is/was brewing — Restaurant in Lake View Township

is/was Brewing is a new local treasure and absolute paradise for saison lovers! The taproom offers a perfect blend of cozy ambiance and spacious comfort, with both indoor seating and a large outdoor garage area. Their house saisons are exceptional, and they offer an impressive bottle list that's reasonably priced. While they specialize in Franco-Belgian styles, they also feature guest drafts and creative non-alcoholic options, including Dark Matter coffee on tap and unique house-made shrub sodas.

The space is wonderfully welcoming - complete with fun touches like skee-ball in the back and charming artwork featuring cats and geese throughout. The staff is incredibly friendly and knowledgeable, creating a relaxed, neighborhood vibe that makes you want to stay for hours. It's family-friendly too, welcoming both kids and dogs.

If you're new to saisons or curious about craft beer beyond IPAs, this is the perfect place to explore. The thoughtfully crafted brews might introduce you to flavors you've never experienced in beer before. Between the excellent beer selection, comfortable atmosphere, and genuine hospitality, is/was has quickly become one of Chicago's must-visit breweries. Don't miss their special food pop-ups - follow their Instagram to...

Absolutely fantastic place - perfect for the beer connoisseur who is getting tired of palate destroying double IPAs and is seeking deep flavors and drinkability. However, if you don't like saisons (first give some more a try to make sure), they have a few non-saison beers and rotating selection of guest taps. I'm pretty sure every time that I have been there has always been something easy (lager or blonde ale) and an IPA on the guest tap list as well as some delicious non-alcoholic options.

I wish it was a little bit closer to me as I would make it my regular spot (maybe I should just move?), but Is/Was is absolutely worth the trip and I try to make it up here at least every few weeks.

So sad that the beer slushie machine stopped working - the special non-documented release of finer points of bad behavior conditioned for 3 months on the July 2024 harvest of Michigan blue raspberries was really something special (photo is from...

Was really excited to visit their relatively new taproom in ravenswood! In a beer landscape that has rapidly lost a lot of the interest in (and producers of) mixed fermentation beers and saison in general, they absolutely crush their styles and give some hope for this awesome corner of the beer world.

Taproom is comfortable, they had a great little food stand spot out back serving up reasonably priced quesadillas and other stuff, and the staff were kind and knowledgeable. Note that while the focus is on innovative saisons and Brett-fermented beers, they do brew a couple clean beers, like a pale ale that was a nice palate cleanser and used some Midwest ingredients.

Extensively bottle list for to-go and onsite consumption, plus a solid draft list. Several guest taps and non-alcoholic options too. I hope they stick around, you’re doing a great...