The Mythology of Rabid Brewing
By David Nilsen
In a quiet office park behind a Home Depot in Homewood, Illinois, sits a brewery steeped in mythology that serves as a refuge for the weird and wonderful. And they also happen to brew really good beer.
“I feel like we have created our own mythological universe,” says Raiye Rosado, who co-founded Rabid Brewing with her husband, Tobias Cichon, in 2017. “We called on all the great traditions and where one didn’t exist, we wrote our own. That’s what this mural is all about. It’s the creation of beer as we see it.”
Raiye is referring to a large, hand-painted mural above the Rabid Brewing taproom, which depicts a mythical origin story for beer in which fantastical creatures pour the golden elixir out for the denizens of this imaginary world.
The mural was created by New York-based artist and illustrator Annabelle Popa.
“My passion is mythology, folklore, monsters, creatures,” says Annabelle. She says the 9”x16’ mural gave her the opportunity to explore many different components of that passion. “My favorite part, just because I love animals, was this weird moose god that they were harvesting the hops from.”
Fantasy and mythology drive much of what Tobias and Raiye do at Rabid Brewing. As you enter the front door of the brewery, your eyes look up to the huge mural telling the mythical backstory of Rabid’s beer, and then they fall to the smaller but no less remarkable macabre accents around the space—strange skulls adorned with too many horns, nightmare beings drawn in chalk along the walls, and a taplist filled with imaginative names like Lilliputian Warfare, Cobra Combat Serum, and Gnome Runner.
One of their annual releases celebrates not only fantasy and mythology, but also excellent chocolate and coffee. Dwarves of Doom is a 10% ABV Imperial Stout brewed with coffee from local roaster Smuggler’s Coffee and Ecuadorian cacao from Ethereal Confections in Woodstock, Illinois, on the northwest side of Chicago.
Ethereal provides cacao for a number of breweries (you can listen to an interview with Michael and Marisa from Ethereal in Episode 08 here), and Raiye and Tobias immediately noticed the aromatic quality of their nibs. They felt the Ecuador nibs provided a pleasing earthiness to anchor the robust stout.
The aroma of Dwarves of Doom leads with surprisingly bright, fresh coffee for as big of a beer as it's housed in, along with dark bread and roasted grain and some subtle cocoa. The palette carries a good deal of acidity from this trio of roasted ingredients, with subtle spice and a big push of dark coffee. The cacao is mostly incorporated into the roasted malt profile, adding deeper complexity. This beer is bold but complex, loud but light on its feet.
Annabelle drew the label art for the Dwarves of Doom label, and Rabid provides some entertaining backstory for the beer:
“Be still! The Dwarves have lit the fires. The war cry has sounded. Crafted deep beneath the mountain with the finest coffee and chocolate, may the Dwarves of Doom use fury and fire to guide your way.”
You can listen to my full interview with Raiye, Tobias, and Annabelle in Episode 29 of Bean to Barstool!