Goldfinger Brewing Company

Today is the release of our June seasonal beers and the world debut of our Summer Beer!

Summer Beer was designed for maximum refreshment, light on its toes at 4% abv, with a bright aroma that signals its time to soak up the sun. The single decoction mash provides just the right amount of light bready malt character, while remaining dry which explains why this beer disappears from your glass so quickly.

New Zealand Lager is always a welcomed beer for us here because, despite focusing on traditional subtle lagers, we still have a fond appreciation for hops playing a larger role in certain beers. This version expands on featuring genetically related European noble hops with New Zealand hops to present citrus, tropical fruit, and pleasant herbs. At a respectable 6.5% abv, there is sufficient robustness to complement the bold hop expression.

We can’t wait for you to try these beers! will be here from 2-6pm roughly.

Lagers, patio, and freshly canned Original, Pils, and Mexican lager await you. Stock up for dad.

will be serving delicious food starting at 5pm.

Saturday can’t come soon enough!

We’re down to our last few kegs of our collab with ! “Bavarian Breeze” is a German style wheat beer presenting a silky smooth body packed with flavors of clove, banana, and pear. All of these flavors are esters derived from the special top fermenting yeast.

Esters, simply put, are organic compounds reacting with alcohol from fermentation to create all sorts of fruity flavors. Depending on a wide variety of factors, the amount of esters and the specific types may vary. In the case of Bavarian Breeze, we developed a recipe that would create the type of ester profile that defined this delicious beer. We hope you’ve enjoyed it so far!

Matt Gallagher, Co-founder of Half Acre, had his first foray into Stichfaß service last week and gave our customers a sneak peek into our six month lagered Oktoberfest Ur-Märzen.

Every first Tuesday of the month we tap a German gravity keg (stichfaß) of a young version of a beer we have in lagering tanks to show how the beer develops over time. If you aren’t coming to our First Tuesday Faß Tappings from the Cellar you are not only missing out on an educational opportunity to learn about sensory analysis and how different lagers develop over time, but an awesome opportunity to meet great people who share a mutual appreciation for beer and learning. Tappings happen at 5:30pm on the first Tuesday of every month and the beer lasts until the faß is kicked.

We look forward to seeing you at the next one!

Food truck update for the week: returns this Friday 6/14 and returns this Saturday 6/15 .

Next Saturday, June 15th, we’re making it officially summer with the launch of two new beers:

Summer Beer - An all German malt, single decocted, light lager hopped with Spalter Select and Saphir hops at an infinitely refreshing 4% abv.

New Zealand Lager - A hoppy lager presenting the European noble hop varietals: Hallertau Mittelfruh and Czech Saaz, with their New Zealand offspring: Wai-iti and Motueka. The citrus and fruitiness, balanced by herbal and spicy noble hops makes this 6.5% abv lager very easy to drink.

These small batch lagers will be available on tap and in cans beginning at noon and we’ll have food truck around 4pm. Cans will be exclusively available at our Downers Grove taproom.

Tonight is the debut of who will be arriving around 4pm.

Bavarian Breeze Hefeweizen and Heller Bock are this weekend’s seasonal beers to enjoy. Tonight is BYOF, and tomorrow we welcome a new food truck at 4pm: Boom Box Burgers !

“The gratitude we have for the endless inspiration around us knows no bounds. Beyond our own curiosities and goals, one of the aspects we find most motivating to our small business is the reception we get from you. The appreciation, loyalty, and genuine good will we receive from you, our customers and fans, not only gives our brewery legitimacy, but also allows us to survive and thrive.

Thank you for your continued support and for joining us on this journey. Here are some images from our family’s recent visit to Sugar Creek Malt’s farm and barley fields, another family business whose Indiana grown malt is the base of our upcoming local take on a Pre-Prohibition lager.”

Sincerely,
The Beckmanns

“If time is the most essential ingredient at Goldfinger, only time will tell how Beckmann adds to his family’s history books. With Goldfinger, Beckmann set out to revive his family’s brewing history. It may have only been four years, but little by little, detail by detail, and beer by beer, Goldfinger seems to be already carving out its own legacy.“

Thank you Hop Culture for featuring our brewery and doing such a wonderful job at highlighting our passion for lagers.

