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Few Spirits

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Yesterday Julie and I headed up to Evanston to visit FEW Spirits. FEW operates Evanston’s first and only distillery in a building in the alley off Chicago Avenue. The tour consists of a historic look at Evanston’s role in the Temperance movement, a causal tour of the distilling process and a generous tasting session. For $10 is was a great way to see a working craft distillery.

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FEW Spirits takes it’s name from Frances Elizabeth Willard, who was the president of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union for nearly two decades.

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FEW Spirits has some of the coolest looking bottles of any alcohol I’ve ever seen. Each type of spirit has a different label that represents an aspect of Chicago’s World’s Fair of 1893. The Bourbon bottle is best looking among the lot.

Open House Chicago 2012

Jewelers Building
This past weekend Julie and I took advantage of the Steelers not playing on Sunday and took in Open House Chicago 2012. We’re members of the Chicago Architecture Foundation which allowed us to skip all the lines at each building. Probably worth the membership price alone.

We started out Saturday morning with the Jewelers Building (then I went home to watch football while Julie hit a couple more buildings) then on Sunday we hit the following:

  1. Driehaus Museum
  2. Tribune Tower
  3. Michigan Avenue Bridge House
  4. Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies
  5. The Bergoff Restaurant
  6. Chicago City Hall
  7. Harry Caray’s Italian Steakhouse and Bar

Outside of Harry Caray’s and the Bergoff (which was closed) I’ve never been to any of these buildings.  The event basically allows you a self guided tour of the space or a limited tour of specific space. For example in City Hall, they took us through the Council’s Chambers and the at Tribune tower they took us through the Patterson and McCormick offices. It was a great way to see some of the more interesting buildings in Chicago.

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Driehaus Museum

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Tribune Tower

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Michigan Avenue Bridge House

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Spertus Institute for Jewish Studies

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The Bergoff Restaurant and Bar

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Chicago City Hall

Side Note:
* Every adventure needs a map.

View OHC2012 SUNDAY in a larger map

Inaugural Homebrew Harvest

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A couple weeks ago, Todd and I hosted the first annual Homebrew Harvest at his place. Todd, along with his friend Ryan, are also home brewers so we decided to host a party this fall with each of us supplying two different beers. The turnout was great and the beer was drank (which is always a good sign). Julie and I brewed a Blueberry Ale and a Stout. We’ve done the Blueberry before but this was our first stout and it was really good. I’m pretty sure it was gone by the time the party was over.

We kind went all out this year with signage, name tags and rules. We also tried to do some hand painted pint glasses but I wasn’t able to come up with a suitable paint in the week I had to prepare. Next year we’re expecting bigger and better things. We had a great turnout with well over 30 people, a 3 dogs and 2 babies.

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