DOG COSTUME PHOTO CONTEST & HALLOWEEN @ IBW LODGE #1

6 more days til Halloween, Halloween, Halloween! 6 more days till Halloween.... but 5 days until Halloween at Chicago's home to SENSITIVE AND INTELLIGENT BATHROOMS... IBW Lodge #1.

Over here at IBW Lodge #1 we get extra squirrely around this time of year. Truth is, we're not even sure if we aren't some kind of trans-dimensional goblins who have been brainwashed to believe we're humans running a brewery and Lodge (ok, Cult) just so we're less conflicted in completing our mission of making the world less of a soulless cess pool of mean-spirited cranks. Frankly, that's real hard work fulfilling that mission and, doing it while you know in your heart that you're a goblin from another dimension, only complicates things.

But, I've said too much already.

THIS THURSDAY WE ARE HAVING A DOG COSTUME PHOTO COMPETITION. Bring your dog in in a costume and you get a $3 can of INNER SPACE. We'll take your photo and post them all on our Instagram account on Friday. Whoever gets voted as the best dog costume by our instagram followers wins a $50 IBW GIFT CARD.

We are TOTALLY biting off of our friends at Lucky Dorr who have done this for 3 years. IN FACT, they are doing it on Thursday as well. So, you could go to Lucky Dorr at 6pm for their event and then bring your dog still dolled up to our place (we're about a 10 minute drive from Lucky Dorr) and cook two nerds with one drone. Think about it, this is your only life, why are you going to leave opportunities like this on the table? Why???

While you're here you could pick up a pumpkin to paint for our Pumpkin Painting Contest on Saturday. Or drop off a pumpkin you already painted. Or do nothing, but drink. Any way you slice it, you should definitely make plans to be here on Saturday for our Halloween party.

Why, you ask? Because we're going to knock it out of the ghoulish park on Saturday October 30th with a full day's run of events, everything from the very wholesome, to the truly dark and depraved. Something for everybody, really.

Here's the Facebook event page for people who still do that Facebook thing: https://www.facebook.com/events/172486615076878

Read the flyer, it gives you all the details. Wear a costume. Ok?

We'll have prizes of t-shirts, IBW gift cards and some other seasonally appropriate & scary stuff to give away. There will be something spooky on the tube. Or maybe we'll just turn that damn thing off? Hard to say.

Celebrate Halloween @ IBW Lodge #1 on Saturday October 30th!

Greetings My Ghoulish Gang of Gangrenous Green Garden Gremlins & Circus Geeks!

OHMERGERD! OHMERGERD! OMERGERD! I can hardly contain myself. 10 more days to Halloween, Halloween, Halloween! 10 more days to Halloween.... but 9 days until Halloween at Chicago's home to TRANSFORMATIVE BATHROOMS... IBW Lodge #1.

Yeah, we're going to knock it out of the ghoulish park on Saturday October 30th with a full day's run of events, everything from the very wholesome, to the truly dark and depraved. Something for everybody, really.

Here's the Facebook event page for people who still do that Facebook thing: https://www.facebook.com/events/172486615076878

Read the flyer, it gives you all the details. Wear a costume. Ok?

We'll have prizes of t-shirts, IBW gift cards and some other seasonally appropriate & scary stuff to give away. There will be something spooky on the tube. Or maybe we'll just turn that damn thing off? Hard to say.

You should totally do the Pumpkin Painting Contest. Just bring in your painted pumpkin anytime between now and when we announce the winner at 5pm on October 30th and leave your name with a bar tender. Who knows, you might be the only person to enter the contest and then, even your crummy pumpkin could take home a medal. Nothing to sneeze at there, bra.

So, long story short, get your fargin iceholes over to IBW Lodge #1 NEXT SATURDAY OCTOBER 30TH and squeeze a little Joy out of your weekend before the whole world is consumed in annoying, loud mouthed, flames. Let's be fair, time is running out.

But, hey, we honor all types over here at IBW. We love all you creepy, carny folks who doll up like Sexy Leatherface or Beetlejuice or even like some low-rent pirate even when it's not Halloween. But we also hold space for you anti-social shut-ins who fear our plague-infested planet with the kind of common sense not typically found in this here our modern world. And for you, our hermetic friends, we make CANNED BEVERAGES chock full of hops and booze. And, this week, we dropped a few newbies just for you.

