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Meet Forbidden Root Brewery

Lee Heidel
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Chicago beers crafted with all natural, unique ingredients.

The Chicago beer scene is dense, packed with world-class, original and exciting breweries and brew pubs. As such, it can be hard for a new brewery to make a name for itself and break away from the distinguished competition. Having good beer is the most important factor, but having a solid niche doesn’t hurt, either.

Forbidden Root ticks both boxes. Described as “the first botanical brewery in Chicago,” Forbidden Root’s recipes include unexpected ingredients like juniper, wormwood, ginger, marigold and fig leaves. While these may seem rather experimental in the modern landscape, the use of roots, flowers and other botanical elements in beers goes back to the earliest days of American brewing. Reviving these forgotten or largely ignored elements has given Forbidden Root a fresh space to occupy and grow its brand.

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Three of the flagship brews from Forbidden Root are Sublime Ginger, Money on My Rind and WPA.

Sublime Ginger is inspired by the flavors of the Florida Keys. The witbier base provides a mild, refreshing foundation to add the sinus-opening bright ginger and tart key lime juice. It’s the perfect antidote to the mid-winter blues. Honeybush and lemon myrtle additions prove that the brewery is serious about its botanicals. A light 3.8 percent alcohol by volume allows this to be a sessionable, any time selection.

Money on My Rind is also a wheat ale, but this time the flavor profile reflects the hearty additions of juniper and grapefruit. Similarly thirst quenching, Money on My Rind is mild on the hops, focusing instead on big, fresh, natural citrus flavors. A bit of pepper on the finish comes courtesy of grains of paradise.

Wildflower Pale Ale (or WPA) is a brew that pulls in more hop bitterness and slightly higher alcohol percentages to create a classic American Pale Ale base beer. On top of that comes elderflower, marigold and sweet osmanthus flowers. Brewed with Citra and Cascade hops and dry-hopped with Mandarina Bavaria hops, this is a rich, complex beer that makes its name through the subtle floral and herbal notes from the botanicals.

Forbidden Root’s exciting array of botanical ingredients and quality recipes extend deeper into its line with beers like Cherrytree Amaro (an Old Ale brewed with cherry stems, basil and cinnamon), Heavy Petal (featuring West African cocoa, toasted pecans and magnolia flowers) and Fernetic (an Imperial Black Ale with peppermint, saffron, rhubarb and more than a dozen other botanicals).

Learn more about Forbidden Root and its beers, restaurant and mission as a benefit corporation by visiting forbiddenroot.com.

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Lee Heidel
Lee Heidel
Lee Heidel is the managing editor of Brew/Drink/Run, a website and podcast that promotes brewing your own beer, consuming the…
This Road in Washington is Where All Your Favorite Beers Get Their Start
Hop farms.

On a map, it doesn’t look like much more than a straight north-south line just southwest of Wapato, Washington. Yet, the road known as Lateral A in the Yakima Valley is one of the most famous hop-growing stretches on earth. Here, one of beer’s critical ingredients grows up along tall trellises as far as the eye can see, harvested annually and sent off to brewers near and far.
It’s a reminder of the many people and places that go into your favorite brews. Rural areas like this provide the space, climate, and human beings for such sprawling agricultural tracts. Those who’ve been to the Yakima Valley know of the openness of this arid country, with mountains beyond and glimpses of Mt. Rainier and Mt. Adams to the west. If it wasn’t for the dramatic topography in the distance, you’d think you were in the desert, or some farm-heavy stretch of the Midwest, mid-drought.

Here, the sun shines more than 200 days per year. It’s an energized environment, one that’s responsible for three of every four hops produced in the entire country. What started as an experimental planting in 1868 is now an impressive patchwork of hop-farms. It’s said that a hotel room in the area is hard to come by in August and September, when bottom cutters meander through rows, harvesting the annual crop and brewer’s celebrate with farm-fresh creations.
The valley is quickly approaching 150 hop varieties, which emerge, cone-like, from hop bines (yes, bines, not vines) that can surpass the height of a three-story building. It’s home to many family-run operations which have been hauling in hops for generations. Places like Perrault Farms, in Toppenish a bit south along Lateral A. The Perrault Family arrived here in 1902, when Theodore Roosevelt was in the White House. In addition to growing eleven hop varieties, the family raises bison and grows blueberries.
The hops end up in everything from specialty one-off seasonal beers by Bale Breaker Brewing Company (just north and on the other side of the Yakima River) to Budweiser. Business is booming and the area has its requisite commissions, grower-owned coops, and the like. It’s not uncommon to see reps from the big boys like AB InBev-owned labels sniffing around for a good deal on some choice hops.

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Hops are as important to beer as grapes are to wine. New hybrids are entering the picture every year, changing what a beer is able to do in terms of flavor and fragrance. From a beer-making standpoint, one major consideration is whether to go the wet hop or dry hop route. But the names can cause a little confusion.
For the record, most hops are dried. They get picked in the field, treated to some warm air, and are often shaped into pellet-like cones for use later on. Since most are grown in the northwest but beer is made all over, this is a great way to preserve a good hop and ship it all over the globe. It’s said that they can last for several years in this format (although we all know how great a fresh-hop beer is).
But a dry-hopped beer usually refers to the actual beer-making approach. Hops are added later in the process so that they hang on to their aromatic intensity. Part of that intensity is owed to the fact that dried hops tend to be denser in terms of the flavor and fragrance punch that they pack. The overall IBU dial will be adjusted, too, as hops inject varying amounts of bitterness. There are even double dry-hopped beers, which means if triple and quadruple dry-hopped beers don’t exist yet, they’re coming soon.
You’d think wet hop would be just the opposite — throwing the flavorful cones in during the boil, giving them a good soak. Nope. A wet-hopped beer is a lot like a fresh-hop beer. It’s made with hops that are not air or kiln-dried. They tend to be moist and full of flavorful oils, having just recently been harvested. The flavors tend to be more nuanced and green in nature. And if it weren’t for new hop oils and extracts, you’d really only find wet-hop beers once a year, right around the hop harvest in early autumn.
Some breweries will do a wet and dry take on the same beer, but I’ve yet to see both versions canned or bottled and available side-by-side. Often times, the wet or fresh hop version is a limited run and simply poured on draft at the brewery’s headquarters. Either way, it’s worth looking out for when sipping beer in the fall.
Here are some worth trying to see what side of the hop fence your taste resides.

Wet: Great Divide Fresh Hop Pale

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Kentucky is renowned for its distilleries, both old and new, and while there’s plenty to love all about the spirits coming from the Bluegrass State, there’s also a fantastic brewing scene developing.
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