• Might Meets Right imperial stout aged in High West manhattan barrels, one of the two beers in Temperance’s first bottle release

I got to Evanston’s Temperance Beer Company a bit late—I didn’t manage a column till last May, when their kegs had been turning up in Chicago bars for seven or eight months and they’d just debuted on retail shelves with Gatecrasher English IPA. (I felt a little better, and even a tad prescient, when Gatecrasher won a silver medal at the Great American Beer Festival that summer—I’d given it an immoderately positive review.)

  • Temperance definitely knows how to make with the classy labels.

Speaking of packaging, Gilbert tells me that Brad Shaffer of Spiteful Brewing brought his brewery’s bottling line to Temperance—and that’s not an easy piece of machinery to move. “We couldn’t have bottled anything without Spiteful,” Gilbert says. “They are the best.” Shaffer helped run the line last weekend, alongside a Spiteful affiliate who goes by Beer Me Fitz. Tony Magee at Lagunitas can rattle his saber at Sierra Nevada all he wants—in the trenches of Chicago beer, the prevailing ethos is still “I got your back.”

  • The beer had a better head right at the pour, but it didn’t stick around long. This was my third photo.

I was half expecting the manhattan Might Meets Right to taste much more aggressively bitter than it smells, given how often that happens with this species of stout. But nope. It’s lush and sticky, with a lovely zing of carbonation that keeps it from cloying. Milk chocolate and vanilla come through strongly, along with roasty, sugary espresso and something densely fruity, like dried figs and dates. The note that I’d identified as cherry in the aroma comes across more like raspberry here. The booze is prominent, with a bit of an herbal bite, but it’s not hot.

One last thing: Sunday at noon, the Hopleaf hosts Super Stout Sunday, whose gonzo tap list includes Temperance’s barrel-aged Root Down porter. Brewed with chicory, licorice, and smoked malt and aged in Few Spirits rye whiskey barrels, it was rolled out for the brewery’s first birthday on September 18. (Gilbert says he’s surprised there’s any still around, since only ten sixth-barrel kegs left the tap room.) Also on offer are Founders KBS, Firestone Walker XVIII, Surly Eight, and seven Bourbon County beers, among them all five 2014 variants and 2012’s Cherry Rye. There’s no cover, so expect the bar to be mobbed.