FoBAB 2024 Reflections – Guys Drinking Beer

My headache has finally subsided.

Before we get to my FoBAB 2024 ruminations, many of you may know that I have been covering the Chicagoland beer scene since the late 2000s. Many of you also know (but for the benefit of those who don’t) that in late 2020 when life and employment statuses changed for a lot of us, my wife and I moved away from Chicago after a pretty solid 16-year run. We now reside in northern Michigan where I’ve been observing the Midwestern beer scene from a slightly more distant perch.

Every year since we moved, FoBAB weekend is my opportunity to make a return trip to the city and dive in headfirst to all the great beer I don’t have immmediate access to any more. And this year’s might have been the best yet.

For all of our FoBAB coverage through the years, click here.

In the 66 hours I was on the ground this year, outside of my time spent at FoBAB, I managed to squeeze in trips to is/was, Monochrome Brewing, Other Half Ramova, Demo Brewing, Dovetail, Pilot Project, Demo Brewing, Electric Funeral, Hop Butcher, plus a couple of beers at Kasey’s Tavern during the Bears game. Occasionally, I ate, and also slept.

Having one of the city’s beer pioneers be recognized as the top pick just feels fundamentally satisfying to me, and it’s something that arguably hasn’t happened since Goose won in ‘12 for their Cherry BCBS. (Thank you to the ABV Chicago team’s medal recount Google doc for this info and perspective.)

And who doesn’t love a festival with a little bit of mystery? After a quick scan of the brewery list, many of us were wondering, who the hell is Neuronova Brewing? It says they’re from Chicago, but I’d never heard of them before, and I’m the dork who tracks all of this stuff. And then when they won the very first Fan Favorite award, many of us were outright confused. (I even Tweeted for the first time in almost half a year, hoping to pop up on the video screen at the fest.)

Turns out it was a new side effort at least partially helmed by brewer Eric Flores of Whiskey Hill (he holds the business license, anyways). No doubt the beer was quite tasty, and honestly it was pretty clever to soft-launch a side label at FoBAB. It’s a room full of pretty rabid beer lovers who are very familiar with the scene, so sneaking your barrel-aged beers in without any explanation and letting us try to figure things out gives them a memorable start.

Finally, FoBAB is not just about great beers, but also the very public recognition of the best one — and seeing the owners of Lisle’s Bubblehouse Brewing so visibly thrilled (and maybe a little shocked?) to take the stage and accept a Gold Medal for their “That Escalated Quickly” in the Other Pale section was just a joy to see.

Favorite Tastes of the Day:

Cruz Blanca’s La Lucora: When I saw that this beer – a brambleberry ale – was aged in Angostura bitters barrels, I was intrigued. Would that application completely overwhelm a beer, like, say, aging in a Malort barrel? Happy to say that it did not — it complemented the dark fruit flavors deliciously. There was no doubt that the Ango was quite up front, but in much the same way it presents in a Trinidad Sour. Loved it. And with MolsonCoors acquiring the Cruz Blanca brand, I wouldn’t hold my breath for anything else this exciting in future years. Grab it now if you see it.

Idyll Forest / Pryes Brewing’s 2024 Soiree: I don’t make many return trips for beers at FoBAB – too many to try and too little capacity for all of them. When I sipped this one — a “wine hybrid ale” — I immediately button-hooked for a second pour. Every other wine-beer hybrid I’ve ever had just presented as basically just wine with some grain body to it … this one sang out loud with bright, tight fruit flavors and deliciously tart acid that still fully felt like a beer through and through.

Milieu Fermentation’s smol: Has a barrel-aged beer under 3% ever medaled at FoBAB, let alone awarded gold? It was shocking to see how much flavor Milieu was able to wring out of this 2.7% ABV mixed-culture table beer, and clearly the judges agreed, handing them top marks for Wild Beer Mixed Culture – Acidic.

Lupulin Brewing’s Scribbled Lines Star Damage – Calamansi & Sabro: Making two competitive flavors — fruit tartness and hop bitterness — marry together seamlessly is a trick, but Lupulin definitely pulled it off here. Starting with a foeder aged golden ale is always a good start, and then finishing it on calamansi juice and dryhopping with Sabro could have gone horribly, horribly wrong but this landed so deliciously.

Roaring Table’s Key Lime Saison: Not much to say about this one, other than it just worked. The sum of its parts was great but you could also get a sense of the delineation of them, too — clearly a saison first with sweet-tart key lime floating across the top. Just a tasty, refreshing, really nice flavorful beer. How those flavors lasted for years in a French Oak barrel, I’d love to know.

Other deliciousness worth mentioning: Off Color’s Funky Beer for Tacos, Revolution’s Cherry VSOJ, Hopewell’s Olde Duck Barleywine, Half Acre Benthic 2×4, Wicked Weed Funkatorium’s Angel of Darkness.

A few other random takeaways:

BCS, Bypassed: Perhaps it’s a statement of this year’s strength to tell you that this was the very first time ever where I didn’t have a single pour of any Bourbon County Stout at FoBAB. I have no explanation for this; it just happened. Every time I glanced at the lineup that was pouring at their outdoor beer car, it didn’t lure me outside – nor did the promise of Apertivo or Dapper Rye, their competition beers. (I’ve had Apertivo – it was delicious, but I had a hunch that the Fernet flavors so present at release had faded by now. Anyone know if I was right?)

Pumpkin peril: One of the beers I was hoping would appear at FoBAB was MORE’s Imperial Falling Colors: Special Reserve; the imperial BA pumpkin porter I showed y’all a label of recently. Well, they brought it! And I was … shall we say, underwhelmed by the lack of pumpkin to it, sadly. Was it undoubtedly a deliciously thick, rich and creamy barrel-aged beer? Yes, definitely — but when you promise pumpkin pie in a bottle and don’t deliver that big pumpkin and spice flavor, it’s going to be a miss. I had this early so I don’t blame my palate here, either.

Party foul: While I consider nearly everything I had to be, at the least, drinkable, I saw something this year that I’ve never seen before. I won’t disclose which brewery’s beer suffered this fate, but I observed one attendee sip a beer and immediately convert the dump bucket into a spit bucket. Ew. I understand not liking a beer, but if you can’t handle sipping 2oz. of an experimental beer, maybe FoBAB isn’t for you, friend.

There you have it — those are all the thoughts about FoBAB I’ve had in my head over the preceding week. Did you attend? Try anything you liked? Need to talk about one of the beers you tried and couldn’t wrap your head around? Sound off in the comments and we’ll all commiserate together 🙂

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