Chicago brewery renaissance underway on North, South sides
CHICAGO (WLS) -- Chicago is undergoing a brewing renaissance. There are at least a dozen breweries whipping up lagers, IPAs and Belgian-style beers around town.
The tap room is the focal point at the brand-new Baderbru Brewery, which just opened up in the South Loop a few months ago.
"We make crushable craft beers - predominantly lagers - but also traditional German-style wheat beers," said Rob Sama, one of the owners of the brewery.
If you can't decide, get a flight. You can also tour the facility, which is producing about a thousand cases a week right now. And the nice thing, all of their flagship beers are under five percent alcohol.
"A lot of craft beer today is high in alcohol or very high in bitterness; we make beers that are easy to drink; they're not gonna tax your liver, not gonna tax your palate," said Sama.
Up in Albany Park, Finch Brewery has a massive facility on Montrose, where they've got at least eight beers on tap at a time, plus four from their nearby production brewery.
"IPAs are always popular; we like to do a lot of fun, different styles too. We have a fresh hop beer that we went to Columbus and got the hops for and put it in immediately so that's gonna be coming out shortly," said Rich Ness, one of the Managers there.
But the kitchen is also serious about its food. From the spot-on pretzels with grainy mustard, or the kimchi-topped chicken sandwich, to a few homemade sausages: an Italian, plated with polenta, tomatoes, cheese and fresh basil, and a curry sausage, served with lentils, cumin yogurt and cilantro salad.
"Meat and beer. So sausages and beer will always go together," said Ness.
Now beginning this week, the menu is gonna be focused a bit more on sausages and sandwiches - and bar snacks - but if you didn't want to have your sausage so elegantly plated with polenta, you could also get it in a bun.
In this week's "Extra Course", Steve talks about Finch Kitchen's unique assortment of bar snacks.
Extra Course: Bar snacks at Finch Kitchen
Baderbrau Brewing Company
2515 S Wabash
(312) 890-2728
The Finch Kitchen
2925 W. Montrose Ave.
(773) 942-7949
