Mike Pallen of award-winning brewery Mikerphone Brewing (121 Garlisch Dr, Elk Grove Village, IL 60007) returns to Car Con Carne.
Moments before Mikerphone Brewing’s senses-shattering burger throwdown between Biker Dude Burgers (Darrin Klapprodt) and Chicago Culinary Kitchen (Greg Gaardbo), Mike jumped in the car to talk craft brewing trends, Mikerphone’s history and events, the need to be family-friendly (and dog friendly), pickle juice and … beer. Lots of beer talk.
Visit Mikerphone Brewing at https://www.mikerphonebrewing.com/mainstage, and don’t miss
SMELLS LIKE A BEER FEST, happening on August 3. Here are the details:
SMELLS LIKE A BEER FEST IS BACK!!!
We have partnered up with the village of Elk Grove to host this charity event on Saturday August 3rd from noon until 5 pm. Proceeds from the fest will benefit the Youth Committee Scholarship!
The event will feature over 60+ breweries/meaderies/distilleries, live music, food vendors, a dunk tank, Stern pinball machines, art vendors, a tattoo booth and more! Plus we will be debuting the 2024 BA Imperial Smells Like Bean Spirit variant beers.
We are so pumped to be throwing this event again! The guest lineup is beyond incredible! It is going to be a crazy great time!
1840/ ANGRY CHAIR/ ARKANE/ BACKCHANNEL/ BARNTOWN/ BLACKSTACK/ BOTTLE LOGIC/ BROTHERSHIP/ BRUJOS/ CEREBRAL/ COHESION/ CORPORATE LADDER/ DANCING GOAT/ DERIVE/ DREKKER/ EAGLE PARK/ EVERYWHERE/ FIDENS/ FINBACK/ FORAGER/ FORBIDDEN ROOT/ GOLDFINGER/ GNOSIS/ HOP BUTCHER/ HUMAN ROBOT/ ILLUMINATED/ JEPPSON’S/ KINGS/ LUA/ MAGNANIMOUS/ MAPLEWOOD/ MESSOREM/ MILLPOND/ MODIST/ MORE/ MORTALIS/ NARROW GAUGE/ NEW IMAGE/ NORTH PARK/ OLD IRVING/ OLOGY/ ORCHESTRATED MINDS/ OTHER HALF/ OUTER RANGE/ PIPS/ PHASE THREE/ PULPIT ROCK/ RADIANT/ RESIDENT CULTURE/ ROARING TABLE/ RUSE/ SAINT ERRANT/ SEVEN ISLAND/ SOUTHERN GRIST/ STANDARD MEADERY/ STREETSIDE/ SUPERSTITION/ THE LOST ABBEY/ THE VEIL/ TRIPTYCH/ VOODOO/ WANDERING MONSTERS/ WELDWERKS/ XÜL/ YOUNGBLOOD/
Food options from Biker Dude, Flyin’ Hawaiian, Private Sector Provisions, and Tacos Las Manitas!
Live music from Beer and Loathing and DJ Escrow!
Ticket Options:
VIP – $110. Early exclusive entrance from noon until 1 pm. Noon until 5 pm full time. Special glassware.
General Admission – $85. Entrance from 1 pm until 5 pm.
Designated Driver – $40. Entrance from 1 pm until 5 pm. No alcohol served.
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Car Con Carne is sponsored by Easy Automation: easy-automation.net
Transform your living space with cutting-edge home automation. Experience seamless control over audio/video, lighting, climate, security, and more. Embrace the future of smart living – your home, your rules.
Get a quote by visiting easy-automation.net, or give Dan a call at 630.730.3728
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Check out the previous Mikerphone Brewing interview on Car Con Carne!
Beer and BBQ: Fire and Smoke BBQ Company at Mikerphone Brewing (Episode 635)
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TRANSCRIPT
This right here is Car Con Carne, a Q101 podcast.
And Car Con Carne is sponsored by Easy Automation, easyautomation.net.
Transform your living space with cutting edge home automation.
Actually, living space, workspace, business.
With cutting edge home automation, experience seamless control over audio, video, lighting, climate security, and more.
Embrace the future of smart living.
It’s here, your home, your rules.
Get a quote by visiting easyautomation.net, or give my guy Dan a call.
This is his direct number.
If you’re watching on video, the number is directly on the screen, 630-730-3728.
It is a Sunday morning.
As I’m recording this, I am right outside Mikerphone Brewing in EGV, Elk Grove Village.
And to my right, if you’re watching, even if you’re listening, it’s also true, to my right, it is Mike Pallen.
He is the owner, head person, impresario, person who is, he’s the Mike, he’s the titular Mike of Mikerphone Brewing.
