Another Chicago brewing company… Sorry guys, we’re gonna try to clog your already-congested shelves with another new local beer. But this one will be a little bit different, as the head brewer will be your neighbor, friend or possibly your enemy.
We’ve started a beer company called Middle Brow. Each month we’ll throw a homebrewing contest, and the winning recipe will be commercially brewed and distributed the beer to local bars and bottleshops, in both bombers and kegs. Each contest will revolve around a particular theme or style, adhering somewhat to the BJCP guidelines, but also straying from them on occasion, because we all know as homebrewers, brewing is about experimenting and being creative. For example, the style for the first contest is a “winter warmer,” but Christmas ales, old ales and similar fruit/spice beers will be allowed to enter as well. We’re going to do a best-in-show [type] selection, and then a few weeks later it’ll be on tap and shelves throughout Chicago and some neighboring ‘burbs.
So, what’s in it for the winner? Well, first of all, prestige. Oh and some cash, to the extent we make any money at all. And they’ll even get their picture on the label (better yet, a cartoon drawing of their picture). And, in any event, we kinda started the beer company backwards: we’re a couple beer nerds with unfulfilling desk jobs and bleeding hearts who wanted to “give something back to the community,” as they say in after-school specials. After lots of brainstorming, we finally linked our two passions and decided to raise money for charities by brewing and selling homebrewed beers. So, we’ll be giving half of whatever money we make to local charities. For the first brew, we’ll be donating to CeaseFire.
As you’re well aware, we can’t have a homebrewing contest without homebrewers. So we’re asking for your help. We would be pretty bowled over if you shared our Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/MiddleBrow with your friends, homebrewing pals, and other like-minded beer nerds, where they’ll be able to learn more about our company and our contests.
If the community responds favorably to this idea, we hope one day to open our own brewing space, a sort of co-op brewery that will continue the same “you as the brewer” ethos. But that’s a distant dream… In the meantime, let’s hold some cool events, try some delicious homebrews, and talk shop with our fellow beer nerds.
