The Race That Never Ends: Ale Syndicate

on site taps

I was recently selected as an ambassador of sorts for Ale Syndicate. They're a sponsor for my team, CRUSH Multisport and they reached out to see if any of us would like to serve samples of their beer at local stores and events. Of course I replied right away and asked to be included in the group. Last week I stopped by the brewery for a quick tour and taste test. The Richie Imperial Porter was my favorite but all of the beers were super smooth and drinkable. Even the IPA which I'm usually not a fan of. I signed up for my first shift as a sampler and stopped by a few days later to grab the beer. It was an interesting experience and I'm looking forward to doing more events as I learn more about their beer and the brewery. A little background on Ale Syndicate (from their website): We love two things: Good beer and the city of Chicago. We’ve spent years homebrewing–and we got good at it. We moved to Northern California and got the chance of a lifetime: to start our own brewery, making the only bottled craft beer in the city of Oakland. The beer took off. The stores kept selling out. But something was missing. We missed Chicago. Don’t get us wrong, California’s great. But we always had a Chicago flag hanging in the brewery. We missed just about everything about Chicago. The toughness. The skyline. The winter. Even rust - nothing rusts in California. We missed the spirit of audaciousness that is uniquely Chicago. A drive to do big things. We considered bringing our beer to Chicago. But the beer we were making was distinctively California. We felt Chicago deserved something bolder and stronger. So, we sold our homebrewing equipment and our stake in the brewery. We bought a pickup truck and jumped on Route 66 headed east. Since then, we’ve built a truly collaborative brewery that is more than the sum of its parts and far greater than we had ever planned. In March of 2013, working with partner breweries throughout the state, we started pouring on draft lines across Chicago. Our first brew, Richie Imperial Porter, went on to be named "Best Porter" by Chicago Magazine. Our hard work and tasty beers earned us the title of "2013 Best New Brewery in Illinois" from RateBeer. We released our first packaged beer in February of 2014, with six-packs of Municipal IPA, Sunday Session Hopped-Up Ale and Van de Velde Belgo-American Ale. We also did a 750mL release called Omega Midnight, a collab with Omega Yeast labs. In July 2014, we completed work on our own space and started brewing beers in Chicago's Logan Square neighborhood. We have begin moving beers produced at partner breweries into our own production facility. We hope to offer tours, events and, one day, a tap room at our location. Until then, we'll continue to turn out what we hope is some of the best local beer in Chicago. At Ale Syndicate Brewers, we believe in strong flavors, pure ingredients, and the power of coming together around something we love.
The Brewery