Tonight at 5:30pm is our First Tuesday Faß Tapping from the Cellar featuring guest tapper: Matt Gallagher from ! We will be checking in on month 3 of 6 of our Oktoberfest Ur-Märzen. Come early!

In two weeks, it is the return of a hopped up seasonal lager after over a year long hiatus: New Zealand Lager. We have learned a lot about hoppy lagers over the last several years, experimenting not only with hop varietals and malt bills, but fitting it into our standard operating procedures of cold lagering.

The spirit of New Zealand lager, our very first seasonal beer we ever brewed, was to showcase the relationship between parental and offspring varietals of hops. This iteration takes that further and blends four hop varietals: Hallertau Mittelfruh, Czech Saaz, NZ Waiti, and NZ Motueka. Pairing the parental noble hops with their New Zealand progeny provides for an interesting interplay between comparing and contrasting qualities. The resulting lager is a complex example of ways in which these related hops enhance certain qualities they share with each other. Details on its upcoming release to be announced soon.

You didn’t work hard all week just to stay cooped up at home today. It’s a heller bock kind of day today!

Board games, chess, darts, Klask, shuffleboard and BYOF makes for a relaxing and casual Saturday.

Cheers to the weekend. We look forward to hosting you.

The menu this weekend is as follows:
Original
Pils
Vienna
Mexican
Bavarian Breeze Hefeweizen (collab w/ Skeleton Key Brewery)
Heller Bock

No food trucks this weekend. BYOF

A symptom of the unprecedented access of our current global economy is the distance it places between us and the home-grown.

Our latest beer project, which we will debut at our Fourth Lagerversary, breaks away from the convenience of sourcing raw materials from virtually anywhere in the world and instead highlights what is available in our own back yard. The craftsmanship, raw materials, and terroir we aim to express in this unique beer represent a coalition of states surrounding Lake Michigan: Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Running hands across barley fields, crunching on raw corn, rubbing green hop pellets, and letting our bare feet feel the energy transfer from this incredible dirt, has given us new perspective on the significance of beer.

Stay tuned to see our journey toward producing an authentic, hyper local iteration of a Pre-Prohibition style lager.

Today at 4pm we tap our latest collaboration with Skeleton Key Brewery “Bavarian Breeze.” This Hefeweizen features a pleasant balance of banana and clove aromas presented on a silky smooth canvas of German wheat malt. To celebrate the release, we’re excited to welcome back Biker Dude Burgers around 5pm with his delicious smash burgers.

This beer will be served exclusively at ours and Skeleton Key’s taprooms.

Celebrate the joys in life like love, family, friends, and finely crafted lager beer. Join us outside this weekend and stock up for your Memorial Day plans. We canned a fresh batch of Original lager this past Thursday; hard to get fresher than that.

Enjoy!

Despite many attempts at expressing into words our adoration for Heller Bock, the best we’ve come up with is “mmmm,” “oh wow,” “yum!” “Ahhhhh,” “damn,” “yeeeeessss.” Ok, so we’re not poets, but we’ve come to the conclusion that we’ll just keep drinking it until we activate our linguistic inspiration. Won’t you join us today and all weekend?

It’s BYOF this weekend as Chuck’s had to cancel tonight.

Today, we’re brewing a collaboration beer with friends and lager royalty: Bierstadt Lagerhaus!

This will be one of the beers we release at our Fourth Lagerversary (July 19th-21st) celebration. We are brewing an Italian-style Pilsner using Italian Adriatic coastal barley known as “Eraclea” for the region it is grown in, courtesy of Weyermann Specialty Malts .

This single decocted dry-hopped Pilsner will be brightly aromatic with a pleasant cracker-like malt character exemplifying ours and Bierstadt’s mutual love for a well crafted Pilsner.

Heller Bock and some Jamaican Jerk Chicken by sounds like a match made in heaven. We open at noon and Rasta will be here at 2pm.

