• Cthulhu rises from the nightmare corpse-city of R’lyeh.

Maybe you missed both of Goose Island’s 25th-anniversary parties in May. Maybe you haven’t seen their excellent 25th-anniversary ESB, which was distributed so thoroughly that I was able to pick up a six-pack at the Dominick’s two blocks from my apartment. But anyway, yes, Goose Island turns 25 this year. And the Clybourn brewpub (which operates independently of AB-InBev) is getting in on the action by hand bottling a series of small-batch beers. Two months ago it released the first, a fine double APA called Silver Jubilee, and on Friday it bottled Cthulhu—an imperial oatmeal stout aged in an 18-year Elijah Craig bourbon barrel. Both beers use the same generic 25th-anniversary 750-milliliter bottles, but Silver Jubilee is capped with dark green wax, Cthulhu with copper.

Cthulhu goes on sale when the brewpub opens today at 11 AM; bottles are $20 each, with a limit of one per person. (Silver Jubilee is still available for $10.) Many thanks to manager Lisa Carlson and brewmaster Nick Barron for hooking me up with a complimentary bottle of Cthulhu on Saturday so I could review it in advance.

Philip Montoro

Philip Montoro has been an editorial employee of the Reader since 1996 and its music editor since 2004. Pieces he has edited have appeared in Da Capo’s annual Best Music Writing anthologies in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2010, and 2011. He shared two Lisagor Awards in 2019 for a story on gospel pioneer Lou Della Evans-Reid and another in 2021 for Leor Galil's history of Neo, and he’s also split three national awards from the Association of Alternative Newsmedia: one for multimedia in 2019 for his work on the TRiiBE collaboration the Block Beat, and two (in 2020 and 2022) for editing the music writing of Reader staffer Leor Galil. Philip has played scrap metal in Lozenge, drummed with the Disasters, the Afflictions, and Brilliant Pebbles, and sung for the White Outs. He wrote the column Beer and Metal from 2012 till 2015, and hopes to do so again one day. You can also follow him on Twitter.