On Saturday afternoon, we went to the Chicago Beer Society‘s 7th Annual Brewpub and Microbrewery Shootout.
This was a very cool event: 16 brewpub/restaurants from the Chicago area set up tables in a huge room at the Irish-American Heritage Center on Chicago’s Northwest Side, where they had samplings of their beers and food. We, as attendees, were asked to try each establishment’s goods and rate them on: (a) favorite beer; (b) favorite food; and (c) favorite food/beer pairing. Here is a link to the winners.
Both Lisa and I picked The Onion Pub & Brewery’s Sand Hill Pilsner as our favorite beer. My favorite pairing was the short loin from the Chicago Rock Bottom with their Robust Porter (also the overall pairing winner from the votes), and my favorite food was the Irish Bread Pudding from Govnor’s Public House in Lake in the Hills. Honorable mentions for the food go to Emmett’s in West Dundee for their venison loin with cherry sauce, and Prairie Rock of Elgin for the sesame scallops.
In spite of the huge crowd and the occasional person bumping into another, the atmosphere was very jovial. I guess all that good stuff had an effect on the attendees. I ran into Chris from the EMS days, and once I thought about it, I shouldn’t have been surprised that he was there– he’s always been a beer expert.
We’ll be hitting more of these events, I am sure.