Moving to chicago (UoC area)

Been looking around, there's a few homebrew clubs in Chicago. Any feedback? Anyone been a member of more than one club?

Right now I'm looking at HOPS in Southside as they're the nearest.

Next up is CHAOS, which seems super together and helpful. Bonus is use their complete brew system, and leave one fermenter in a temp controlled room.

Chaos downside is that their annual fees range from $77 to almost $300...

pricelessbrewing said:

Been looking around, there's a few homebrew clubs in Chicago. Any feedback? Anyone been a member of more than one club?

Right now I'm looking at HOPS in Southside as they're the nearest.

Next up is CHAOS, which seems super together and helpful. Bonus is use their complete brew system, and leave one fermenter in a temp controlled room.

Chaos downside is that their annual fees range from $77 to almost $300...

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Hi Priceless. Sorry I don't check in on this section of HBT very often. I'm a member of two brew clubs, Brewers of South Suburbia (BOSS) and CHAOS. I joined CHAOS a year ago, when we moved from the burbs back into the city. I live just a little north of you, in Pilsen.

For me, I brew at CHAOS and its been outstanding. If push came to shove, I could find ways to brew at home now, but one reality of moving into the city for us is we lost a lot of space. For me to be able to go to the brewhouse, use the club's equipment and fermentation room, is well worth the $26/month it costs me. In addition, CHAOS has all the other stuff that regular clubs do - parties, meetings, events, educational events.

If you don't need or want the brewhouse, then I think you could look at any number of clubs. But for the brewing space, its really unique.

Appreciate the comment. I've joined chaos as a Web member to check it out, and have talked to Jeffw a little bit. I've been doing small batches on the stove top since I didn't bring a lot of my equipment with me.

I'd love to join chaos and attend the meetings as it seems like a good group but don't really need the brewing facility so the memberships a little steep for me. Got in touch with the president to maybe help establish a yeast bank and help build some stir plates but it's not really worth it if I have to pay for the friend membership just for that.

I'm a Facebook member of chicago homebrew group as well and they've been awesome as well but don't remember where they meet up. Hops of Southside has been hard to get onto their forum and it's kinda annoying.

CHBG currently meet at Maplewood Distillery in Logan Square. Its a bit of a trek from Hyde Park via CTA, but doable, and they're a great group. They also run group buys if you want to get cheap grain. There's one coming up this month.

Yup I'm planning on buying a sack of two row.

Hope you don't mind me bringing this thread back up. I also live in the Hyde Park area, and was wondering if you figured out what club(s) best suit you? I've been getting back into brewing over the last year or so, and have been looking into joining a local club. I've kind of lucked out in that my current place finally gave me space to brew again.

There seems to be three home brew clubs in the area

Chicago homebrew Group: Large group (chbg) , meets second Thursday of the month. Active Facebook group. Has group buys for grains occassionally. Tends to have some good discussions. Haven't made it out to a meeting yet as I've had to work each time.

CHAOS: cool club for what it offers. I'd like to join and go to some events and stuff but the price is not worth it for me. Visited the brewhouse, joined the Web forum, talked to some of the officers. Cool club, if the friend membership was cheaper I'd probably join as that. If you join you get access to the brewhouse and a bunch of equipment, you literally wouldn't need to buy anything if you didn't want to.

Hops! Homebrewers of south side. Don't have any information on them. Tried to join their website a couple times, and just got frustrated and gave up. Literally never had more of a difficult time joining a damn website.

If you join the forums on either chbg or chaos, I think you'll find either club to your liking.

ps have an informal yeast bank started, as do a couple other members of chbg so if you'd like to get some of the yeast I have available let me know, the link is on both forums. In chbg subforum for chbg, and yeast subforum for chaos.

Thanks for the info. I feel the same way about CHAOS. I don't know that I'd be able to get up there enough to really take advantage of a membership. Even with a car West Town is kind of a pain to get to. The "friend" level is probably most appropriate. The discounts would easily make it worth it. If you ever make it to a meeting, please let me know.

I tried joining the CHBG forum over the summer. I could never find the president's name, which you need to complete the registration. It's actually remarkably difficult to find anywhere. I just ended up guessing one of the admins of the facebook group and it finally went through. I'll have to check it out.

As an aside, I'm not sure if you're affiliated with the university at all, but my roommate and I got the physical sciences to sponsor a homebrewing competition this fall. It sounds like they want to try to do it a few times a year.

I'll keep the yeast bank in mind. I've been thinking about starting to bank some of mine, but have been brewing radically different styles which all require different specialized yeasts lately. I see you use the Brulosopher type method, which has always seemed the most attractive. I wanted to get into a more regular brewing pattern. I've been shooting for 1-2 times a month, and failing spectacularly.

Cool, I heard about the Homebrewing comp from my gf who's in a masters program , maph.
I know there are a couple other brewers in the area. u/Metic is a PhD in philosophy and he mentioned a brewer running one of the labs on campus. Looking forward to the comp.


I used to keep a couple strains before but now that I do small batches, saving some money on yeast became more important as spending $5-10 on yeast for each batch would easily triple my per batch cost. So now I have a bunch of east, several strains for each of the styles I typically brew.

pricelessbrewing said:

There seems to be three home brew clubs in the area

[snip]

Hops! Homebrewers of south side. Don't have any information on them. Tried to join their website a couple times, and just got frustrated and gave up. Literally never had more of a difficult time joining a damn website.

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Damn , I'm a member and it sucks to see that. Well, better late than never. We do have a very active member in the Hyde Park area, Jeff A. However, in case you never got in touch with anyone at HoPS, here is some info:

We meet every 3rd Tuesday of the month usually at the Bridgeport VFW Hall at 3202 S May St, Chicago, IL 60608. However, the March meeting on the 15th will be held at Moxee/Mad Mouse - 724 W Maxwell St. Our meetings include a formal homebrewers corner, plenty of socializing with fellow homebrewers, style of the month tasting, and pizza (although probably Moxee's delicious food this month).

We are having a homebrew competition, Bubbly Creek Barrel Brawl, coming up on 4/16. Visit the site for more info.

Annual events include the following:

• Oktoberfest
• Brewery bus tour (probably sold out at this point)
• Bomber party
• Bubbly Creek Barrel Brawl

We have a Facebook page and Yahoo Group as well as the a fore mentioned website. In addition, feel free to DM me and I will get you more info and our quarterly newsletter.

Thanks for reading,
Brian C

@HopEd if I'm free I'll see if I can make it to the meeting.