Discover Top Posts Tagged with #hopleaf

Maplewood’s Son of Juice Hazy IPA on tap at Hopleaf in Chicago. A 3 of 4. Quite hazy in appearance and smells faintly of tropical fruit, but the body is a little bit of a letdown compared to many others in the style. Some juicy sweetness in the body but relatively flat on the palate and finishes with some citric bitterness.

#maplewood #son of juice #hazy ipa #india pale ale #hazy india pale ale #ipa #beer #hopleaf #chicago #3

#clangen #Hopleaf #warrior

Well greetings fiends and accomplices. Sorry, that was dumb. Ahhh well, whatcha gonna do? Am I right people? So, I’ll start this blog with some of my newest favorite recommendations. The night that Joe was announced our president elect, we were out prowling around Andersonville. We began the jubilliant celebration with many like minded revellers, at Simon’s. Now Simon’s seems to have converted an employee parking space or two into a beer garden. Simon’s is always interesting, I do believe. It is there we had a few Lagunitas products for a reasonable trade in currency. We then went to Hopleaf to seek our fortunes. There, we had a thimble of Half Acre’s Logue. It was quite pleasing, with notes of pine and cypress. It had a library esque vibe, if beer can actually have a vibe. I, for one, declare that it can. This made us look at the Half Acre curbside pickup options. As it turns out, they no longer had Logue available in 4 packs. However, my working brain cell kind of recalled that their newest release Burl, was pretty good last fall, or whenever we last tried it. we purchased it from my phone and hastily picked it up to bring back to our place of residence. It seemed necessary to try it in the car while I waited for my home fry to pick up our Chinese carry out. This was clearly the winner of the evening, and has now taken First Place as my favorite beer ever. Sigh, so that’s my advice to you. Go forth and get some of this.

#half acre #hopleaf #Simon’s #denisetalksbeer

sick sad weird world

#Chicago #Hopleaf #I hope this place survives

Hopleaf - Chicago, IL

Overall: A-

Bitterballen

5 Rabbit El Inigo Montoya 2016

O'Hanlon’s Thomas Hardy’s Ale 2006

I learned about Hopleaf shortly after turning 21. At the time, I was living half a block from Al’s Deli, a long-standing Evanston deli with a strong French influence that was a sleeper among the great Evanston restaurants. One of the owners of Al’s, a man who one of my friends dubbed the Cookie Wizard on accord of his almost inconceivably good cookies, recommended it to me while I was waiting for a sandwich. Shortly after that point, as a newly minted 21-year-old with a burgeoning interest in craft beef, I took the L down to Berwyn and walked to Hopleaf. At the time, I was entirely focused on Hopleaf’s legendary reputation as a beer bar and didn’t really know anything about the food. It was a memorable night - my first Zombie Dust, at the time almost impossible to find, and my first Belgian sour beer. As a college student, I stuck to the cheaper side of Hopleaf’s menu (sandwiches and mussels) and ordered a duck reuben. To this day, Hopleaf’s duck reuben remains one of the best sandwiches I’ve ever had. Savory, crispy, creamy, complex, alongside a mound of thin, salty fries that were the perfect accompaniment to beer.

Fast-forward a few months, and I was back with a friend who insisted on ordering a charcuterie board - a luxury that I wasn’t used to and word I’d never even heard before. Among the offerings was a duck liver mousse. I’m not entirely sure what possessed me to try it at the time, as I was still sticking more to pizza and burgers than organ mousses, but it ended up being a seminal food experience. I’m not sure I’d ever eaten anything before that was so intensely rich that even a moderate amount at once was unpleasantly overwhelming. No doubt an early seed in what has grown into an all-encompassing food obsession.

This particular trip to Hopleaf required much more restraint. A quick stop for a beer and a bite before heading to Alinea, I wanted to ensure that I didn’t spoil my appetite. I planned on sticking to bitterballen, which I hadn’t had in about nine months since I was in Amsterdam, and the a beer leftover from the previous weekend’s anti-super bowl stout event. I ended up ordering an El Inigo Montoya 2016 from 5 Rabbit Cerveceria. El Inigo Montoya (a Princess Bride reference) is a barrel-aged version of Yodo con Leche and I’d heard great things from friends who said it was one of the best beers at Crafts and Drafts beer festival in Milwaukee one of the past years. It was very much a pre-pasty adjunct stout - not overly thick, very roasty, but prominent coffee and dulche de leche flavors. Pleasant, but somewhat dated relative to the current style. About half way through the glass, the bitterballen came out. For the uninitiated, bitterballen is a very misleading name. There’s nothing really bitter about them - rather, their falafel-esque fried balls of minced-meat stew. Typically dipped in mustard, they fit squarely into the realm of American comfort food and I wouldn’t be surprised to see them gain more traction in the future, especially if someone comes up with a clever, more English-friendly name. The bitterballen were great - crispy on the outside, very creamy on the inside with each bite seaming to have one slightly larger chunk of meat for texture. Probably not the best pairing with a roasty stout, but delicious none-the-less.

While enjoying my order, I was flipping through the bottle menu and saw that they had bottles of Thomas Hardy’s Ale. Thomas Hardy’s is a quintessential English barleywine, originally brewed between the 60s and 90s before the original brewery went out of business, the brand was revived by O’Hanlon’s between 2003 and 2008 before that brewery also ceased production. Since 2014, Thomas Hardy’s has been made by Meantime Brewery. As such a classic yet obscure beer, I’ve been actively looking for Thomas Hardy’s Ale for the past several years, and despite being deeply involved in the craft beer community, I’d never come across it. Hopleaf had bottles of the 2006 for sale, which may seem like a long time to age beer, but barleywine ages very well, and Thomas Hardy’s Ale is frequency aged in excess of 20 years. This beer made for a better pairing with the bitterballen. It was completely still with a mouthfeel slightly thicker than medium-thickness. The flavor was heavily dark fruit and sherry with notes of tobacco. The dark fruit and sherry in particular are characteristic of any heavily aged beer, especially English beers. Overall, a delicious beer, though for the less ambitious, I’d recommend sticking with JW Lee’s Harvest Ale. It is almost identical, but can be found fairly easily on liquor store shelves, often in vintages going back to 2001.

#hopleaf #bitterballen #beerbar #bar #beer #chicago

Hell of a good lunch yesterday at #Hopleaf in the #Andersonville neighborhood of #Chicago! Montreal Style Beef Brisket on Rye, Belgian Frites, Roasted Brussel Sprouts, and really tasty Belgian Ale from Maredsous. Good stuff all around! . . #beer #craftbeer #food #nomnom #belgian #bars #beertography #glotography https://www.instagram.com/p/Bp9uZR2AT_I/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=ous7giph6sw4