THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE DRINK! Brewpubs take the challenge at Chicagoland Shootout By Nicholas Day Special to the Tribune Published February 1, 2006 These days, local brewpubs aren't satisfied with serving some of the best beers out there. They want the best food, too. So no one brought peanuts at the eighth annual Chicagoland Brewpub and Microbrewery Shootout recently, a food and beer competition sponsored by the Chicago Beer Society (CBS). There were, however, port wine beef medallions with wild berry salad and walnut balsamic vinaigrette, the entry of Brass Restaurant and Brewery of South Barrington. The Shootout's sold-out crowd at the Irish-American Heritage Center in Chicago rated the medallions "best food," closely followed by the jalapeno garlic-seared shrimp and the amber ale-braised pork ribs. The beer aficionados sampled the food and drink of 16 brewpubs that came from as far as Rock Island (Blue Cat Brew Pub) and Munster, Ind. (Three Floyds Brewing Co.), bringing with them butane stoves and kegs of evidence of the vitality of regional brewing. "People want to be part of this event," said Jeff Sparrow, who organized the event for the beer society. "Winning means a lot to them." The top beer, Saison Also Rises from Rock Bottom Chicago, was brewed in the style of Belgian farmhouse ale, or saison. The names of its competitors also sounded like anything but local: Robert Burns Scottish Ale from Goose Island Beer Co., Bourbon Barrel-aged Imperial Stout from Aurora's America's Brewing Co. and Belgian Dubbel from the Onion Pub & Brewery in Lake Barrington. It was an impressive diversity of brewing styles--a range that almost no American brewers were producing just a few decades ago. Positive changes The oldest Chicago-area microbrewery, Goose Island, opened in 1988--a decade after the American craft brew revolution began in California--and the growth since has been exponential. Although a few local brewers, such as Three Floyds and Two Brothers Brewing Co. of Warrenville, have followed Goose Island's lead in bottling their beer, the majority have not. Bottling requires a lot of space and money: a warehouse for production plus the expense of bottles, labels, packaging and shipping. So a lot of brewing innovation happens on a smaller scale in brewpubs, where the essential overhead is a keg and a pint glass. That means that many of the best beers brewed in Chicago, and almost all of those that were on tap at the competition, will never sit in a liquor store's fridge. That's not to say that brewers wouldn't like to see their beer there. Matt Van Wyk, who brews for Flossmoor Station in Flossmoor, has considered selling his beers in cans, a more cost-efficient medium that also has storage benefits (it eliminates light damage and decreases degradation from oxygen). But for the present, his beers, such as a "dry-peppered" wheat ale spiked with a few Anaheim and habanero chilies, are only on tap in Flossmoor. Van Wyk, who started as an enthusiastic home brewer, gave up his day job as a science teacher a few years ago for a few poorly paid brewing gigs. Statistically, it wasn't a smart move: As Van Wyk said, there are only so many brewer positions. Now the brewmaster at Flossmoor, he said brewing "is like a craft. It's like being a carpenter or an electrician in that you learn a lot on the job." Many local brewers have worked with each other or studied together at the Siebel Institute of Technology, a brewing school located above the Goose Island brewpub on Clybourn. "There's a real camaraderie among brewers," said Randy Mosher, a board member of the beer society and author of several books on beer. "Beer's a mission." Itinerant local brewer Greg Browne, who started brewing at Goose Island and now heads Mickey Finn's in Libertyville and teaches a monthly "beer school" at the Map Room bar in Chicago, said he has "worked at every place in Chicago and at some that don't exist anymore." Browne arrived in Chicago from Australia in the early 1990s, when quality craft beer was still an upstart. "I didn't like American beers, the mass-produced stuff, so I started brewing my own," he said. Menus to match It's not only the beer in Chicagoland that has improved. "The first year we did this, people brought hot dogs and chili," said Dave Phillips, president of the Chicago Beer Society. Now, offerings include ostrich and rosemary satay over sticky rice, the entry of Three Floyds, which just opened a brewpub alongside its microbrewery In Munster, Ind. A few brewpubs, like Brass or Emmett's, which has three suburban locations, look more like white-tablecloth restaurants than neighborhood taverns. An auxiliary goal of the Shootout is to demonstrate the flexibility of beer with food--there's even an award for the best beer and food pairing (won by Rock Bottom Chicago for its saison and shrimp combo). Beer enthusiasts are tired of wine getting all the attention. "Beer's much broader," Mosher said. He cites beer's highly variable alcohol content (from 3 to 20 percent) and carbonation (from ticklish to scouring), which makes it more adaptable to a wider range of food, as well as its backbone of bitterness from hops (which cuts through fat and refreshes the palate). But the brewpubs didn't limit their food to cheese or shrimp or even ostrich. A few tackled dessert too. Govnor's Public House in Lake in the Hills offered an Absolution Ale that was soft, rich with malt and a perfect match for a raspberry-caramel-chocolate cheesecake. Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune