2017 Orange Sunshine Release, New Blood & More!

There's a lot going on in IBW's underground bunker these days and we're excited to share almost all of it with you!

First and foremost, we are incredibly happy to welcome two new members to our little cult:

Jim Myers joins Wally as our second full-time sales representative. He brings with him years of experience of sales in the healthcare industry and is looking to make a shift to a life more satisfying slinging beers with our fine-feathered crew at IBW.

Mellow Lucas comes at us as a pony-tailed swiss army knife for IBW. Our accounts in the south and west suburbs will get to know Lucas quite well over the coming months as he is handling our suburban roll-out. Lucas will be managing suburban accounts and will also be in the field shaking babies and giving you fine people of suburban Chicago the first tastes of our healthy elixirs. In his spare time, Lucas is lending his brains and brawn to the brewery as our first for reals brewing assistant.

Please raise a glass and join us as we welcome these two fine gentleman!

We accept them! We accept them! One of us! Gooble! Gobble!

Next Tuesday, April 18th we're throwing our annual Orange Sunshine release party! Join us at the Paramount Room where we'll be pouring Orange Sunshine, a very rare keg of Acupulco Gold (100% brett fermented tropical beauty) and, of course, Paramount Room's house beer made by us, Jinx Remover, a brett pale ale.

Music will be provided by the lovely and talented The Columbines as well as a few other guests to be announced.

We'll be giving away shirts, stickers & buttons and making big plans for interplanetary mind streaking. For more information, hit up the Facebook event page. Don't miss this!!!


And for all of you lovely alcoholics that like to play the at-home version of the IBW game, we are releasing Sex Cult - a 6% tart farmhouse made with Huell Melon & Mandarina Bavarian hops - and Augustus Glooped - a thunderous 9% stout made with cocoa nibs and alderwood smoked sea salts - to stores this Friday. You can find them at all your usual spots, pretty much anywhere that sells good local beer (Beer Temple, Grand & Western, Binny's, Bottles & Cans, Bitter Pops, etc... you get the idea).

Alright friends, that's it for now. Get your affairs in order, Craft Beer Week is just around the corner.

See you on Tuesday!

Nabikhopf Released Today!

Today we're releasing the second installation in our 4-part Hopped-Up Farmhouse series, the always troublesome Nabikhopf.

Our mind-controlled slaves will be delivering Nabikhopf to the following stores today:

  • Bitter Pops
  • Bottles & Cans
  • Madison Vine Wines
  • Pleasant House Bakery
  • Noble Grape
  • Beer Temple
  • Warehouse Liquors
  • Vas Foremost Liquors
  • Binnys - River North
  • Binnys Marcey
  • Malloys Finest Naperville
  • Binnys Naperville
  • Binnys Downers Grove
  • Binnys - Glen Ellyn
  • The Beer Cellar

As you can see, we are expanding our distribution range to the suburbs. If you have a store that you want us in, but don't see it on this list, please talk to your store's beer buyer and have them contact us. We'll get them beer quicker than a hot dog with no mustard. Or something like that.

Have fun at the Ween show, don't embarrass yourself, and remember, those voices in your head are not always wrong.

IBW/Haywood Tavern Collab Brunch This Saturday

This Saturday we're celebrating not one but TWO great collaborations between Illuminated Brew Work's Brian Buckman & Haywood Tavern's Chef Rodney Staton. And we're doing it with a side of canteloupe and calling it brunch.

This Saturday at the Haywood Tavern (2759 W Augusta) from 11am - 3pm we'll be tapping both of our collaborations with the Haywood - Barrel Aged Son of Toucan Sam (7.6% Belgian Bock Aged in Cabernet Barrels for 9 months) and Feefe in the Night (6% Schwartzbier) - along with Brainwash (7% Tart Farmhouse) and FNORD (7% WIT) and we'll be enjoying them alongside Haywood's killer brunch menu. This is a damn fine way to start your Saturday day drinking properly.

For more information on the Haywood Brunch, check out the Facebook page for it here.

