A trip to a Chi-fornia brewery.

After a rousing loss by the beloved Bears, Z-Bot, Grapes and I had little to do with our Sunday.

Sure, we played some Quantum and Cards Against Humanity with some friends I’m too lazy to think of nicknames for right now. And sure, one of those games I highly recommend while the latter is a bit worn out. But regardless, the domain name DiceDiceBaby.com is already taken so my board game blogging aspirations are over. Thus I’ll move on to the more intoxicating adventures of the afternoon.

While the beverages, boredom and bitterness settled in after the Bears loss we decided to rescue the remainder of our Sunday. To do so, we stuck with Denver’s original plan of going to the Lagunitas brewery, despite the fact that Denver decided to bail on his plan.

We arrived at the brewery without any bullet holes in our car after a joyful ride around Pilsen looking for the illusive “16th and Rockwell” entrance. Liver Pro Tip: Google Map the 16th & Rockwell intersection before heading to the brewery.

We ventured into the building after parking our proudly bullethole-less car. The entrance hallway had Willy Wonka music on a loop; appropriate for an “adult candy” factor. The hallway guided you through the brewery towards the center of the building where refreshments, or rather “adult candy” awaited. The music particularly suited Z-bot as he has rambled on his Willy Wonka Halloween costume plans for about a week now.

The hallways also had an assortment of black lights, laser lights and disco balls to fill out the Willy Wonka whimsy. This, paired with large windows giving you views of the industrial brewery where their Oompa Loompas brewers make the magic happen. Or I suppose the yeast makes the magic happen and the brewers just make wort, if I am to listen to our tour guide. I almost prefer this as I now imagine yeast as microscopic Oompa Loompas.

Winding through the access tunnels and crawling up a couple flights of stairs (elevators are in the works) proved worthwhile as the center of the building contained a building in and of itself, housing the best brewery tap room I have laid eyes upon.

The tap room consists of an obligatory gift store, followed by an “L” shaped hallway containing couches and the like. This hallway leads you to the taproom itself, containing rows of long Oktoberfest style picnic tables (crafted from the old roof of Lagunita’s Petaluma brewery), a stage with live music and a full bar with Lagunitas on tap to the far right. On the edges of this room there are regular tables, and doors to an indoor balcony containing smaller picnic tables overlooking the brewery.

Pretty sweet setup, even without mentioning the peanuts & pretzels (plus a full menu for ordering).

After grabbing a Lagunitas Daytime we waited around at the picnic tables for someone to round us up for a tour.

While waiting I had a chance to briefly meet a member of HOPS – a Chicago based homebrew group – and he introduced me to the founder of Skylark, one of the bars on the bracket. The Skylark founder kindly informed me that they are tapping some Three Floyd’s BrooDoo, and given my love of Three Floyd’s I may have to check this out before they sell out.

Eventually “Dino” – one of three tour guides nicknamed Dino, all with different pronunciations – came bearing a large cross with the word “Tours” scrolled across the top. We followed this modern martyr of the malt.

“Dino” (Jake) introduced us to Lagunita’s Chicago facility – Chicagonitas as he may say. I enjoyed this name but much prefered my creation, Lagucago. Either way he dived into trivia about the company and brewery, and trust me there’s a lot of it.

First, the name. Dino explained that Lagunitas is an old Native American dog breed. Then he explained that he’s lying and it really means tiny lagoon in Spanish – or something like that. Honestly I thought it was German for a whale’s vagina.

Then Dino explained the history of the facility – it used to be a steel plant until that went out of business. Cine Scene, a production company of some sorts then bought the property. Unfortunately the vibrations from nearby train tracks made the building unsuitable for Cine Scene’s filming. Dino also mentioned that Cine Scene had filmed parts of Transformers on this lot. For some reason I have trouble believing that a Michael Bay movie could be hindered by shaking the camera. Really I may just credit these ‘vibrations’ for 95% of his work since The Rock and Independence Day.

Either way this particular building did not meet Cine Scene’s needs and they sold it to Lagunitas. Within 18 months of construction Lagunitas had more than its fair share of fermenters and brewing equipment, including an extra large tank which required Lagunitas to knock out an entire wall. Lagunitas has plans to put in more of these tanks and also has a habit of naming some of their tanks – Cheech & Chong, and Harry out in California, plus several named after former canine co-workers.

I feel given this naming tradition and history of Cine Scene that these extra large tanks need Transformers themed names. My suggestion are Megatank and Optimus Pils. At the very least they should name this group of tanks the Autohops.

The Lagunitas brewery and Dino came equipped with many small quirks like this. The brewers have painted many of the poles around the building with various themes – Chicago flags, cigarettes etc. – along with a air compressor painted like a Mario Mushroom. Personally, I enjoyed Dino talking about the R2D2-esque ‘Hop Cannon’ the most, pretty much exclusively because it gave me a chance to shout “Get to the hopper!” in my best Arnold impersonation.

Anyways, here’s some bullet points to sum up the rest of the tour

• Plans to add a rooftop beer garden, with awesome skyline views.
• Plans to add an indoor amphitheater.
• May or may not have Conan O’Brien imprisoned in the green room of said amphitheater.
• Plans to add a doggy day care (apparently the California location has more dogs than people on site).
• Dino’s personal plans to add an awesome bowling alley above the hallway leading to the tap room.
• Literal tons of more equipment for the brewery including new kegging lines and fermentation tanks and such.
• Various stories about the history of Lagunitas, including how they mostly make their pilsner to keep the founder’s wife happy (and the Germans who make all the brewing equipment).
• They use tons of hops. Both in the figurative and literal sense.
• Plans for Die Hard 6 to take place here (I may be making this one up).

Finally, I’ll give a shoutout to the brewery’s Monday and Tuesday activities. The tap room is open to the public Wednesday-Sunday, but on Monday and Tuesday they reserve the space for nonprofits. The nonprofits can host events there free of charge in addition to getting all the beer for free with 100% of revenue going to the charitable organization. Lagunitas also offers private tours and tastings as prize packages for charity auctions and raffles etc. So in other words, Lagunitas is a pretty sweet addition to the Chicago community. The contact info I got for the nonprofit I hope to hook up with this sweet deal is Jake.Durham@Lagunitas.com

The biggest and maybe only downside to this brewery is that it’s so new. Too new to have been on any of the best bar lists etc. that I used to make the Bar Bracket. Still, I definitely plan on coming back here for several return visits. I think it may soon top the list of best day drinking locations for Winter in Chicago.

As always, for a briefer review of Lagunitas, you can always check out the Chicago Bar Bracket Google+ Page.

After the brewery we went to a Meetup which promised a free psychic. Unfortunately we waited around for a couple hours and our reading was not in sight so we left. Fortunately I’m thinking about hiring this psychic company to come out for the Chicago Bar Bracket sometime, so keep your eyes on the @BestBarBracket twitter for that.

Until next time, go drink some Lagunitas.