Chicagoist's "Beer of the Week": Goose Island's Mild Winter Ale

By Chuck Sudo in Food on Dec 10, 2008 8:00PM

Goose Island's been working a lot with rye malt recently. Their Juliet ale, brewed with rye, marionberries and aged for six months in Robert Kraig cabernet casks, has been a popular selection among those Chicagoist staffers who've tasted it (Jacy and myself). This week, we're featuring another rye-based Goose Island offering that's been flying off shelves.

"Mild Winter" can be read as wishful thinking for the type of winter we'd like to have. It's also Goose Island's latest brew. It's a surprisingly malt-forward and spicy ale, even for one with rye as the primary malt, so we asked Goose Island's Mary Pellittieri for more info about the ingredients. Pellittieri didn't disappoint. Mild Winter is a tawny red ale uses roasted barley and dark chocolate malts, in addition to rye, and hopped using Pilgrim, Willamette and Tettnang. Pellittieri said that Mild Winter was designed as an English mild ale, but with a high specific gravity and 4.4 percent ABV content, it doesn't finish like one.

Goose Island has been hosting pub crawls in conjunction with Mild Winter's release. The next one is Saturday in the South Loop form 2-9:30 p.m. The crawl starts at Reggie's Music Joint (2105 S. State St.) and moves to Krolls Bar and Grill (1736 S. Michigan Ave.), Weathermark Tavern (1503 S. Michigan Ave.), Grace O' Malley's (1416 S. Michigan Ave.), Wabash Tap (1233 S. Wabash Ave.), and Blackies (755 S. Clark St.). IF you can't make that, get your hands on a sixer of this week's "Beer of the Week," Goose Island's Mild Winter Ale.