(WBBM NEWSRADIO) — Coasters fill a bulletin board on a wall of Sketchbook Brewing’s Skokie taproom as a nod to the company’s creative nature.
“We provide colored pencils for our guests. It's not for kids, necessarily. The kids do a lot of drawing too. But there's a lot of adults that come in and spend time enjoying the beer and drawing on a coaster.”
Founder and Owner Cesar Marron showed where they ferment beer in large metal tanks.
“We make 3 turns into each of these fermenters for beers that we do distribute as well as sell in the taproom.”
They’ve been brewing beer for ten years now with their most popular offering - a West Coast IPA but not in the style that used to dominate the industry.
“That's so bitter that it makes your face cringe, you know, we had a certain follower that was not really our customers, but it is essentially a West Coast. And I like to say it's the reason I wake up every morning because I know there's a lot of people that have not yet had Orange Door in the Chicagoland area, and one day they will.”
Cans of cream ale roll down the assembly line not far from where a bin of spent grain steams. Marron brings the barley and wheat byproduct biweekly to two local farms.
“They use it for composting basically, so they're very happy to receive this. It's got a lot of nutritional value and it is not trash. It does not belong in a landfill.
Along with IPAs, oatmeal stout and red rye ale, Sketchbook serves at its taprooms in Skokie and Evanston its Hop 2.0 that Marron says pairs well with a Chicago classic.
“If you hate Malört, you put that with the hop water, it makes the Malört taste much more palatable.”
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