Goose Island–From Farmers Market To Beer
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MyBeer Buzz
Goose Island has been producing a weekly series of pub-only releases that are brewed with a unique featured ingredient….and that ingredient comes from their local farmer’s market. Today’s beer (7/23 @ 11AM) is Peachy Keen Wit (5% ABV) with Doughnut peaches from @MickKlugFarm. Details from The Republic:
Jared Rouben, the friendly 30-year-old brewmaster of Goose Island’s Clybourn Avenue pub, comes to this slice of bucolic urbanity in Lincoln Park early each week for one ingredient, and one ingredient only. He might leave with an herb, a spice, a vegetable, a fruit or a condiment, and at some point, he has picked each of the above. Ingredient secured, he heads to his brewery and steeps the find into a beer that will be tapped the following Monday and be gone two days later, if not sooner.
The next week he repeats the process. And he repeats and repeats, every Wednesday, until October, when the best of the Midwestern harvest has passed. Rouben’s weekly experimentation has resulted in more than 30 beers made from more than 30 fresh Midwestern ingredients, like a baby carrot Belgian wit, a rhubarb saison and a helles lager infused with apple tree wood that Rouben smoked himself.
But this day’s plan was already in the books. At the Seedling farm table, Rouben shook hands with owner Peter Klein and asked for “the secret stash.” Klein withdrew a box out of reach from the average shopper. It was filled with 12 cartons of little lush red gems — wild strawberries. They’re smaller, creamier and denser than their more common strawberry brethren. Rouben had fallen for them the previous week, but there weren’t enough to infuse an entire keg.
The following Monday, I went back to the brewery and took a seat at the bar. Rouben’s smile said he was proud of his creation. He set two glasses in front of me: one with the wild strawberry saison, which he named Strawberry Sundae, and the other filled with the regular saison.
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