• What a handsome new sign!

Regular readers may remember my column from July 2013, about CHAOS Brew Club‘s Summer Brew-BQ—the group’s last party in its old home near Grand and Ogden. CHAOS has been operating out of a new, larger space at 2417 W. Hubbard for more than a year, and I’ve finally found a pretext to write about it again without simply summarizing another party: Learn to Homebrew Day, which the American Homebrewers Association has declared to be Saturday, November 1.

CHAOS has 54 “brewer” level members (with full access to the brew house), 24 “apprentice” members (access if accompanied by a brewer), and 62 “friends” (who can attend classes and events but can’t brew). That’s a modest increase from last July, when it had 43 brewers, 23 apprentices, and 46 friends. Friends pay $21 per quarter, apprentices $45 per quarter, and brewers $26 per month. Thirty bucks gets you a trial membership—basically a 60-day apprenticeship. CHAOS usually takes on 40 to 60 trial members at each of its quarterly parties, since admission to the party requires club membership.

  • The recipe for the aforementioned imperial stout

  • By the end of the boil, this inky wort had reached an original gravity of 1.094, or 22.5 degrees Plato.

  • You may notice that this Blichmann gas burner has way more little holes in it than anything on your kitchen stove.

  • I’d have gotten a better photo of the flames, except it’s frowned upon to run one of these burners with nothing on it.

  • Cold water circulates through this copper coil to carry away heat; immerse it in hot wort and it’ll take the temperature down below 70 degress in no time.

  • Blichmann Engineering wishes you to know that the word “BrewMometer” is trademarked. So no funny business.

  • Brewers use these recirculating fountains to clean fermentation vessels. The brown flecks near the neck of this carboy are hop residue from a previous batch.

  • The fermentation room, pegged at 65 degrees. Not pictured: A carboy with aluminum foil over its mouth instead of an airlock. (“Not up to spec,” in the words of CHAOS board member Jamie Proctor.)

  • Not that you can see anyone’s face, but from left to right: Chuck Mac, Steven Lane, Darren Miller, Jean Zelt, and Pete Alvarado.

  • This style of sink is pretty handy for washing unwieldy kettles (or mash paddles, in this case).

  • The pegboard at each brew station holds more than a dozen tools. You can’t really see the thermometers, hydrometers, and bulkhead brushes in this photo.

  • Empty carboys outside the fermentation room. If the daylight through the entrance weren’t so overexposed, you’d be able to see the Metra tracks outside.

  • Barrels from Corsair (I think) and High West Distillery

  • This barrel isn’t used to age beer—it’s rigged to pour from eight different kegs, and sees service at CHAOS parties.

  • The CHAOS keezer. (The word was new to me—it’s a portmanteau of “kegerator” and “freezer.”) Its taps are usually a mix of leftovers from parties and beers brewed to share at the space.

  • Bricks from the demolished CHAOS building in West Town hold the keezer’s temperamental lid closed.

  • The CHAOS bar is a display model donated by Aaron Heineman of Heineman Bar Company. He’s also founder of Breakroom Brewery, soon to open in the same Albany Park space as HBC. (That’s Jamie Proctor behind the bar.)

  • The room with the bar also contains one of CHAOS’s few attempts at decor.

  • Brewers tend to bring good stuff to share. The Cigar City cans came from Pete Alvarado. The hand-labeled bottle contains Darren Miller’s homemade kombucha, brewed with pekoe tea, rose hips, and Carolina Reaper chili peppers, among other things.

You don’t exactly have to turn over rocks to find metal songs whose titles use the word “chaos.” (Encyclopaedia Metallum lists more than 4,000.) This profusion of options allows me to present you with a song from a band I genuinely like: Portland doom four-piece Usnea. “Chaoskampf” appears on their 2013 self-titled full-length.