![]() ![]() Your average American Amber Ale, like New Belgium’s ‘Fat Tire’ or Maine Beer Co.’s ‘Zoe,’ will have more bite. So, where do classic English bitters fall on the bitterness scale for modern American craft beer drinkers? Pretty meh. Considering our ability to taste bitterness developed as an early warning sign to poison, can you blame them? Note to self: Write a murder mystery involving poisoning unsuspected IBU junkies with strychnine. Some people love the bite of broccoli rabe or the zest of a bold West Coast IPA. So why would anyone who isn’t obsessed with bracing flavors ever want to drink a beer dubbed a bitter? Because sometimes names can be deceiving. They intentionally give fans few clues about what beers to expect until just before each release.Bitterness is polarizing. Some beers are new and some have been previously released. Hop Butcher has abided by a modern approach to brewing that embraces no flagship or year-round beers - just fresh batches every week. ![]() Zimmer and LaRose crafted an ethos to match the Hop Butcher for the World name, becoming one of the first Chicago breweries to embrace the hazy IPA trend that became a foundational industry shift. Realizing they likely couldn’t trademark the South Loop name, they turned to a moniker riffing on Carl Sandburg’s legendary poem “Chicago” and reflecting their love of hop-forward beer. Zimmer and LaRose, who met selling season tickets for the Chicago Rush in the Arena Football League, entered the beer business in 2015 as South Loop Brewing, making tiny amounts of beer at the now-defunct Aquanaut Brewing in the Bowmanville neighborhood. Zimmer said having two breweries of different sizes will offer “all the flexibility in the world to make appropriately sized batches and put them where we want.” “It allows us to stretch our muscles and take bigger swings on smaller batches,” LaRose said. Operating their own production facility will allow Hop Butcher to enter supermarkets, but it’s not a priority, Zimmer and LaRose said. Hop Butcher beer is available largely in beer and liquor stores and has yet to be sold in supermarkets. “We’ll follow what has made us successful to this point: growing organically and being smart about where we put things.” “Just because we can make more beer doesn’t mean we will right away,” Zimmer said. Though about 90% of its beer is sold in the Chicago area, Hop Butcher has built a national following that includes being named 14th-best small brewery in the country by readers of Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine in 2021. Hop Butcher, which specializes in trendy beer styles such as hazy IPA and rich, flavored stouts, will grow in 2022, but Zimmer said it will be measured growth. They have been brewing there full time since the deal closed. Zimmer and LaRose said they will build a taproom in Bedford Park they hope to have open by fall. The former 5 Rabbit location is in a south suburban industrial park that provides larger-scale production - at least double and potentially four times the output possible at Half Acre’s former facility. Zimmer and LaRose said they’re awaiting city and state permitting and hope to be brewing and open to the public by May, if not sooner. It’s a smaller brewery that will provide opportunities for experimentation and smaller-batch production. The former Half Acre location, which has a popular taproom and bottle shop that will allow Hop Butcher to sell directly to consumers for the first time, is in a densely populated North Side neighborhood with ample foot traffic.
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