Burp Fest at Festival of Wood & Barrel-Aged Beer (FoBAB) 2026

In 2002, a brewer, a fellow brewer, and a beer writer walked into a conversation that would reshape American craft beer. Pete Crowley, then brewmaster at Rock Bottom Brewery in downtown Chicago and newly elected president of the Illinois Brewers Guild, had been watching a quiet revolution unfold: Chicago-area brewers were experimenting with aging beer in used bourbon barrels, a technique that Goose Island brewmaster Greg Hall had pioneered on a broad scale in the mid-1990s. Crowley teamed up with Todd Ashman of Flossmoor Station Brewing and Jeff Sparrow, a writer and longtime member of the Chicago Beer Society, to create a festival dedicated entirely to this emerging art form. In 2003, they held the first Festival of Wood & Barrel-Aged Beer on the second floor of Rock Bottom's downtown location. Thirty-six beers from 22 breweries. About 150 people in a banquet room. It was almost certainly the first barrel-aged beer festival ever held, and it planted a flag that Chicago has never relinquished.

The growth from that intimate gathering to a nationally recognized institution has been remarkable. FoBAB has traveled across the city — from Rock Bottom to Goose Island's brewery, a Plumbers Union Hall, the Bridgeport Arts Center, and now Credit Union 1 Arena on the University of Illinois at Chicago campus — each move driven by the need for more space. By its 20th anniversary in 2022, the festival was pouring over 350 beers from nearly 200 breweries across two sessions, with thousands of attendees descending on a basketball arena. What hasn't changed is the competition: FoBAB awards gold, silver, and bronze medals across 12 to 13 barrel-aged style categories, plus a coveted Best in Show honor. These medals carry real weight in the brewing world — a FoBAB gold is one of the most respected accolades a barrel-aged beer can earn.

What makes FoBAB singular is its uncompromising focus. This is not a festival where you'll find a hazy IPA or a session lager. Every pour has spent time in wood — bourbon barrels, wine barrels, rum casks, fresh oak — and the result is a depth of flavor and complexity you simply cannot find at a general beer festival. Organized by the Illinois Craft Brewers Guild, FoBAB has become a pilgrimage for barrel-aged beer devotees from across the country, and a proving ground for breweries pushing the boundaries of what beer aged in wood can become. Chicago, already America's great barrel-aged beer city thanks to Goose Island's Bourbon County legacy, has FoBAB to thank for turning that local tradition into a national movement.