Gapers Block Microbrewery Crawl

2013 was the year of over-​commitment; a veritable perfect storm of events for me and my partner-​in-​crime.
When the 3^rd Annual Gapers Block Microbrewery Crawl fell on my birthday I was both excited and irritated. We, unsurprisingly, had another commitment on that day and it wasn’t birthday-​related. I bought two tickets anyway, deciding that at least one thing on my birthday would be my choosing. I’m glad I did.
I’m an avid reader of Gapers Block, but had never heard of the crawl. For our $ 45 tickets, we visited four local breweries complete with a tour and tastings. School buses were also provided to shuttle us between venues.
We started out at Lake Effect Brewing, a brewery so small, I think it could fit inside of my apartment. There’s not really any signage making it hard to find behind the Chicago Costume warehouse. We split into two groups because not all of us could tour the place at the same time. It was really neat to see such a small operation and how they make everything work. The 5411 empanada truck was also there to feed us before we continued on with our afternoon of drinking. While tiny, they’ve got big plans and one includes a small tap room adjacent to their current space.
Our next stops were at increasingly larger breweries — Finch’s and Metropolitan. I was aware of each brewery, but not terribly familiar with either one. We had enough people to fill two school buses, but the tours still felt pretty intimate; we were able to ask lots of questions at each place. FYI — the kegbots at Metropolitan are fully functional.
The tour finished at Dryhop, the only brewpub on the crawl. Dryhop, like Lake Effect, has a compact brewing operation, so we split into small groups. Our guide, recognizing we had heard how beer is made three times prior, glossed over the process and instead highlighted what makes a brewpub that only distributes on premise different from a microbrewery.
All in all, it was a fun way to spend my birthday, drink more than a little good beer, and do some fun stuff in our fair city I may never have discovered on my own. The fellow crawlers we met along the way were very cool, as were our Gapers Block ambassadors. From what I gathered, the previous year’s crawl was fairly similar to this year’s; personally, I’d like to see them broaden the crawl and create a southside version too.