We've got a fresh batch of FRUIT CREEP that is tasting rrrrrrreeally freaking good. We took a gamble and fermented this batch with Omega Yeast's COSMIC PUNCH yeast and, damn son, it's the best this has been in a long minute. Get it now, get it fresh, yada yada because everybody knows you know soooo much about beer that you don't buy any thing that's older than 3 weeks. We get it, Captain Cicerone. So go on out and get it now, k? K. We'll keep your seat warm on Untappd.

Oh, and holy macarooni, sometimes LIFE IS FLIPPING GREAT. Like when the GREATEST RECORD LABEL IN THE HISTORY OF PATROLEUM PRODUCTS reaches out to you to do a collaboration with THE GREATEST GUITARIST IN THE HISTORY OF PSYCHEDELIC MUSIC (Ok, Ben might take umbrage at that last statement, but he's really freaking good and, by my mind, one of the better and certainly most interesting folks plucking a small lyre these days).

Yeah, the wonderful and mercurial folks over at Drag City Records hit us up about doing a collaboration to help promote Ben Chasny's (Six Organs of Admittance, Rangda, Comets on Fire, et al.) new album INTIMATE LANDSCAPE. Of course, we agreed and we got to work chatting with Ben about what he likes and what we like and what we came up with was the first Belgian Dubbel we've ever done. Sure, we've poked around that style in the past (see Brown Reason to Live), but this is our first real approximation of that style. And it's delicious. We used that incredible Rochefort yeast strain which just does mysteries with the grain bill and keeps improving over time.

Seriously, pick up this beer now. And eat it with some kind of slow cooked autumnal meal or something with mushrooms or some sausages or, hell, if you hate murder, it's even great with raisiny cous cous or other grain and fruit/nut delights. And listen to Ben's album - or any of his incredible albums ("Burning the Threshold" is a personal favorite) - while you stuff your face and bend your mind.

The album "Intimate Landscape" drops on November 5th and you'll be able to get a 4-pack and LP specially priced package only at the IBW Lodge #1 when that happens. But get the beer now and prepare thyself for beauty. You can read more about this collaboration here.

We also packaged the first batch of MUGWUMP BRUNCH that we've done in like 2 or 3 years. This Sour Double Dry Hopped Double IPA with Cara Cara Orange Juice tastes just like a Mimosa and pairs well with black caterpillar meat. That's a William S. Burroughs reference for you illiterate folks out there.

We've also got a fresh batch of t-shirts in. So, you folks who are waiting on Mushroom shirts will finally get yours, I'll ship them out this week. The rest of you nice people who are looking for a good shirt to wear under your sweater or hoodie or flak jacket, you're in business. Go hit our crummy web storefront and buy some right now!

Meet the IBW x Ben Chasny Collaboration, "INTIMATE LANDSCAPE"

Today we’re dropping the first beer we’ve made with an honest-to-Datsun Belgian yeast strain that we’ve made in several years. And we couldn’t be more thrilled about it.

Belgian style beers - with their devil-to-the-winds attitudes toward Germany’s rheinetsgebot laws and wily sense of creativity and curiosity, combined with a pedigree of some of the most complex and beautiful yeast strains on this planet - have always been a prime inspiration for us here at IBW.

Belgium is the birthplace of Surrealism and the battle ground for Europe’s unending cultural squabbles over these past many centuries, so, it’s no wonder that those wonderful people have developed a very sane and healthy approach to the sensual delights of food and drink and living along the way.

It’s with no irony or exaggeration when I say that the reason I started brewing was out of homage and pursuit of cracking the code on Orval and Danny Prignon’s ‘Fantome’ label. So, now that we’ve got our little beer hovel, IBW Lodge #1, it’s one of my great pleasures to start playing with these invisible friends once again. I’m sure you’ll dig the results.

When Chicago’s Drag City Records approached us to collaborate on a beer for Ben Chasny’s latest release, “Intimate Landscape”, we wanted to make something complex & subtle, big, but yielding; like Ben’s music.

Special B’s caramel pitch along with that relentless kaleidoscope of fruit and spice from the Rochefort yeast seemed the perfect answer. Both of these ingredients have large personalities, though, when enjoyed with food, they somehow mute, yield and change in response to their sensory collaborators. This is what Ben always seemed to be doing when communicating his ideas in sound: reflecting the world around him with a vision and curiosity that shined through the listening experience, inhabiting his audience in landscapes - sometimes terrifying, often sublime. Ben paints gothic, stained-glass cathedrals with sound. And burns them with concave glass for kicks.

