Goose Island Beer Company | Chicago, IL
Beer Trip: Goose Island Beer Company in Chicago, Illinois
Living in the Midwest, anyone who is familiar with beer knows of Goose Island and its signature goose tap handles located at bars everywhere. Naturally, when headed to Chicago for a wedding, we knew this would be a must visit. Goose Island has several brew pubs in town, but we wanted the full brewery experience and so chose the Fulton Street location.
The bar was full for trivia night during our visit!
Fun mural that welcomes you as you walk up!
The Brewery
The full brewery occupies several buildings down both sides of the street as you walk up, which makes it feel like an entire campus! Having visited many larger breweries of similar size to Goose Island, we were kind of surprised with how modest the tasting room was.
There are a few tables outside, but the majority of the space is indoors and features neat live-edge wooden tables along with a signature bar running nearly the length of the tasting area. The place has a very modern feel with a concrete floor, open structured ceiling, and a white subway tile backsplash, all while tying in Goose Island and Chicago themed graphics throughout.
Awesome live edge tables and Chicagoland map decor
The Beer
Goose Island had a board full of draft options featuring 16 different choices. Of course they had all of their signature options like the IPA, 312 Urban Wheat, and Sofie, but they also had tons of other beers as well that were more seasonal in nature. There were many styles available, ranging from multiple IPAs, fruit beers, lagers, and an Oktoberfest just in time for the fall season.
Already being familiar with their flagship options, we knew that Goose Island made good beer - but we were excited to try some of their other offerings. The Lost Palate was one of the new beers we tried, which was a great New England IPA with a bit of fruitiness and was rather smooth. Probably our top fruited beer of this visit was the Tepache Sunset Tequila Fruited Ale - the pineapple in this one was fantastic and created the perfect sweet flavor (we’d love to see this one distributed someday)! The other beer that really stood out to us was the Knead to Know, a Vienna Lager with a great bready taste. This was one of the better rye lagers we have ever had - well done, Goose Island!
Food, Merch, & More
We had really hoped to take a brewery tour while we were visiting, but unfortunately they canceled our tickets the week prior due to a block party that they were hosting that weekend. If we ever make our way back, the tour would definitely remain on our to-do list. With that said, the bartenders told us that their block party is a rather big deal - they literally block off the street and set up a full serving area outdoors. If you are local, it seemed like quite the event to attend.
We loved the mild cheese sampler board!
Goose Island doesn’t serve food here, but they did have a few snack options such as seasoned pretzels and some pretty legitimate meat/cheese sampler trays.
As one might expect from a larger brewery, they had all kinds of cool merchandise in a small section at the back of the room. You could get shirts, hats, glassware, signage, and to-go beers - we even lucked out and were able to purchase their last Goose tap handle on-hand!
To-go beer offerings
Fun beer bus outside ready for the next day’s block party
Proud owner of the last Goose Island tap handle in stock
Many t-shirts to choose from in their merch section!
