If you don't know already, Illuminated Brew Works established a very exciting partnership with our friends at the Chiditarod this year, creating and providing a beer exclusively for the race. We will be pouring IBW's ChiditaRye French Rye Saison at the starting line, all the checkpoints and at the finish line this weekend.

When the Chiditarod organizers approached us about this, we knew immediately we wanted to be involved with this great charity. We also knew we wanted to execute this beverage expertly so we teamed up with our friends over at Une Annee brewery. Une Annee is, hands down, the most interesting brewery working in Chicago today. The beers they make are simple and clean deliveries of flavor and nuance that's bringing a much needed and new voice to the Chicago beer scene, raising the bar to a exciting new level. It was a real joy working with Dustin and Jerry on the ChiditaRye.

ChiditaRye is a pretty lovely, very dry French Rye Saison. The earthy yeast and spicy rye are delivered over a delicate touch of American hoppiness in a beer built to last longer than you on race day. It pairs quite well with sabotage.

If you want to try this great collaboration you need to act pretty fast. It will only be available at the starting line of the event and at the following checkpoints: Roots Pizza, 5 Star, Lotties, Bucktown Pub, Emporium Arcade and a few more to be announced.

Lukas Satas, who made that great wood-cut sign for us that you probably saw on shitbook is making our tap handles for the ChiditaRye as well. Make sure to ogle those pretty things from a near distance when you indulge your faces in our beer this weekend. Check back on our site at www.ibw-chicago.com for more locations.

Hey speaking of the website we’re in the middle of a huge overhaul of that bad boy. We’ve been working with Mark Ludeman to design something worthy. It’s a work in progress right now. Check it out and let us know what you think. www.ibw-chicago.com Mark is also working on a new logo for us, you probably saw at least the first pass of it up yonder at the top of this email.

We picked up our first 5BBL fermenter from PBST Tanks a few weeks ago. We’re all real proud of Vern, our little stainless beast. We’ve also put some more money we don’t have into a glycol chiller for the double-jacketing on the FV and as well as some cooperage. It appears that this thing is actually happening, good people of the internets. We are slowly becoming a brewery.

And, you know, one pretty vital part of becoming a brewery is the licensing needed to properly sell your wares. We’ve made some real progress on that as well, moving to what appears to be the third tear of the federal licensing. We are hoping – and think it’s realistic – that we’ll be able to self-distribute beer produced at our very own dungeon by July or August at the latest. Pretty exciting stuff.

Oh hey... one other thing about the Chiditarod... Apparently America’s favorite son, Jimmy Fallon, is in town this weekend. Liz from Chiditarod has started a social media campaign to get Jimmy to the Chiditarod. We think that ideas as good as putting wheels on peanut butter. All you have to do to help sway his interest is tweet him at @JimmyFallon and give him one good reason to come. What could be a better reason than for him to get mind-crawled by some fucking IBW beer?

Oh yeah, we just got a shitload of stickers in, both ChiditaRye stickers as well as IBW stickers. Find us and acquire them for your strange toys. We also have glasses and a very few shirts left. We’ll get those on the site soon or you can just email me at brian@ibw-chicago.com if you want.

Why don’t you like us on poopbook?

Lastly…. Our glasses are raised and our hearts are heavy in honor of the passing of Harold Ramis. He was truly one of the greats. But hey, in seemingly terrible times like these, we like to stare a little longer at the sun and vaguely remember what it says on the side of the Ba’hai temple in the northern suburbs: “I have sent death as a messenger of Joy to thee, wherefore dost though weep”. Wherefore indeed, hot shot.

Godspeed, friends. We will knock glasses again soon.