You can buy 4-packs of Intimate Landscape at IBW Lodge #1 for $9 starting today, Monday October 18th. You’ll also be able to get Intimate Landscape at any decent bottle shop in and around Chicago starting this Wednesday.

And, starting tomorrow, you can buy Ben’s LP, “Intimate Landscape” + a 4-pack of Intimate Landscape at IBW Lodge #1 for the low, low, low American price of $21 (while supplies last, et al.). You will also receive a free high-five in honor of your impeccable taste with every purchase.

MOCTOBERFEST THIS SATURDAY @ IBW Lodge #1!

Greetings Earth Worms!

We are officially into those deeper throws of autumn here in our lovely yet complicated opt-in prison complex some still call Chicago. Leaves are taking forms of ember and our winds are doing their damn skipppiest to chill down to a reasonable approximation of sweater weather. Neighborhoods are slowly transforming into ghoul-speckled graveyards and some folks are even putting up Halloween decorations.

We here at IBW Lodge #1 are playing our roles to character as well, careening across time loops like little stuffed piggies with spiral tails on roller skates. And, in service of that salty pretzel of aphorism and image, we will be hosting our FIRST EVER IBW MOCTOBERFEST EXTRAVAGANZA THING this Satyrday here in our humble beer hovel, IBW Lodge #1.

Here's a link to our event page on that digital cesspool Facebook. You can also find details on our LOW-RENT WEBSITE in what is called an 'events' section.

This will be what anthropologists call "fun". We'll have liters of our marzen, "MOCK-TURTLENECKS", to pour into your mouths in exchange for USD. We'll also have FREE! FREE! FREE! brats and pretzels. That's right! No bio-survival tokens will be required for food! Holy shit! We will also have VOCODER KARAOKE so you can become that kraut-rock star you've always daydreamed of. Oh, and if you wear a mock-turtleneck, I'll buy your first liter.

So, long story short, get your fargin iceholes over to IBW Lodge #1 THIS SATURDAY and squeeze a little Joy out of your weekend.

But, hey, we honor all types over here at IBW. We love all you party people who show up to our events dressed like over-stuffed 1990's boy band rejects, but we also hold space for you anti-social shut-ins who fear our plague-infested planet with a kind of common sense not really found in this here our modem world. And for you, our hermetic friends, we make CANNED BEVERAGES chock full of hops and booze. And, this week, we dropped a couple newbies just for you.

Back for no good reason other than we LOVE drinking this beauty, we've got STUPID FOR JUPITER. This 6% IPA is loaded up with Mosaic and Hallertau Blanc hops making a perfect crusher that is easy on your nose, friendly to your mouth, and adversarial to your sobriety. Get this baby, baby. Get it at our IBW Lodge #1 OR get it at any self-respecting bottle shop. You can be stupid - god knows plenty of people are - but, if you're going to be stupid, please, be STUPID FOR JUPITER.

And because there is no light without shadow, no yahweh without Lucifer, no yucky without cookie and no Penn without Teller, we need to balance our Jupiterian joy with some good old Sumerian demon doom (lest our compliance team will get up our craw). In service of balance and delicious beers we are, once again, offering you PAZUZU'S PEDALS our 6% porter made just in time for you to enjoy this black beauty next to fire whilst our most wonderful time of year creeps in all about you. Get possessed by this chocolate and coffee lovely and get yourself loose, loose, loose so you can properly throw back your head and howl at our moon.

We still have some limited edition prints by Jason Pritchett (the talented and crispy angel who descended from Southern Illinois to paint our Lodge mural) from our lovely evening with Desert Oracle last week. Screwball Press screened these beauties and you can buy one at our poor excuse for a website while supplies last. And, if you haven't listened to the show yet, Ken posted "Harvest of Souls" last Friday and it sounds fantastic. Check out the most recent episode of Desert Oracle, "Harvest of Souls", recorded right here at IBW Lodge #1, by following this link.

Desert Oracle @ IBW & Happy Lobster Food Truck!

Greetings Space Family!

Who said Apocalypse can't be fun? I mean even good old St. John of Patmos made these wild and wooly End Times sound like John Carptenter's once and final masterpiece. You know that one where he teams up with effects legend Ray Harryhausen and casts a digitally reconstructed Rowdy Roddy Piper as a sword-spitting, flying-horse riding Jesus?

