So we have touched on Half Acre and Two Brothers here at I Drink Good Beer but there is just one Chicago brewery left that we would like to highlight before the year is out and that brewery is Finch’s Beer Company. Finch’s Beer Company was started for the sheer fact that Owner Ben Finch wanted to supply the drinkers of Chicago with easy drinking brews, gateway beers if you will. What originally started as a draft distribution in 2011 is now producing kegs and 16oz cans of their fantastic beers. I was recently at a distributor out in Pennsylvania and came across a sample case of Golden Wing, Threadless and Cut Throat. Seeing countless posts on Instagram and numerous check ins on untappd it was a obvious I to grab this for some trade bait and fresh content.
Lets kick things off with Threadless IPA. A collaboration beer made with the folks over at Threadless. Threadless is an online community of artists and an e-commerce website based out of Chicago, you can read more about them here. It is a very cool company started with only a small amount of capital and giving the independent artists of the world a place to hang and show their work. It is awesome that Finch’s teamed up with them and I am honored to have tried this beer.
Cut Throat Pale Ale is an awesome pale. Coming in at 5.6% puts it in the realm of a Sierra Nevada but in my opinion, Cut Throat has way more flavor to it. I wasn’t getting a whole lot of the orange peel that the beer was brewed with but it did not matter. It was drinkable with the right amount of hops and a solid malt sweetness to make it well rounded and although the abv is not sessionable the beer sure is.
Golden Wing was probably my favorite out of the whole bunch. It was actually this very can that inspired this whole photo shoot. For a blonde ale, I found Golden Wing to be super hoppy for the style and if I didn’t see the can I may have assumed it was just another pale ale. Definitely a solid beer and probably one of the first things I will hunt down on draft when I hit Chicago.
Finch’s Beer Company is doing a great job with their beer and it is great to see breweries like them making a name for themselves and supplying the Windy City with some of the best brew out there. We would love to pay them a visit when we ever find ourselves in Chicago and we most certainly looking forward to trying some of their other beers, especially Fascist Pig. Cheers to Finch’s and Happy New Year.
Finch’s Beer Company
-Brian