Nice to see you.
Great to see you again, too.
So we’re here on a Sunday morning, like I said.
One thing I’ve noticed, I think for craft breweries, events are important to the life of a brewery.
I mean, you build community with the beer and the regulars, but events are a big deal, and like knowing which events to put on.
I mean, when we started, all we had to do is put up new beer out and people came.
But then after COVID changed, a lot of things changed.
So we had to start figuring out ways to get people in creatively and do events like bingo and trivia, and then get creative out of the box and do events like we’re doing today, the burger throwdown.
Yeah, so the burger throwdown, and that’s a rub it in for people who are just watching or listening, but there’s a burger throwdown happening.
It’s starting shortly after we’re done talking, which is awesome, but looking ahead, because people will be watching or listening to this after the fact, looking ahead, tell me about Smells Like a Beer Fest.
Yeah, we’ve been very fortunate to team up with the Village of Elk Grove and the Mayor Johnson here to put on a charity event, which we were doing every year until COVID happened.
COVID kind of derailed the plans with the 2020 event, which was gonna be our biggest event ever, and it was actually gonna be outside of the grounds here.
It was gonna be at the Rotary Green area.
Then COVID happened and things changed, and we came back with smaller events, but then we finally got the courage and excitement and the staff was very looking forward to bringing the event back.
So we’re doing it August 3rd at Mikerphone.
It’ll be in the street.
The village is blocking down Garlish for us.
Nice.
We’re gonna have 70 plus awesome vendors here between breweries, meteries, distilleries.
We’ve got tattoo artists on site.
We’ve got a couple of different vendors selling some swag and stuff like that.
So it’s cool to have it come back to life and…
They’re shutting this whole stretch off.
Correct, yeah.
That’s awesome.
Yep.
So we’ll have a dunk tank, so anybody who wants to pay a couple bucks to throw some balls at one of us and knock us in the water.
It is August, it could be refreshing.
It’s gonna be great.
But yeah, it’s all for charity.
So we’re working with raising money for the Elk Grove Village Youth Scholarship Fund.
So anything we can do to do that.
We’ve got some raffle prizes that we’ll be raffling off.
And like I said, as much as we can raise, the more kids get this scholarship and doing good.
So the power of craft beer.
Well, it goes back to something I mentioned right at the onset, the notion of community.
You’ve got to ingrain yourself with the people who you serve.
Yeah, I mean, obviously we’re the only brewery in Elk Grove, but we wanted to make sure that they knew that we wanted to be, you know, brothers in arms with them in any way that we can help out.
And so year one, we did a charity event with them and raised money for the VFW to get the elevator put in their building.
And then it just kind of spiraled from there.
And so I feel like we’ve done a good job of integrating with the village.
You know, we make our kick, push, post, Oktoberfest beer that will be served at their Oktoberfest party.
And any way we can get involved, we do.
You were the only brewery in Elk Grove Village, which says to me that perhaps they’re a little tough on allowing breweries to get green lit in the village.
Yeah, well, fun fact, Yelp has rated us the number one brewery in Elk Grove Village.
So I’m very happy about that.
No, it was, it took a little bit of time to get the approval to get a brewery back here.
But I think the board members understood the concept and helped kind of let Mayor Johnson see the concept.
And it definitely didn’t come easily.
We had limitations on how much we could serve early on, which is pretty limited to 48 ounces and we’ve got that extended out a little bit.
But I think over time, we’ve done everything they’ve asked of us and we continue to have a great relationship with them.
And anytime we need something from them, we sit down and we brainstorm of how we can make it work and make it better for all of us together.
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The most recent was Stone.
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It’s wild.
There are still some days that I remember brewing those first batches.
And then there’s other days you’re like, I don’t know how much longer I can do this.
I did not have this much gray hair when I started this industry, but it’s all part of the fun.
I’ve been very fortunate to be a part of this grandiose community that is craft brewing.
It’s taking me places I’ve never imagined and brewed all across the world.
You’re an award-winning brewery, bears mentioning.
We are, very proud about that.
Actually, that first year, we got right beer, best new brewery in Illinois and one of the best new breweries from beer advocate in the world.
That was a huge achievement and really put us on the map.
But as time’s going on, 10 years we’ve established some core beers, we’ve established some core products that we really focus on.
Those beers are one-metals and the Barrel-Age program has won us the most medals of anything.
It’s a testament to our team who’s been together basically since day one, continue to gel and learn and grow and just continue to develop what we’re doing.
When you say core beers, IPAs?
Yeah, actually, so we have a core lineup of Mikerphone Check One Two is our double dry hop, double IPA, and then Hey Mambo, Mambo Italiano is our Italian Pilsner.
