How to drink your way across Europe without leaving Chicago

Quenchers celebrates 21st annual European Beer Tour

The first time I stepped into Quenchers Saloon at the corner of Fullerton and Western I couldn't help notice the huge beer list and outstanding collection of breweriana. As I sat down, the friendly staff treated us very well, and at one point my friends and I were given a fantastic tour of the place. This first impression kept me coming back for many years, but I didn't know how incredibly cool Quenchers really was until yesterday, when I "toured" Europe without ever leaving Chicago.
I've wanted to check out Quenchers European Beer Tour ever since my friend Jim emphatically told me how he does the tour every year the day after Thanksgiving. He couldn't believe that I, as the webmaster of the Marcobrau Beer Pages, had not taken part in one of the coolest beer events in Chicago.
To take the tour, all one needs to do is pay $30 or $50 depending on how long of a tour you want to take, get your picture taken and have a thirst for good beer. I plopped my $30 down in front of Earl, owner of Quenchers, got my passport, and away I went. Where did I go? Well, I visited Austria, Belgium, Estonia, France, Slovakia, Sweden and the Ukraine. I sought out the unusual places, as well as a couple of familiar ones, too.
Of course, you can't drink that much beer without eventually getting the munchies, so my tour included a cheese and sausage snack tray. You also need a good tasting glass for all that beer. So I picked one out from a selection of a dozen or so. This was included in the price of the tour as a keepsake. Also included is a groovy T-shirt. The whole tour can be done in a night or you can take your time and use your passport throughout the week. Also, a couple people can share a passport. But you only have a week to take your tour.
I decided to start my tour in Belgium with a glass of Duvel. Actually, my wife Carol had most of this beer, with me getting just a couple sips. Duvel is one of her favorites. She also had most of my Golden Pheasant from Slovakia. The Duvel was a particularly fresh bottle that poured with a huge mousse-like head. It helped that I poured it into my new Stella Artois glass that I acquired as part of the tour. (A longer tour would have included my pick of three glasses.) The Golden Pheasant followed the Duvel. It had a nice slightly flowery hop character with a good clean bitterness that wasn't too sharp.
Our next stop was Estonia and Saku beer. This pilsner-style beer was very tasty and probably my favorite among the lagers tasted. It came in a large half-liter bottle with a nice yellow label. This beer was fairly dry and hoppy with a good body and mouthfeel. It was slightly darker in color than a typical pilsner. From Estonia, we stayed north and travelled to Sweden. There we sampled a Pripp's 1828. This was another well made medium-bodied pilsner that was very dry.
Austria was our next stop and then France, followed by a jump far east to the Ukraine. I sampled a Gösser from Austria -- a beer I've always wanted to try -- and finally got the chance. It was as good as expected. As a fairly light pilsner beer, it was very enjoyable. The Fischer-LaBelle from France was also light with a nice dry character. Finally, I had to try a Ukranian beer named Obolon. It came in a big green half-liter bottle and poured into my glass with a strange greenish hue. I'm not sure how it got to be green, except that it was also hazy, indicating a coarse or complete lack of filtration. It was a fairly hoppy beer. Maybe the tinge of green was from the hops. I'm hoping it wasn't from any radioactivity from the Chernobyl meltdown in the 1980s.
So that was my tour of Europe. It took only a few hours and I didn't have to fly. All the beers seemed very fresh and none of beers in green bottles had even a slight hint of skunkiness. I think this is very important if you're going to be passing these beers off as being as fresh as if you were actually in Europe. I would say that Quenchers did an outstanding job and this event surely will keep me coming back.
Kudos to Earl and all the staff!

My passport photo.
A look inside my passport. I took a short tour of Europe, and got to choose from seven beers from the above itinerary. The long tour includes a staggering 15 choices from the list.

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