IBW's Beer Here Now is Here... Now!

Some day this fine city of ours will let us open the doors of our tap room to you lovely members of the public. Right now, it looks like that day is gonna be around the end of July or early August. You know what? We'll keep you plugged in as that time comes to be. In the meantime, do your kegels and shine your tap dancing shoes. We'll be open before you know it.

In the meantime, we've got some new beers for you... and an old favorite.

In honor of the incredible Baba Ram Dass, we made BEER HERE NOW. This 7.5% double dry hopped double IPA is loaded up with Idaho 7, Citra & Mosaic hops and is a down right lovely homage to a downright lovely human.

SLUSHY THING #2 is like SLUSHY THING #1 but even less like beer than that one! This time we used Sweet Cherry, Blood Orange and Meyers Lemon juice in addition to some lactose and left all the damn fruit in the beer so now you can tell your friends your drinking another Jamba Juice while covertly getting properly pie-eyed on carcinogen-rich booze! At no other time in history has your liver been at such odds with your tongue!

And then, for you old-school IPA drinking demons out there, we've got a new batch of DAGGER FLUTE hitting the mean streets again. This 6% delight is all citra, top to bottom.

All these beers are coming at you this week and next. So, hop on your Luck Dragon, get down to your favorite bottle shop and fill your Tauntaun skinned satchel full of these delightful poisons.

To celebrate the Dog Days of summer, we've got a crazy good sale going on at our TERRIBLY DESIGNED web store. From now until August 1st, anytime you spend $49 or more and put in the code SIRIUSISIMPORTANT, you get 30% off your order of anything in our store. So, you should do that.

Fruit Creep & Trust for Your Boom-Boom Party

Hiya!

We had our city inspection last week! There were a couple days of frantic, last-minute adjustments and not a ton of sleep, but we made it.

Everybody from the city was incredibly nice and supportive and seemed as excited about us getting this place open as all of you have been. Let's hope these are all good omens and tidings. It's been a very looooong slog to get this place up on line, so, some fresh, encouraging winds were very welcome.

We've been getting a lot of questions - in fact, a nice lady just popped her head in as I was writing this - about when we'll be open. Believe me, we want to be open as bad as you want us to be. It seems plausibly realistic that we could be open by mid-July if all goes modestly OK, which, you know, is all we can really hope for these days. Facebook or Instagram are your best options for immediate news on when we're opening. And, of course, this lovely newsletter as well.

I hear tell that we've got some kind of holiday this weekend. The one where every damn person in my neighborhood extends every inch of their will to give my dog a nervous breakdown. Well, I'm here to report: she remains steadfast. Alice has not yet given up all hope, though she just spends a lot more time following us around the house, shaking, drooling and panting like Nixon in front of the press. She'll be ok, though, I think, we just keep front-loading her with beer. So have at your dumb fireworks and, please, enjoy your weekend.

To assist in your incendiary indulgences, we've dropped a fresh batch of FRUIT CREEP and TRUSTlager out to our accounts. The city got theirs on Tuesday and, as always, we're doing western burbs today, north tomorrow and south burbs & Rockford on Friday. Utah is getting some Fruit Creep, too. You should see that towards the end of July.

Don't forget to go to our TERRIBLY DESIGNED web store and buy one of the sexy new shirts we had made recently. These are real nice looking shirts. Real nice. We'll also have these available at our tap room when it's open along with some other fun, limited swag. But, if you buy a shirt now, you can wear it to the opening and then everybody will know, beyond any shadow, that you are serious about your love of IBW. And what could be a more important way to express your individuality than that?

Tony's Humble Pie & Slushy Thing #1 Are In The World

Greetings, Freaks!

It's June and we're half-way through the double-booked 2020/2021 mega-year of brain-twisting highs, lows and WTFs. Can you believe it?

Don't worry, you don't have to believe it. In fact, we mostly recommend you don't believe it. Or, really anything for that matter. The only thing belief is good for is to sell you stuff and why in the world would we want to do that?

