The annual Glunz Global Beer Expo took place in Rosemont this week, and on the train ride out there my friend and I speculated about who else in our car was headed to the tasting. All the guys with facial hair, we guessed. Sure enough, they all got off the train at the Rosemont stop. As we exited, I heard one person say, “This is the best day of the year.”
The Expo is a trade event attended mostly by beer buyers for local stores, bars, and restaurants. It’s a little different from most of the beer tastings that are open to the public, where brewers tend to bring their rarest and most unusual offerings; here, the beers are mostly stuff that’s readily available. What makes it interesting are the new breweries: some still in the process of opening, some already established but new to Chicago. After the jump, the best of what I tried.