(You know - as an aside - a trick to riding roller coasters is knowing when to let go. Artful timing on when to wave your fingers airside and let your tongue slap against your skull's back like a lovable Labrador out for a Sunday spin in a green family truckster can be a difference between a harrowing barf bus and an extended glimpse into life and sublimity.)

And, as far as Apocalypse weekends go, have we got a doozy in store for you here at everyone's favorite IBW Lodge #1!!!

Saturday, we open at 4:30pm. That gives you 30 minutes to order a beer and secure a seat before HAPPY LOBSTER FOOD TRUCK rolls up to deliver that delicious, hot & buttered lobster roll you were smart enough to PRE-ORDER at this here link. That's right, HAPPY LOBSTER FOOD TRUCK will be here Saturday, September 25th from 5-8pm. We're doing this, once again, with our friends at WineStyles Norwood Park. There will be outdoor seating and we'll have some plastic cups for you if you want to enjoy your lobster outside. Or, if you want to bring your wine glasses inside IBW Lodge #1 that's fine, too. We're just happy to have you all here forgetting about life for a minute, being funny and fun and letting your tongue slap at ye olde backside of your skulls. Lord knows, we all need it. Pre-order here.

Sunday, we're closing to public at 5pm because this SINGLE GREATEST THING IN ALL OF HISTORY is happening here at IBW Lodge #1. Your esteemed and gregarious host of DESERT ORACLE RADIO, Brother Kenneth Layne Esq., will be here at our humble IBW LODGE #1 to spread the Good News about these Bad, Bad Times... LIVE and in person. Tickets are very limited and almost gone, so, act NOW and FAST as they say.

If you aren't familiar with Desert Oracle Radio, it's about time you edumacate thyself! Desert Oracle Radio is a weekly 30-minute radio show broadcast every Friday night at midnight from Joshua Tree's 107.7 KCDZ Radio. I've described it as if William S. Burroughs and Joe Frank had a baby and that baby made a radio show about all that odd and wonderful flotsam & jetsam in our Mojave Desert. I've also heard him described as Garrison Keillor at World's End. You pick your analogy at will.

A lot of people come to IBW and think, for some reason, that we're running a Cult of some kind here. Maybe it's all these smiling faces floating about unbouyed from earthly fears. Maybe it's our general aire of Devil-May-Care as we wash our bodies and brains in lovingly crafted and delicious poisons. Or maybe it's that our website describes us as a Cult. I don't know, your guess is as good as mind.

But, I'll tell you. That whole intellectual sheep mutilation that is this 'Q' phenomenon, happening to some otherwise nice folks in our country as of late, has really given "cults" a bad name. Which is, you know, really saying something! I mean, for a population whose only real knowledge of cults includes Charlie Manson's Family, Heaven's Gate & Nexium, for somebody to come along and make that word "Cult" sound even more dubious... now that takes something. So congratulations for that. I guess?

So yeah, we're definitely not a Cult. Not like that. And definitely not like THAT.

BUT.... if we were a Cult, we'd certainly need some kind of prophet to steer our listless masses. You know, a door-to-door salesman of hard-won wisdom, gilt with solid one-liners and a general sense of purposelessness and malaise that is somehow embodied with SPIRIT and loosely knit across a bed of found sounds and etheric, atmospheric music. And he'd probably come from a desert of some kind. Most likely from our country's Wild West.

But, we're not a Cult. So we don't have anything like that. Instead, we've got Ken Layne of DESERT ORACLE RADIO and, by all my estimations, this young fella will do. Just fine.

So, why don't you JOIN US? This Sunday. Gooble Gobble, Gooble Gobble.

We'll have limited edition prints by Jason Pritchett (the talented and crispy angel who descended from Southern Illinois to paint our Lodge mural) of that image at the top fo this email, too. Screwball Press is screening them as I write this. You can buy one at our IBW LODGE #1 on Sunday and, who knows, if you're a gentleperson and polite about it, Brother Ken may even sign it for you. Maybe.

If you're into maps, here's a map that shows you where the IBW Lodge #1 is. I would recommend you use this in conjunction with a bike or feet. If you must drive to come see us, please don't park in WineStyle's parking lot. There's a ton of street parking all around us. Indulge in our glut of street parking at will.

6186 N Northwest Hwy, Chicago, IL 60631

Saturday, 4:30 - 11pm
Sunday, Noon - 5pm
Monday, 6pm - 9pm
Tuesday, 4pm - 10pm
Wednesday, 4pm - 10pm
Thursday, 4pm- 10pm
Friday, 4pm - 11pm