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Drink Thu Jul 28 2011
Summer Drinking Series: Revolution Coup d'Etat
As promised, this week's beer is slightly off the beaten track of wits and wheats. Revolution Brewing's Coup d'Etat is a French-style saison dry ale packing 7% ABV -- not a beer for gulping down quickly as you stagger into the bar from your un-air conditioned apartment. Saison pale ales were initially developed farmhouse by farmhouse as a quenching end-of-day reward for farmhands during the harvest season, and Coup d'Etat drinks likes this sort of pedigree would suggest -- it's a spicy, rich beer for lingering over, and with a toasty, caramelized flavor palate that feels more like August than the citrus and flowers of June. Still totally refreshing, but a very different character than both the shandies and summer IPAs out there.
And worth waiting for. Which you will do, at Revolution. The year-old-ish Logan Square brewer still commands a 40 minute wait on a weeknight, unless you can sneak in at the bar. (It'll be interesting to see if the opening of their new upstairs lounge ameliorates or exacerbates this.) But like all good things, the wait is worth it. Coup d'Etat is merely one among many top-notch beers (the summery Rosa, infused with hibiscus petals and orange peels, would have been my first choice, but they were sold out that night -- I just can't help myself with these fruity botanicals, it seems), and the food is excellent, from an entree-sized burrata topped salad, to generous piles of mussels, to a wide range of traditional and creative flatbreads. French farmhands would toast their approve, I imagine.
