Boozy Brunch Signings at Lincoln Ave Brunch Fest

Malört may be the worst thing you’ll ever taste.

Known primarily for its intense bitterness, the infamous Chicago liqueur has been compared to “a forest fire, if the forest was made of earwax.” Yet lurking in the horror and the mockery lies the truth of Malört: we keep going back for more. For nearly a hundred years, we’ve gone back.
Jeppson’s Malört could have died a hundred deaths in that time. Its survival wasn’t always a given. It also was no accident. There was one man’s dogged persistence. One woman’s patience and dedication. There were cultural shifts and fortunate timing that helped transform a drink rooted in centuries-old Swedish tradition into the American sensation it is today.

Malört is a story of love, relationships, and how one generation finds meaning where generations before did not. Such transformations happen in art, in history, and in food, and it happened to Jeppson’s Malört.

Author and beer expert Josh Noel unpacks a uniquely American tale, equal parts culture, business, and personal relationships—involving secret love, federal prison, a David vs. Goliath court battle, and, ultimately, the 2018 sale of Jeppson’s Malört, which made Pat Gabelick, a 75-year-old Chicago woman who spent much of her life as a legal secretary, into an unlikely millionaire.

North American Guild of Beer Writer Award Recipient

Goose Island opened as a family-owned Chicago brewpub in the late 1980s, and it soon became one of the most inventive breweries in the world. In the golden age of light, bland and cheap beers, John Hall and his son Greg brought European flavors to America. With distribution in two dozen states, two brewpubs and status as one of the 20 biggest breweries in the United States, Goose Island became an American success story and was a champion of craft beer. Then, on March 28, 2011, the Halls sold the brewery to Anheuser-Busch InBev, maker of Budweiser, the least craft-like beer imaginable. The sale forced the industry to reckon with craft beer’s mainstream appeal and a popularity few envisioned. Josh Noel broke the news of the sale in the Chicago Tribune, and he covered the resulting backlash from Chicagoans and beer fanatics across the country as the discussion escalated into an intellectual craft beer war. Anheuser-Busch has since bought nine other craft breweries, and from among the outcry rises a question that Noel addresses through personal anecdotes from industry leaders: how should a brewery grow?