LINCOLN SQUARE — Chicago's favorite Mexican street food — elote — is colliding with the city's favorite beverage: beer.
Keep it Copacetic from Middle Brow Beer makes its debut Saturday at The Grafton.
The guys from Middle Brow — Nick Burica, Bryan Grohnke and Pete Ternes — were brainstorming ideas for a collaboration with ManBQue when they hit upon the concept of creating a beer that would mimic elotes, aka, Mexican street corn.
Patty Wetli says the team popped their own kernels, which wasn't easy:
Two hundred-forty pounds of popcorn later — they purchased the raw kernels from Three Sisters Garden in Kankakee — the guys had the base for their beer.
"Nick popped all of it," a process that took 20 hours, six air poppers and three SUVs to transport the bags of popcorn, said Ternes. "He kept emailing us updates saying, 'I'm losing my mind.'"
The result is a cream ale flavored with lime juice and zest along with ancho chiles.
"They really make it taste like elote," Ternes said.
If the intriguing ingredient mix gets folks to give Middle Brow a try, well that's the point.
"It's definitely hard to break in the craft beer scene. It seems like one opens up every week or two," said Ternes. "That said, we've been slogging away for a year, going to events, trying to keep our name out there. We're starting to make some headway."
The three grew up together in Oak Forest, where Grohnke still lives (Ternes has since moved to Pilsen and Burica is in Lakeview). All of them have day jobs, and if their hope is for Middle Brow to eventually become a full-time pursuit, they've certainly made it hard on themselves to attain that goal.
Middle Brow donates half of all proceeds to charity.
"I don't really know what made us do it," Ternes said, offering up Catholic guilt or bleeding heart liberalism as possible motives.
"We have good jobs, we spend money on pretty expensive beer and food. To have a nice meal and then see someone covered in seven blankets, sleeping on cardboard, you think, 'This is nuts,'" he said.
They donated profits from their first beer, which they produced in early 2014, to Cure Violence (formerly CeaseFire). Proceeds from Keep It Copacetic, given its elote roots, will go to the Immigration Youth Justice League.
"We're sort of inspried by companies that aren't focused on the bottom line first and foremost," Ternes said. "I think it's just the general feeling that you can do well by doing good, you don't have to keep all the money."
The Keep It Copacetic release party is set for 7 p.m., Saturday at The Grafton, 4530 N. Lincoln Ave.
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