By Josh Noel
Chicago Tribune
WWR Article Summary (tl;dr) The roommates’ bus tour will lead thirsty do-gooders to six of the nearly 20 Chicago-area breweries that have brewed a version of a beer supporting victims of California’s Camp Fire.
CHICAGO
Six breweries.
Eighty-five miles.
Six and a half hours.
Who says doing good can’t be fun?
The Jan. 19 afternoon slog is the brainchild of roommates Morgan Blofsky and Sarah Mellema, whose initial inspiration was a desire to sample as many examples of Chicago-made Resilience Butte County Proud IPA, the beer supporting victims of California’s Camp Fire, as possible.
The question was how to get people to join them.
The answer was a bus. And a lot of planning.
The result is the roommates’ bus tour, which will lead thirsty do-gooders to six of the nearly 20 Chicago-area breweries that have brewed a version of Resilience.
Tickets, which cost $45, include transportation between the breweries and a pint of Resilience at each stop.
The bus will leave South Loop music venue Reggies, which donated use of its bus, at 11:30 a.m. The tour will spend about 40 minutes at each of the following breweries (in order): Dovetail Brewing, Goose Island Brewhouse, Haymarket Pub and Brewery, Elmhurst Brewing, Alter Brewing and Marz Community Brewing.
The bus will return to Reggies about 6 p.m.
“It started as, ‘How can we visit them all?’ ” said Blofsky, 29. “Then we had the idea to get people to come with us.”
Blofsky grew up in Chico, Calif., which sits 15 miles from Paradise, the town recently devastated by the Camp Fire. She worked for two years as a taproom hostess for Chico-based Sierra Nevada Brewing (“a wonderful company,” she said), which organized the Resilience project.
More than 1,400 breweries nationwide have signed on, pledging to donate proceeds to Sierra Nevada’s Camp Fire Relief Fund.
Blofsky and Mellema began reaching out to the nearly 20 Chicago area breweries making Resilience just before Christmas, trying to gauge interest in being part of the tour. Most responded within a day.
“They got excited, so we got more excited,” Blofsky said.