Oh wait. Scratch that. You should totally believe It. And by "It", we mean everything we're about to tell you right now. Because somehow we ended up in a position where we're supposed to convince you to buy stuff from us. Specifically, beer. And shirts. And lifestyle. And these little dioramas Jason has been making where he recreates great moments in baseball with taxidermied frogs in wigs. They're amazing and you can get them RIGHT NOW at our poorly designed web store for the low, low, LOW price of $156.99. While life on earth lasts.

At long last, we've got our City of Chicago Liquor Task Force appointment!! Next Thursday, the fine folks of the City of Chicago are going to stop by and cause us stress, anxiety and, more than likely, more money. But we've never been happier to have any of those unpleasant emotions and experiences thrown into our laps because it means we're dangerously close to opening our Mind Control Super Store and Tap Room Extraordinaire!!! Eat your vitamins, say your prayers and throw a little love and good luck our direction as we do this thing. Please.

It seems plausibly realistic that we could be open by mid-July if all goes modestly OK, which, you know, is all we can really hope for these days. Facebook or Instagram are your best options for immediate news on when we're opening. And, of course, this lovely newsletter as well. SO CLOSE!

The best way to bide your time while we make our brothers & sisters at City Hall happy is to stay a little bit drunk. Not black out, gross out your friends and family kind of drunk, but just a little swervy. It makes work better and your kids more tolerable. It whitens the teeth and makes for much stronger bones and thicker hair. And, no matter what any one tells you, it does make you funnier. And it makes our emails a lot more coherent.

We're biased here at the International IBW Space Station and Cult Member Only Hair Salon, but, we think the best way to stay that proper amount of gentlemanly drunk (or gentlewomanly (or gentle-whateverly)) is on our two most recent releases: Tony's Humble Pie and Slushy Thing #1.

You know Tony's Humble Pie, it's the same, delightful 8% blueberry pie beer you've been using to get through Thanksgiving for the past couple of years. But now you can get it in 16oz cans and, BELIEVE US, it's the best way to celebrate all the stuff you never got done while the world burned down around us.

Slushy Thing #1 is our first pass at the newest and dumbest fad in beers, slushy beers. Full of sweet cherry, key lime, cranberry, vanilla and lactose, this 6% sour ale tastes prettay similar to a Slurpee and will set your records straight if you ask it nicely. It pairs well with Andy Kapp Hot Fries and is the perfect foil for your next trip to the DMV. We've got two more variations on this style coming at you this summer, one with a seltzer base and like twice as much fruit as this one and another that... well, we'll wait to tell you when we get there.

What's most important about these Slushy Thing beers is that our wizard designer has made them in the image and likeness of the limited edition cups you used to get your slurpees in back in the 1970s. Now, we know that nobody born in the 1970s would even think about drinking a freaking beer that tastes like a slurpee, so settle down, we don't expect you to get the joke.

Oh! OH! We got more shirts in. Go to our TERRIBLY DESIGNED web store and buy all of them. It is the only way to clear your conscience. I swear.

One last bit of exciting AF news: THERE'S A BEER FESTIVAL THIS WEEKEND! I know, I know. Shhhhhh. We're all pretty excited. Come to the Morton Arboretum on June 19th, embarrass yourself and say hi to our newest employee Zac Rodgers. He's a real nice guy and new to Chicago. Please take some time to explain to him that nobody in Chicago actually eats Chicago-style pizza. He'll understand eventually.

Ok, everybody. Go buy some beer! And shirts! And dioramas!

IBW's Kick-A-Shmoo Coming at You

Hello Earth Friends!

Here's hoping May, with it's lovely showers and April flowers, has been good to you.

Us? We've been keeping it high and tight over here at the Norwood Park compound. Murals are getting painted, floors finished, banisters welded. The place is getting all around gussied up and she looks lovely!

A realistic open date seems to be around the middle of June at this point and we will certainly keep you plugged in. Facebook or Instagram are your best options for immediate news. And, of course, this lovely newsletter as well.

In the meantime, we've been doing what we do: making beer! This week sees the release of KICK-A-SHMOO JOY JUICE. This 8% Double Dry Hopped Double IPA is made with Galaxy, Rakau and Mandarina Bavarian hops and is our loving tribute to America's original State bird, the Shmoo.

As the wikipedia entry on the Shmoo states:

• They reproduce asexually and are incredibly prolific, multiplying faster than rabbits. They require no sustenance other than air.

