Goose Island Wrigleyville - Chicago, IL
Real Ale Fest was visited on March 1, 2002
This is a three day festival of competition and tasting sessions. The 'Real Ale' festival is the largest gathering of real ales in America and the largest collection of cask-conditioned ales anywhere outside of Britain, by which it is inspired.
Real Ale tastes quite different from normal draft beer. This unique flavor is driven by two factors: real ale is not filtered (still contains important flavors that filtering normally removes) and real ale is in the presence of live brewer's yeast right until the moment it is dispensed. (Yeast produces many of the flavors in beer and keeps the beer at the peak of freshness.)
Goose Island Wrigleyville is located in the 'gold coast' area of Chicago. At first the building did not appear to be big enough to house the onslaught of beer lovers arriving promptly at 5:00. The first tasting area housed perhaps a hundred casks. We later found an upper level with the bottled-conditioned real ales (which no one from P.A.L.S. used their precious tickets on) and a back room which we fondly refer to as the cold room. The cold room was a little piece of heaven and housed the darker stouts and ales. Needless to say P.A.L.S. spent the majority of their time in the cold room.This was the first beerfest P.A.L.S. had attended with a restriction of tickets. How could we possibly choose 5 out of 185+ served? Dilemma solved...buy more tickets! The pours were generous (and more so as the night wore on). The beer lovers (from all areas of the USA) never lacked in conversation and laughs.
It was agreed by all that a most wonderful time was had. We hope to make it an annual 'field trip' and look forward to possibly meeting up with a few fellow beer lovers at other up and coming festivals.
Salute!
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revised: March 17, 2002
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URL:
http://geocities.datacellar.net/palsandgals.geo/tours
