Flossmoor Station

I wrote about my visit to Three Floyd's a few posts back and mentioned visiting Flossmoor Station as well, now that I have regained a some motivation, I have decided to tell everyone about it.

That Saturday (2/28) Matt and I hopped on a train to Flossmoor, Illinois and met Uncle Tom for lunch at Flossmoor Station Brewery. The brewpub is literally the old train station in Flossmoor. Just imagine living in Flossmoor and commuting to Chicago by train everyday...delicious beer would be at your fingertips every time you got off the train on your way home. Anyway, I have to thank Tom for calling the brewer ahead of time and telling him that we were coming and I was a student at Siebel, we got quite the tour. Checked out the 15 bbl system that can be seen from the restaurant, went downstairs and got to check out the serving vessels and the bottling machine. Considering Flossmoor Station is an old train station and they had little control over the layout of everything, they seemed to make good use of what space they had.

The timing of the visit was also lucky/cool because the head brewer, Matt Van Wyk, is on his way out of Flossmoor to be the head brewer at Oakshire Brewery in Eugene, Oregon. Generally speaking, I have a dislike for anything in Eugene (going to UW will do that), but I will have to go check out the brewery down there. Matt was an awesome guy, very informative and could be a great contact out west, so I can't hold it against him that the brewery he is going to happens to share a town with a certain university. I have not had any beer from Oakshire, but will be sure to do some reviews when I get the chance to try them (Matt made great beers at Flossmoor so I am sure they will be excellent). The day we were there was also the first day on the job for the new head brewer, Bryan Shimkos. Another great guy that I was glad to be able to meet and talk to.

Me and the brewers, Bryan (left) and Matt (right)

The topic of bottling came up and as luck would have it, they were planning on bottling the next day, so I volunteered to come down again and help them out. Great chance for me to get some hands on experience with bottling and I am sure they didn't have any complaints about free labor (I did get some beer and food out of it, so it wasn't totally free). Being a small brewpub that happens to bottle beer, they didn't have a very big or very automated bottling system. It was a four head filler that you had to manually put the bottles in and take them out, about as basic as it gets these days. It took us about four hours to crank out about 75 cases (900 22oz bottles) of their Pullman Brown Ale (award-winning beer, pretty darn good if I say so myself). The closest comparison to bottling beer that I have experienced before is putting numbers on soccer jerseys. It is cool at first, but quickly becomes mind-numbing. Or simple put, shitty job, but someone has to do it. I can only look forward to the day when I want to start bottling (actually I would like to can) and don't have enough money or volume to put in an automated line, just wait, I'll be asking for help.

4-Head Bottling Machine

Between a great tour, two meals, a ten beer sampler at 11 am (plus more beers while working) and some hands on work, I had a great experience at Flossmoor Station and can only hope to run into or work with those guys again.