• Shmoos are delicious to eat, and are eager to be eaten. If a human looks at one hungrily, it will happily immolate itself—either by jumping into a frying pan, after which they taste like chicken, or into a broiling pan, after which they taste like steak. When roasted they taste like pork, and when baked they taste like catfish. Raw, they taste like oysters on the half-shell.

• They also produce eggs (neatly packaged), milk (bottled, grade-A), and butter—no churning required. Their pelts make perfect bootleather or house timbers, depending on how thick one slices them.

• They have no bones, so there's absolutely no waste. Their eyes make the best suspender buttons, and their whiskers make perfect toothpicks. In short, they are simply the perfect ideal of a subsistence agricultural herd animal.

• Naturally gentle, they require minimal care and are ideal playmates for young children. The frolicking of shmoos is so entertaining (such as their staged "shmoosical comedies") that people no longer feel the need to watch television or go to the movies.

• Some of the more tasty varieties of shmoo are more difficult to catch, however. Usually shmoo hunters, now a sport in some parts of the country, use a paper bag, flashlight, and stick to capture their shmoos. At night the light stuns them, then they may be whacked in the head with the stick and put in the bag for frying up later on.

Now, everybody knows you can't believe everything you read on WikiPedia. That said, I think the Citizen Journalist who curated this data did a fine job of maintaining information integrity.

Next week sees this year's release of some people's favorite beer: GAY AGENDA. This 8% Double Dry Hopped Double IPA with Peaches was Chicago's first beer to honor all of friends and neighbors who identify as LGTQ+ and is the first and only beer in the torrid history of humanity to feature local Living Legend and crochet artist Jeff Fox and his laser-shooting dogs Winston & Bennie flying across the sky. Troof.

And, if that isn't enough, 10% of all the profits from GAY AGENDA go to support the fantastic folks over at Howard Brown Health who have been eliminating the disparities in healthcare experienced by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people through research, education and services since 1974. They're doing amazing work and you can support them and their great work with this beer.

I've been slowly but surely updating the website after many moons of neglect. Be patient, it's getting better. I swear. I'm adding current offerings on the home page and building out more detailed (and up-to-date) beer info. Amongst other goodies. Have a look when you can. If you have suggestions, send them to info@ibw-chicago.com.

Ok, everybody. Go buy some beer!

IBW's Brony Is On the Town!

It's time once again for IBW's BRONY to hit the mean streets of the western world!

This 8% Double Dry Hopped Double IPA is a creamy delight made extra purty with Rakau & Motuekahops. If you haven't sunk your face into BRONY yet, you should. If you already have, then you know. Go on now, get it!

Now - WOW! - what a world we live in! It's such a wild, wooly, seething, bubbling and beautiful mess! We even have grown adults who get their kicks out of dressing up in furry outfits and celebrating their Joy & Madness through the fluffy and funny paradigm of "My Little Pony". I don't want to live in a world without these people or the freedom to dig into whatever nuttiness I might find to express Love in whatever way I feel it. Long Live the Brony! Long Live Light, Life & Liberty!

We've got so much great beer out in the world right now:

• Brony, 8% DDH DIPA

• Orange Sunshine, 5.4% Citrus Saison

• The Ballad of the Peanut Butter Pony, 13% Stout w/ Cocoa & Non-Allergenic Peanut Butter

• Amber Tamblyn's Dad, 6% Sour Ale with Passion Fruit

• Raimboberry Pie, 8% White Stout with Raspberries, Blueberries & Boysenberry

• If You're Not Into Yoga, 11% White Stout with Coconut & Pineapple

This is truly a Golden Age for IBW beer! Get it while you can.

I've been slowly but surely updating the website after many moons of neglect. Be patient, it's getting better. I swear. I'm adding current offerings on the home page and building out more detailed (and up-to-date) beer info. Amongst other goodies. Have a look when you can. If you have suggestions, send them to info@ibw-chicago.com.

New swag is coming soon! The tap room is almost open! Life is complicated as HELL... but good!

This summer is gonna be bonkers, folks. Start doing your drinking exercises now. Ok, everybody. Go buy some beer!