, which is very small compared to the over 100,000 bbls at the Goose Island production brewery. We are taking a tour of that facility at some point, so more details about that later. Most of the 700 bbls are consumed on the premises, while some is taken up north to Goose Island Wrigleyville (they also brew up there as well). The facility could really use some updating, some remodel is going to happen since they resigned their lease for another 5 years, but not necessarily to the extent I am sure the brewer would like. Although the brewery is a testament to being able to make great beer without the most state of the art equipment. Here are two pictures I snapped today, quality is kind of crap, oh well...

2o bbl fermenters

Mash/lauter and Brew kettle

For those who looks at these brewery pictures and think that they all look about the same, you are right, but I am fascinated by them and will continue to post them. Think of it like a car enthusiast who turns their head to stare at a Bentley Continental GT as it drives by, even though they have seen Bentley's before. It is sort of the same. On that subject, did you know a new Continental GT and a 15 bbl brewing system cost about the same amount of money. Which would you choose? I say, give a man a beer he will be wasted for a day, teach a man to brew he will be wasted for life...hmmm, maybe that isn't the best saying.

I may have said it was a short tour, but that wont stop me from writing a lot. Like I said, this is the original Goose Island Brewery, so they used to produce more beer here. Up until recently, they still had some cask accounts, but due to joining the Craft Brewers Alliance they can no longer distribute out of the Clybourn brewery. Redhook (one CBA member) had a distribution deal with Anheuser-Busch and part of the CBA deal involved using the AB distribution, so all of the distributed beer comes from the main brewery. The brewpub doesn't actually make the year round beers (Honkers, 312) at the pub, those get sent in from the other brewery as well. They always have 14 beers on tap, so they do make plenty of beers. Every Thursday they release a new beer in the pub, for those scoring at home that means they make at least 52 different beers a year. That would be a lot of fun to be able to experiment with that many beers.

Another cool thing they often do while making a "big" beer, is follow that with a "small" beer using the same grains. Without going into too much detail, when you make really strong beers, a lot of grains are used. Usually you don't get all of the fermentables out of those grains, so by running another mash/lauter on those, you can get another "small" beer from the grains. Then of course they change it up from then on so it isn't just a weak version of the "big" beer. Cool way to experiment with other hops, yeasts etc while keeping costs down.

That's three posts in three days, probably wont get anything new up until the weekend.