For our brief, annual sabbatical, we drink ten different craft sodas while recapping our experience at this year’s Festival of Wood and Barrel-Aged Beers. We attempt to review the sodas, with five produced locally, but spend a lot of time reliving our favorite FoBAB moments. Our highlights include beers from Perennial, Off Color, 2nd Shift, Goose Island Clybourn Brewpub, Spiteful, Brickstone, The Lost Abbey, Metropolitan, Moody Tongue, August Schell, Half Acre, Temperance, Hardywood, and more. But there’s a lot of craft soda information packed in here too, and you’ll learn why we’re so grateful for Prohibition. We also work on Craig’s arts-and-crafts-based standup routine. Come for the FoBAB, stay for the sodas, leave with a gut full of sugar.

FoBAB Moments:

(00:11:30 - 00:18:18) Overall festival talk: organization, glassware gripes, expedited lines, strip club music, and more.

(00:26:20 - 00:32:27) Ryan’s top five beers of FoBAB, plus a drunk volunteer story

(00:34:44 - 00:38:22) Craig’s top five beers of FoBAB

(00:42:10 - 00:50:16) Other beer highlights

(00:54:29 - 00:59:19), (01:00:38 - 01:04:14) The beer lowlights

(01:06:59 - 01:11:02) What we missed

(01:14:12 - 01:15:45) Ranking previous FoBABs

Craft Sodas Reviewed:

WBC Chicago-Style Root Beer

Virgil’s Black Cherry Cream Soda

Green River

Fentiman’s Curiosity Cola

Deadworld Slow Decay Vanilla Root Beer

Cicero Beverage Co. Salted Caramel Root Beer

Berghoff Orange

Sioux City Orange Cream

Filbert’s Strawberry

Boylan Creamy Red Birch Beer