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In a May 2012 tweet following the opening of Half Acre's taproom in the 47th Ward, Chicago Alderman Ameya Pawar invited craft beer darling 3 Floyds Brewing Co. of Munster, Indiana, to follow suit ("Half Acre opening a taproom next to our office. Message to Three Floyds: come to the 47th Ward!"). While nothing has come of that yet, the 47th is surely Chicago's most beer-centric ward. Stretching roughly from Belmont and reaching north to Foster and Ashland and west to California, the 47th Ward has three breweries (Begyle, Half Acre, and Spiteful), another one in the works (Dovetail), and a planned brewpub (Band of Bohemia). Lower rents make the ward attractive to breweries, and the area's abundance of residents in their 30s and 40s makes higher-quality, higher-priced beers a commodity in demand, says Jim Poole, Pawar's chief of staff. "Alderman Pawar sees brewing as a positive business and a growing industry. I think the neighborhood has really embraced it." In addition to breweries, several serious bars and restaurants with great beer lists operate in the district, and the ward is home to Brew Camp (4639 N. Damen Ave., 773-784-2400; brewcamp.com), a mecca for home-brewing supplies and classes; Bitter Pops (coming to 3345 N. Lincoln Ave.), a planned craft beer retail shop and taproom; and the headquarters of the Cicerone Certification Program (see Ray Daniels profile, above). The only thing missing in the ward is a field of barley—but given Pawar's hustle, that's not out of the picture. Ray Daniels lives quite a beer-full life: A faculty member at the Siebel Institute of Technology brewing school and an investor in Revolution Brewing, he is also the brother-in-law of the owner of Lagunitas Brewing Company. But perhaps most noteworthy, Daniels is the founder and director of the Chicago-based Cicerone Certification Program (cicerone.org), which certifies beer servers, cicerones, and master cicerones worldwide. He started out drinking American lagers at his Texas college bar, the Dixie Chicken, but a chance encounter with a craft beer in the late '90s changed his life. The Cicerone idea: "It came out of my experiences in the marketplace all over the country, mostly from going t h e s c h o l a r Ray Daniels into bars and being served bad beer." That life-changing beer: "It was at a hotel bar in Washington, DC. I remember tasting Sam Adams and going, 'Wow, what is this? This is really amazing.' That was probably my first big, eye-opening, there's- something-going-on-here kind of beer. And then a few years later, I started home-brewing and got caught up in the whole thing." His capacity for throwing back: "In the immortal words of one of my bosses at the Brewers Association, 'It's a marathon, not a sprint.' Slow and steady. When you talk about professional drinkers, they're people who don't get out of control. Tomorrow's another day. And, you know, thank God for Uber." Ward of Plenty With breweries, beer bars, restaurants, and retail outlets, the North Side's 47th Ward is Chicago's beer HQ. illustration by istock