Our .cz side pull faucets are primed and ready to go for another weekend of doing our favorite thing: welcoming you to the taproom and serving you fresh lagers. You can find out what an “emparogi” is when arrives at 5pm.

Born from an early beer memory of our head brewer Tom, crafted for the summertime heroes. Coming June 2024.

When you’re in the thick of your daily routine, your focus is often limited to very few things compared to the totality of actions and interactions required to pass through the day. Inevitably, you may take certain parts of your day for granted. Items, services, relationships, and more that you subconsciously rely on don’t always get their due acknowledgement.

We find ourselves guilty of this reality, but there is something so striking about the aroma emitting from the mash tun upon first infusion of malted barley into hot water that grounds us. Almost like a shaken Etch A Sketch, the slate is wiped clean and we’re reminded of the gift that has been bestowed upon us to live another day and experience the marvels that come with it. To use our hands to craft something that we are so passionate about and in turn experience the pleasures it brings all of you is one element we refuse to ever take for granted. Thank you.

Don’t mind us, we’re just double decocting Vienna lagers while we get excited for two amazing food pop ups we have this weekend:
on Friday at 5pm
on Saturday at 2pm.

We’re open 12-7pm today because mom deserves a few beers. Whether its post-brunch or pre-dinner, don’t deprive mom of some Goldfinger lagers.

Opening the last part of our building for our new production space has brought in tons of natural light to the brewery. Today’s forecast promises sunshine, so we invite you to soak it in with us on our patio. When you get hungry, Chuck’s Pizza will be cooking on site for you starting at 5pm.

In addition to our core lagers, we’ve got an eclectic variety of seasonals currently on tap:

Bohemian Pilsner | Triple Decocted | 5.1% abv
-malty, round, with pleasant spicy hop flavor

“Highly Conductive” collab w/ | West Coast Pilsner | 4.5% abv
- Hoppy, aromatic, and crisp for the hop heads

Heller Bock | 7% abv
- Complex malt flavor supported by fresh German hops

Cans of Highly Conductive and Heller Bock are available. Tonight, Kitchen 10 will be serving tasty food.

Today we’re brewing one of two of our Fourth Lagerversary (July 19-21st) beers. The bounty of crops for beer making around Lake Michigan is impressive. This lager will hearken back to a time before temperance was fashionable, focusing on the local producers whom have dedicated their lives to sustaining generational farms in order to supply the raw materials for beer making. All of the ingredients used in this beer will come from less than a five hour drive away from our brewery, and over the next couple of months we will highlight these unique producers whose crops capture the terroir of this once glacial landscape.

Tomorrow Kitchen Ten returns with their BLT extravaganza at 5pm and Saturday we welcome back .

Collaboration alert!

A few months ago we took a short trip to Noon Whistle Brewing’s Naperville facility to bear witness to the union of tropical and dank New World hops with gentle Pilsner brewing techniques. Our Noon Whistle hop gurus sourced the most pungent Citra, cryo Cascade, and HBC 586 hops to season a canvas of cracker-like Pilsner malt. Cold fermented and lagered for months, this West-Coast style Pilsner provides for a perfect hoppy refreshment with the practicality of only 4.5% alcohol by volume

Tropical fruits, citrus, grapefruit, West Coast style dankness and the recognizable crispness of the lager yeast defines our collaboration beer: “Highly Conductive.”

Available on draft and in six packs to-go for a limited time.

These are German gravity kegs, also known as faß. Every first Tuesday of the monthwe hoist one of these on top of our bar at 5:30pm for our customers to enjoy. It’s usually filled with a young version of an upcoming beer. Tomorrow, we’re tapping one of these that we filled with a brand new beer: “Summer Beer.” The finished version of the beer won’t be released until June.

We hope you come join us and give a warm welcome to our special guest tapper Jonathan Fritz of .

Feliz Cinco de Mayo! Fresh “Chela Chido,” our Mexican lager we originally brewed for Bar Chido is flowing out of tap 4. Feel free to bring food from your favorite taco stand to our taproom. May we suggest Bar Chido? Our friends The Outpost Mexican Eatery-DG sling great tacos right down the street from us too.