A podcast about beer and life. But mostly about beer.
IPA can be a whole lot of things, but when we were cutting our teeth on hoppy beers, the West Coast style dominated. Appreciation of the style never really died off, but it’s regaining a bit of ground on the...
I always get excited when new breweries open up. A new take on beers, sometimes a new and different area, and possibly some food thrown in there. Milk Money Brewing recently (December 2020 or February 2021 depending on who you ask) opened as the first brewery in La Grange, IL. They combine craft beer with some Michelin-starred firepower backing the food side of things. But we’re here to talk about the beer, and given my current proclivity towards non-hazy IPAs, I naturally chose to get Milk Money’s Colorful Noise IPA.
Join me, if you will, on a trip a decade prior. Before items in the bakery aisle started appearing in beer. When, in a sign of things to come, the highest rated beer was Trappist Westvleteren 12, a Belgian Quadruple one could only get at the monastery. A beer slowly climbed up the ratings, eventually eclipsing Westy 12. I found this out at a bottle share after generously being offered this beer by Beer Me Fitz. That beer was, of course, Heady Topper by The Alchemist and it would eventually lead to a new style of beer – the hazy IPA. Oft imitated years ago, few breweries release Heady Topper-like beers nowadays. More Brewing, however, has decided to give it a go with their recent release of Honour.
When we started the podcast in 2014, we set a goal that we quickly realized. Get some of the best double IPAs from across the county and put them on a show. That became our fourth episode, one in which we pushed the limits of how much alcohol we could drink (that includes pre- and between-beer-break-drinking). Then in late 2016/early 2017 we could not contain our excitement over getting seven local New England-style Double IPAs (and one IPA) for our Chi NEIPA show. We didn’t think we’d ever be able to pull it off. Things have now changed and I’m beyond excited to be having Triptych’s Church for Brewers, a West Coast-style Double IPA.