Now, with your base coat properly applied, you can head down to either CBS' Day of the Living Ales or The Chicago Beer Festival. Unfortunately, we had a bit of an accident with our cask for DotLA and wound up power-washing our brewery with it, so we won't have our cask conditioned Fnord with Honey & Amarillo this year. Bummertown. But you should still go and support this awesome and unique event!

And tickets are still available for the Chicago Beer Festival at Chicago's historic Field Museum. This is always a great event and a fine way to end the first chapter of this weekend's bender. Do it!

Jinx Remover Released Today in Bottles!

When the Paramount Room came to ask us to create a beer that would pair perfectly with their wagyu beef burger last fall we came up with Jinx Remover. We knew that any beer to properly live with a burger made from wagyu beef needed to have a plenty of caramel to accentuate the crust, but it also needs some tools to cut through that butter-rich fat.

To achieve this we blended our 100% brett fermented Cult of Ed and a caramel rich pale ale and, once combined, we dry-hopped the combination with American hops.

Jinx Remover hits the nose with the funky hay and horse known well to lovers of the Brettanomyces family.  With both b. lambicus and b. claussenii used in the fermentation of Cult of Ed, you get plenty of funk up front. But the nose doesn't end there. We believe there's no better hop aromatic than Columbus' piney and floral bouquet to play along with the funk of brett, so we went against common knowledge and dry hopped with Columbus to great results. For a closing act, we've used one of our favorite yeasts to ferment the pale ale side of this blend - the same one we use in Brainwash - which creates a tart finish to clean up those fats and make way for another bite of Paramount Room's fantastic burger.

You can get Jinx Remover on draft with one of Paramount Room's wagyu burgers any night of the week for $16 only at the Paramount Room. That's a screaming deal and should not be missed.

But now - as of this very day - you can get your Jinx Remover, bottled conditioned in 750ml bottles at a few select stores here in Chicago. This is a very limited run that will be released slowly over the next few months. It's not to be missed, both because the beer is fantastic, but also the bottle artwork is spot-on.

Made as an homage to those magic candles you can find at your favorite bookstore or Botanica, Jinx Remover comes complete with mis-spellings, testimonials and even a ritual you can do to free yourself of the jinx that is hounding you.  

We've topped each bottle with a color wax that relates to how the beer was conditioned: red wax means the beer was conditioned on brettanomyces bruxellensis, black wax means it was conditioned on neutral yeast & silver wax means it was conditioned on brettanomyces lambicus.

Here's where you can get this first round of Jinx Remover:

  • Bitter Pops
  • West Lakeview Liquors
  • Vas Liquors
  • Beer Temple
  • Bottles & Cans
  • Puerto Rico Liquors
  • Iron & Glass (for you folks in the burbs)

HEY! This Friday February 24th we have our IBW Cultural Calibration evening for prospective cult members at Logan Arcade.  We'll have 3 beers on tap, including the SUPER RARE CULT OF SUNSHINE (that's our Orange Sunshine fermented on 100% brettanomyces). Arman and Brian will be playing some mind-controlling music and we will be scrubbing your hearts and minds with the greatest movie ever made (aside from "Inherent Vice") "Evil Speak"!!! There will also be a few shirts and posters that will be given away, or, if you want to support the cause, available for purchase.

Also, this weekend, we'll be pouring the last keg in existence of BLACK LODGE, our cherry and coffee stout made with coffee from our friends at Abacus Coffee Roasters. The two Brians - Brian Buckman from IBW & Brian Frain from Abacus - will be pouring this at the first session of Uppers & Downers at Thalia Hall.

Using our advanced skills of bi-locality, IBW will also be pouring beer at the Naperville Ale Festival on Saturday February 25th. Stop by and inquire how we achieve this and all of our feats of miraculatude.

Look folks, there has NEVER been a better time to be an alcoholic and there's NEVER been a smarter time than now to join a cult. At IBW we can feed both of those monkeys for you. So what are you waiting for? Give your life over to IBW!!!

One of us! One of us!