Honestly, it is bonkers what that beer does for us.
We can’t keep it in stock.
It’s a lager, so it takes a lot longer to make and produce.
Margins are way less than an IPA, but it’s such a fun beer and that with being in Illinois, you know, the deep-rooted Italian restaurants and Italian culture here, we’ve got it on a lot of places like that and they really embrace the beer.
And then, Smells Like Bean Spirit is our breakfast coffee stout.
Again, you’re a music fan.
Let’s be clear about that.
100%.
So yeah, everything’s got a reference to the music.
So we focus on those three for sure, and then we sprinkle in the other stuff whenever we can.
Get creative, you know, always pushing the boundary with new trends and what people want to drink.
We have adapted since day one of what we serve here.
We can serve now wine, bourbon, mixed cocktails, or ready-to-drink cocktails outside of beer.
So we know the consumers changed over the last several years and we had to figure out a way to adapt to that.
So we make a lot of seltzers now.
We make a lot of things that are gluten-free.
Just any way that if you come here, we have something for you to enjoy.
Well, let’s talk about trends.
Where are, where’s beer headed right now?
I’ve talked to other craft brewery owners in recent weeks and to hear them tell it, perhaps lower ABV is a trend that’s bubbling up.
I mean, we’re in the middle of summer.
Like, this is crushable beer season.
Yeah, I think the first thing that I noticed with this industry is that there is a reset happening.
So there’s a lot of breweries who are closing, unfortunately.
But when we started Mikerphone back in 2015, there were 4,000 breweries.
At one point, we got 10,000 breweries.
So that kind of growth in any industry is scary, right?
And I think there has been this kind of, all right, margins aren’t the same like they used to.
A lot of people are coming up on that five-year lease term.
And you’re seeing, you know what?
We had a good run, we had a lot of fun.
It’s just not worth it anymore.
So we’re unfortunately seeing that.
And it’s hard to see because these are a lot of your friends, you know, our brothers in arms doing this together.
It is a supportive community.
It is, yeah, it really is.
Because I’m pretty sure that every community could support a brewery.
But it was when we started growing and getting bigger and going to distribution and tamped pedals were hard to get out there and that kind of stuff.
And it really, you saw the downfall of that.
And that overgrowth has now led to these closures.
So there’s that.
And so it’s understanding, all right, let’s be smart about how we’re spending, what we’re doing.
Always strive to make the most quality products.
But we can search out and find stuff that is, you know, a better value than what we’ve done before.
And then implementing that is then, all right, so what are consumers drinking?
And it’s not no more about what do we wanna drink, which we make those for ourselves.
But that’s not gonna pay the bills.
We gotta figure out what people wanna drink.
And so this year has been the year of the lager.
I really think that, you know, we keep talking about Kraft lager and Kraft lager and it’s really taken off.
I think people are drinking lager more than anything.
We’ve had a Caribbean lager that didn’t last very long here.
We’ve got the Italian Pilsner.
And now we’re coming into, you know, the Oktoberfest, Martins and Fest beers.
And those usually, you know, they’ll last a couple months.
Now they’re lasting a month, less than a month.
So it’s great.
People are consuming those.
I don’t think hazy’s ever going away.
I know everyone was like, oh, it’s a trend.
It’s a fad.
It’s gross.
I’ve loved hazy.
If I go to a brewery or a bar, the first thing I’m ordering is a hazy.
That to me is my favorite style of drink.
It shows a testament to the brewery making it too.
I can judge a brewery by that.
That’s what I was going to ask.
That’s like the yardstick.
For me for sure.
Then obviously if you make a good lager, lagers are very hard to make.
It takes a lot more time, a lot more investment in your space and equipment.
But I don’t know the trend for a lot of brewers that they order lager first, because they want to have that crushable, sessionable stuff that they can drink a few of.
But I love, I’m still a hazy guy and I’m still a barrel-edged out guy.
Those are my two all day long.
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And the thing about lagers, we all know what a bad one tastes like.
So when you taste a good one, it’s a big deal.
For sure.
We all have the macro beers.
Oh, yeah.
Okay.
So going back to Smells Like a Beer Fest, you’re doing special beer for that event.
Yeah, we have got, so that’s kind of our release of the barrel-aged Imperial Smells Like Bean Spirit.
So we only do that once a year.
This year, we’ve got three different variants.
So we have the original barrel-aged Smells Like Bean Spirit, which is coffee from Tugboat Coffee Roasters, and then Vermont Maple Syrup.
Then we’ve got a variant called Softly Spoken Spirit, which actually brought two of our beers together.
So a double milk style with cinnamon, coconuts, and vanilla blended with the barrel-aged Imperial Smells Like Bean Spirit.
