Chicago Beer Society

I'm not sure if I have written about my homebrew club, The Chicago Beer Society, on this blog before, but I thought I would for a number of reasons, which I'll enumerate on this handy-dandy bulleted list:

• Last month I went to our annual picnic for the first time, and it was awesome. There were about 15 local brewery beers on tap, great food including the competition entries fron salsa, chili, ribs, and dessert contests, and fun, interesting people. The music wasn't great, the DJ played a lot of really obscure stuff and only one (beer-drinking) polka, but from the emails that went around afterwards, maybe they'll improve on this next year.
• The monthly First Thursday is this Thursday, October 1st at Goose Island (As the name implies, it's always held on the first Thursday of the month.) I don't always attend, but I will be there this month. It's always a fun time, sometimes there are presentations, but mostly it's a big homebrew and craft beer tasting with a bunch of people who really appreciate beer.
• The annual Chicago Beer Society homebrew contest, Spooky Brew, will be held on October 31st. I'm entering a couple of my brews, including Your Mother's Mustache, Topfglück Alt, and possibly my Vienna Lager, Schwarzes Modell. They are accepting entries at the monthly First Thursday (sometimes called Thirst Fursday), which is why I'll definitely be attending.

Now I called it my homebrew club, but it's really much more than that. It's an organization of people who enjoy and appreciate well-made beer. Members are homebrewers, beer judges, professional brewers, beer industry insiders, beer authors, and just plain beer drinkers. If you're in Chicago and you fit any of these categories, it's definitely worth checking out.