The Daily Parker

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Brews and Choos project

I love trains. I love beer. I don't love driving when I'm having beer. So how to reconcile all of those things, I wonder?

My solution: identify breweries in and around Chicago close to rail lines and visit them. Starting in February 2020, I identified 98 locations ranging from one as close as 400 m from a downtown Chicago train station to four that require a 100-minute train ride to a neighboring state.

Even better, the densest stop on any train line turned out to be the one closest to my house: there are were seven breweries and one distillery within 1.7 km of the Metra UP-N Ravenswood station; as of July 2023, we have six breweries, one distillery, one winery, and one brewery opening soon.

In July 2023, I officially codified a few things:

  • Chicago-area breweries must be reachable by a single rail journey of 120 minutes or shorter from one of the downtown rail terminals (Ogilvie Transportation Center, Union Station, LaSalle Street Station, Millennium Station, or the Loop structure), and must be reachable by foot within 2 kilometers of the destination train station.
  • Destinations outside Chicago must be reachable from the city center by a single rail journey of no more than an hour, and must be within 1 kilometer of the station.
  • The facility must brew, ferment, or distill at least some of their products on site.
  • The facility must have a dedicated tasting room or restaurant—not just a bottle shop.

This brings a few more breweries into the Chicago orbit, west to Princeton, Ill., east to Elkhart, Ind., and south to Rensselaer, Ind. and Kankakee, Ill. (Milwaukee, which is only 70 minutes from Chicago, has been on the list since its inception.)

Metra, the regional heavy-rail carrier, offers a $10 unlimited-ride weekend pass good from midnight Saturday to midnight Monday, making lazy Saturday brewery hopping that much more accessible. The CTA charges $2.75 between any two destinations, with re-entry into the system just 50c within two hours of starting your journey.

Another note: I'm not going crazy at these places. Typically I get a 3- or 4-beer flight, which means 450 to 600 mL, about one European pint. That, plus travel between stations and waiting for trains, works out to about 35 mL of alcohol per hour. Enjoyable, but not overboard.

If you want to visit any of these breweries and distilleries—and I encourage you to do so—check their website to make sure they're open before hauling out on an hour-long train ride. And check the train timetables carefully! The Heritage Corridor, South West Service, and North-Central Service have terrible schedules, with only a few trains Monday through Friday during rush hour. You could easily find yourself stuck in New Lenox with no way back to the city if you don't pay attention to the time.

The Map

The list

You can see the list of breweries I plan to visit on Google Drive.

Visited so far

The following lists are organized by distance from Chicago, and then alphabetically at each station. (I've delayed-published some of the posts linked below with a new post about every other day. If a link appears dead, try back later.)

Downtown

You can get to these breweries and distilleries via multiple train lines:

Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF)

Heritage Corridor (HC)

Metra Electric (ME)

Milwaukee District North (MD-N)

North Central Service (NCS)

Rock Island District (RI)

Union Pacific North (UP-N)

Union Pacific Northwest (UP-NW)

Union Pacific West (UP-W)

CTA Blue Line

CTA Brown Line

CTA Green Line

CTA Purple Line

CTA Red Line

CTA Yellow Line

Amtrak

Outside Chicago

Last edited Sunday, November 26, 2023 11:11 AM CST