Q. How does someone contact Metro?
A. We don't have a public phone number. Please feel free to email us instead.
Q. Does Metro have public hours?
A. Not really. If you'd like to visit us, please go to the Store page of our website for public tours. We hold about 4 per month, sometimes more.
Q. Do you have a pub or restaurant?
A. Nope. Our sole focus is on the production and packaging of Metro beer. Technically, this makes us a Production Brewery.
Q. Do you ever plan on opening a pub or restaurant?
A. No way. Better and braver people than us open pubs and restaurants. We honor their accomplishments by happily selling them our beer and visiting them ourselves whenever we can.
Q. Would you donate beer to my charitable event?
A. Maybe! We allocate a certain amount of beer each month for charitable donations. We also often donate free, personalized tours as auction items for fundraisers. Local schools, dog rescues, small theaters, gay marriage rights groups, organizations helping adults with disabilities, homebrewing clubs, and anything to do with bicycles take preference when we're deciding where our donations go each month. We sponsor one softball team - the Department of the Geophysical Sciences at U of C; go DoGS!
Groups we've had the pleasure of working with include: HOPS!, BOSS, The Neofuturists, The Drinking and Writing Brewery, Adventure Stage Chicago, Split Pillow, Chemically Imbalanced Comedy, The Anti-Cruelty Society, Finally Home Holistic Recovery and Adoption, Lincoln Park Community Shelter, Teen Living Programs, Local First Chicago, Greenheart, Families Together Cooperative Nursery School, The Arts of Life, Coprodeli USA, Edgebrook Elementary School, Center for Independent Futures, Andersonville Development Coporation, Hawthorne Scholastic Academy, Garfield Park Conservatory Alliance, NeighborSpace, Working Bikes, and Ladder Up Financial Liberation.
Q. Can I have a job?
A. If you knew how much we pay ourselves, you wouldn't ask.
Q. I think I might want to open a brewery too! Can I come pick your brain?
A. We sometimes talk to folks who are on the way to opening breweries; meaning, they have a business plan and are shopping for a space. If you're just kicking around the idea, we suggest checking out the Siebel Institute of Technology. If you attend the Start Your Own Brewery Course, you'll learn how we raised our funds to start Metropolitan Brewing. Get intimately acquainted with the Brewers Association and probrewer.com. And read books like The Brewers Association's Guide to Starting Your Own Brewery, Beer School by Steve Hindy & Tom Potter, Brewing Up a Business by Sam Calagione, and Growing a Business by Paul Hawken. There are more.
Q. What makes a lager a lager? (Say that one out loud... fun times!)
A. The two categories of beer are ales and lagers. With just a few exceptions, every beer style falls into one of those two categories.
Lagers are fermented at about 50 degrees while ales are fermented at about 70 degrees. This temperature difference is dictated by the yeast - truly, everything in a brewery is done for the sole purpose of making yeast happy. Lager yeast ferments best at cooler tempuratures. Another interesting difference between ale yeast and lager yeast is the fact that ale yeast collects at the top of the beer during fermentation while lager yeast collects at the bottom.
Lagers go through a cold conditioning phase called (wait for it) "lagering." The word "lager" is German for "to store." While ales are ready in about 2 weeks, lagers require about 2 additional weeks of cold storage.
Lagers tend to be dry and crisp while ales can be fruity and sweet. The flavors of lagers let the hops and malt shine through. Lagers can be light or dark in color and taste malty or hoppy, but they are almost always well-balanced.
Q. Why do you guys make lagers?
A. Doug studied in Munich as a part of earning his Diploma in Brewing Technology. While there, he tasted lagers as they are meant to be: fresh. This convinced him that what the Midwest needs is a craft lager brewery, churning out the goods to a local market.
Q. Are your beers vegan?
A. Damn right.
Q. Are you ever going to make an IPA?
A. No. That is all.
Q. Can I buy your beer at the brewery itself?
A. Sorry, but not right now. Doing retail directly to consumers requires a city license that we don't have. We might obtain this license in the future, but for now, our focus remains soley on the production and packaging of Metro beer.
Q. Where can I buy Metro beer?
A. We have swanky Google maps listing the on-premise (meaning you drink the beer there) and off-premise (meaning you take the beer away and drink it elsewhere) locations where you can buy our beer. Check'em out. For now, we only distribute our beer to the Chicagoland area; Cook and the 8 surrounding counties.
Q. My favorite bar doesn't have Metro beer! What do I do?!?
A. Tell them that you want Metro beer! No really, that's the best thing you can do because your favorite bar cares deeply about your opinions and wants to make you happy.
Q. Who distributes your beer?
A. We work with Windy City Distribution. If you own a bar, restaurant, liquor store, or grocery store and you want to sell our beer, talk to your Windy City rep. If you have yet to work with Windy City, we highly recommend them - click on the link above and give them a call. All of their reps are Certified Cicerones. They truly care about craft beer and have one of the most intelligent portfolios you'll ever taste.
Q. Will you ever sell your beer outside of Chicagoland?
A. Darn tootin'. We're working toward serving a larger market within Illinois as well as crossing the Cheddar Curtain in 2010. Our long-term goals include selling beer in Minnesota, Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan. We believe that if we were to sell our beer outside of the Midwest, we'd lose too much control over quality and product support, so we're not planning on doing so.