So you’ve got cinnamon, coconuts, vanilla, coffee, and maple syrup.
As you’re describing this, we’re recording this at like 10.30 in the morning.
I’m thinking this is great breakfast.
That’s what they say, hey, you can’t drink all day if you don’t start in the morning.
So and then the last one is a bigger version of the first one.
So it’s called Maple Barrel-aged Super Imperial Smells Like Bean Spirit.
So we actually aged it in maple barrels from whiskey acres, local distillery.
Then it’s just a bigger mash ton.
It gets double the maple, double the coffee.
It’s delicious.
Yeah.
Some fun beers to showcase.
What are you doing with pickles?
We are using pickles a lot.
So it’s funny, I learned about pickle backs a long time ago drinking whiskey.
And then I had a friend of mine who owns a brewery down in West Des Moines.
He makes this pickle beer.
And I’m like, I love it.
And then the more I dug into it and understanding what it is, it’s like pickles are really good for you.
Pickle juice is packed with electrolytes.
It’s like the best thing you could drink for a hangover.
But so we started making this beer called Slick Pickle Rick here.
And it’s hilarious.
It does what it does.
The staff here makes the micheladas out of it.
You know, tahini rim and all that stuff.
And then we have a spicy version on tap right now, too.
So that’s a beer that actually is on fairly often here.
So if you cut a microphone, you’ll see it here nine out of 12 months.
That’s amazing.
All right.
Mikerphone Brewing is 121 Garlish.
Garlish.
Garlish.
Drive in Elk Grove Village.
It’s one of those words I’ve seen, but I’ve never actually heard pronounced.
From what I know, that this is the only Garlish that exists.
Anywhere.
And you see, it’s a very small street.
It’s like, yeah, it’s tucked back in the middle of nowhere.
But yeah, Garlish is how they pronounce it.
121 Garlish in Elk Grove Village.
It is not only the best brewery in Elk Grove Village.
It’s the only one.
So I guess it’s probably the worst one too then, right?
By default.
It is all things.
It is everything all at once.
Mikerphone Brewing.
Like I said, we’re recording on an event day.
There’s a burger throwdown about to happen.
But that said, there’s tons of stuff coming up.
There smells like a beer fest.
There’s always something going on here.
And the beer is award-winning.
And it’s a family-friendly place too.
100%.
My wife and I own it.
We’ve got kids that are 11 and 8.
We’ve taken them to probably more breweries than most people can count.
And we want to establish that.
We wanted people to feel comfortable coming here.
It’s not a bar.
It’s more of a community place to come and hang out.
And so we’re dog-friendly.
We’ve got the big patio now.
We’ve got stuff for kids to do.
I need to take my dog here.
I’ve got a cute little dog who would love to hang out outside.
We’ve got the dog bowls, and we’ve got some fresh water for the dogs.
And yeah, it’s good.
So we’ve got the pinball machines for the kids, the shuffleboard.
For the kids.
I mean, for anybody.
I mean, I’m a kid at heart.
But we keep them entertained, and we’ve got non-alcoholic slushies for the kids, and food, and stuff like that.
We know that the core demographic has kids.
We don’t want to turn them away.
And so I know that that bumps some people out.
We’re of a certain age at this point.
It bumps some people out.
But we have signs everywhere that says, you are responsible for taking care of your kids.
If you’re not doing that, we will tell you to leave.
And so we are very cognizant of kids can be a nuisance at times if they’re not taken care of.
And so this is not a daycare.
Don’t drop your kids off.
Let them run around.
If they’re obedient and sit in their chair and do their thing, totally fine to be here.
Yeah.
Give them your phone.
Let them have some screen time while mom and dad talk.
100%.
Yeah.
All right.
Mike, thank you for doing this.
Always a pleasure to see you.
I’m going to hang out for a while because we’ve got this event going on.
Is it?
Super stoked that you’re a judge.
So I’m a judge for the Burger Throwdown with Dane Plaquot from Fox 32.
Yep.
And then we got Mike Zoller from Porch Drinking as well.
Hell yeah.
That’s a motley crew.
It’s awesome.
Yeah.
You pull together people from all over the, yeah.
Well, Dane’s a local customer, so he comes in often and it’s great.
And so I always love his voice when he talks.
And I figured this would be a good little crew to have come out and do this.
And we’ve got Biker Dude and Chicago Culinary Kitchen and they’ve been working on this battle for years.
And today’s the day.
So we’ll see what happens.
This is awesome.
And Biker Dude will be at the event in August.
He’ll be at the Smells Like Beer for Us.
Yep, for sure.
Awesome.
All right, always a pleasure to see you.
Thank you for doing this.
Thank you for having me.
