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BreakRoom Brewery Is the Latest to Join the Crowler Revolution

By Patty Wetli | April 30, 2015 5:43am
Crowler in Action
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YouTube/Oskar Blues Brewery

IRVING PARK — It seemed like BreakRoom Brewery was "coming soon" forever, but now that the gastropub has opened, owner Aaron Heineman and company have wasted no time bringing themselves up to speed on one of the latest innovations in craft brewing: the crowler.

BreakRoom, 2925 W. Montrose Ave., is the second brewery in Chicago, following DryHop in Lakeview, and one of only a handful in the country to adopt the crowler format, pioneered by Colorado's Oskar Blues Brewery in 2014.

Essentially the crowler is a howler, only in an aluminum can instead of a glass jug.

If we lost you at howler, blame the craft movement for expanding our beer container vocabulary far beyond six-pack and keg.

A quick glossary of the -owler family:

Growler: A 64-ounce reusable glass container (picture a moonshine jug) for grabbing beer to go straight from a brewery's tap.

Howler: A 32-ounce reusable glass container, or in other words, half a growler.

Crowler: A 32-ounce aluminum container, not reusable. Differs from a super-sized can of beer from the corner store in that a crowler starts out empty and is filled and sealed to order with a specific draft chosen by the customer at the brewery.

 BreakRoom is the second brewery in Chicago and one of only a handful in the country to adopt the crowler format.
BreakRoom is the second brewery in Chicago and one of only a handful in the country to adopt the crowler format.
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Facebook/BreakRoom Brewery

Patty Wetli explains the advantages of a crowler:

Clear now?

Oskar Blues, which is selling crowler-sealing machines for $3,000 a pop, promotes several benefits of crowlers over growlers/howlers.

One is portability and another is cleanliness, because let's be honest, how thoroughly do you wash your growler between refills?

A tighter seal also translates into longer shelf-life — BreakRoom said its unopened crowlers are good for two to three weeks — and aluminum is better than glass when it comes filtering light and avoiding
"skunkiness."

BreakRoom's crowlers, which the brewery has dubbed "brain blowers," cost $9. Growlers also will be filled at customers' request.

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