Because you’re reading a beer column, you probably already know that in 2013 Temperance became the first craft brewery in Evanston’s history (the town was dry from 1858 till 1972). Before I started working on this post, I’d had a couple of Temperance beers, but I didn’t write about them—not when Temperance kegs started showing up in Chicago bars in October, and not when Temperance opened its tap room in December. What do you want me to say? We can’t all be good at our jobs.
For the record, Smittytown will go into cans next, as soon as the TTB (the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau) approves its label artwork. After that Temperance plans to package Greenwood Beach Blonde, a summer seasonal brewed with pineapple; Restless Years will join the six-pack lineup in the fall. If you’re subject to chauvinistic feelings about industrial equipment, you might care to know that Temperance bought its canning line from a Chicago firm called Palmer Canning.
- Classy logo, Temperance! This beer is Threeway American-style IPA, available only at three spots in Evanston: Temperance, SPACE, and Union Pizzeria.
Gatecrasher’s aroma is lush and malt forward but remarkably light on its feet—there’s something floral dancing out front (jasmine and violet, mostly, which reminds me that I need to learn what more different flowers smell like), plus apricot, cherry, toast with marmalade, and bit of milk chocolate and caramel flan.
One more thing! Chicago Craft Beer Week is coming right up. Well, I suppose it’s more properly Chicago Craft Beer Eleven Days, given that for its fifth go-round it runs from Thursday, May 15, till Sunday, May 25. This year CCBW Web director Jonathan Surratt (you may know him as @beerinator on Twitter) has invited me to serve as one of several “guides” to the week’s overwhelming profusion of events. I’ve got a profile page at the CCBW site where I’m putting together a list of stuff I’d go to see if I could be in several places at once. You can build one of your own too.
