I had dinner at Revolution Brewing here in Chicago a week or so ago for one of my buddy's birthdays. I'm not sure whether I'm just a sucker for good marketing, but I signed up for their mug club after the first time I ate dinner there and find myself going back on a pretty regular basis at this point.
In any case, on this occasion I had some of the standards I've grown to love and tried a few new things. Their Eugene (robust) Porter is a consistently quality beer. My wheelhouse tends to be IPAs and shockingly, I pass over their IPA to drink the Eugene instead. Their Institutionalized Barleywine was up on draft, so I opted for a small pour of it with dessert. It poured a deep, clear red and simply blew me away on the first sip. It was rich, complex and remarkably drinkable for a 9.5% beer.
But the real highlight of the evening was the Citra ice cream. I have no idea what process they used to extract the hop "essence" of citra and get it into that ice cream, but it worked. Phenomenally well. The mango, pineapple, tropical-fruity, slightly catty flavor came through and worked perfectly with the basic vanilla ice cream. I detected some bitterness, but it was largely the aroma / flavor you'd get from the volatile oils and not isomerized alpha acids that came through.
Being somewhat of a food nerd as well, I am absolutely going to try to recreate this so I can consume it in massive quantities.
If you live in Chicago, go try it. If you don't live in Chicago, go try it the next time you visit. And if you don't visit Chicago and you're enough of a beer nerd to be reading this, you should give it a second thought. The craft beer and food scene here is worth it.
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