I’m always happy to pop the cap on a Chicago area brewer for my first time. And I was rather surprised to see this one when I discovered it.
Energy City Brewing is a small brewery in downtown Batavia. It’s been known a wide palette of pale ales, many in the “milkshake category, or made with fruit, and for regular releases of barley wines and imperial stouts. It’s also know for being open only on the first Saturday of each month, which brings a line of beer fans to their door. But they’ve also been building a distribution footprint with the help of some contract brewing at Church Street. It’s the tap version I happened to find.
I’d stopped by Standard Market in Westmont Saturday after a morning of canvasing for the elections in the neighborhood across the street. It was just noon, and I thought maybe they might have one of the Founders “___ Breakfast Stouts” on tap. They did, but then I saw they had Energy City Milkshake Haida. I am way behind in getting to sample from all of this area’s brewers, so I got that instead. Luckily the server gave me a taster of Kentucky Breakfast Stout, too.
Milkshake Haida is a variant of their Hop Haida, a double New England IPA with Citra and Centennial hops. The Milkshake version adds lactose (unfermentable milk sugar) for sweetness, plus peach and Madagascar vanilla bean. This brew comes to my glass at 8.5% abv.
The draft is very cloudy in its tulip glass, with a thin ring of foam around the edge. The aroma offers more of a strong strong apricot flavor, or a peach with a bit of sourness.
The taste is very pleasant and a bit tart. I caught more orange and apricot before peaches, but in total, it’s a great fruity impression. A citra note that’s aided by the hop load. There’s just a bit of sourness, probably the contribution from the peaches. The hops are knocking back a lot of sweetness so that the tastes starts with the lactose, but then finishes nice and dry.
I’m pleased to have found this, and think it would make a great dessert beer.
And the KBS was its usual excellent self, too.
Filed under: Beer Review
Tags: Beer review, Energy City Brewing
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