A Crown of Horns Fit for a Queen
By David Nilsen
Every July on the grassy lawn beside the brewery, the full hearts behind Rabid Brewing in Homewood, Illinois, host one of the more weird and wondrous beer events you’ll ever attend. Feast of the Goat Queen is an all-day celebration of friendship, imagination, and really good beer.
Feast of the Goat Queen was originally dreamed up as a counterpoint to the testosterone-heavy vibes of Dark Lord Day at Three Floyds Brewery in nearby Munster, Indiana. After a brief hiatus because of COVID-19, the fest has since blossomed into a “Ren Faire for Fae Folk,” a tribute to the ancient Floralia fertility festivals, and an excuse to get beautifully strange.
“We were kind of going for a low-key pagan fertility festival,” explains co-founder Raiye Rosado. “Floralia actually took palce in May, and was an ancient festival that celebrated the goddess of fertility and agriculture. They would release baby hares and goats to run around.”
Feast of the Goat Queen has baby goats, an artists market full of fantastical and mythological arts and crafts, live music, burlesque, wrestling, and appearances by a wandering wizard, Chicago Knockouts Roller Derby, and the Queen herself. Attendees and vendors alike often dress up for the event, donning fantasy- and mythology-themed costumes.
“There was some guy last year who had never been to our place before who was wearing antlers, and he was going around and smudging everything [with a sage bundle],” recalls co-founder Tobias Cichon. “He came up and smudged me and gave me a blessing with whatever he was burning. What was really amazing was seeing not just adults, but earlier in the day, adults bringing their kids and their kids were dressed up as fairies and butterflies and things like that, so that was really cool.”
Crown of Horns
The Feast of the Goat Queen this year will also mark the second annual release of Crown of Horns, a beer first brewed in 2022 as a collaboration between Bean to Barstool and Rabid. The beer is a 4.7% Cream Ale brewed with Philippine Malah Ba Bulong cacao from Ethereal Confections in Woodstock, Illinois. The bean is a relatively new origin imported by Uncommon Cacao.
I had long wanted to brew a light, pale, relatively low-alcohol chocolate beer (so many are heavyweight Pastry Stouts), and Raiye and Tobias were up to try it last year, so we started talking about cacao origins. I had recently tried two of Uncommon’s new Philippine origins through Violet Sky Chocolate, and was particularly drawn to Malah Na Bulong for its strong chocolate foundation and its earthy, herbal, and spicy notes, feeling they would perfectly complement a beer of this type.
Uncommon Cacao began working with Kablon Farms in the Philippines in 2020, sourcing three different micro lots from their 70 hectare, biodiverse farm. The Malah Na Bulong beans are fermented for six days rather than the four days used for the related Bon Bulok lot from the same farm. The more delicate flavors found in Bon Bulok get pushed out because of longer fermentation, leaving the base chocolate foundation behind.
“You get this deeper chocolatey, herbaceous flavor with a little bit of ripe banana,” explains Uncommon Cacao founder Emily Stone. “It has a very sweet note, sort of like fully ripe, sweet banana.”
We brewed the beer with an English ale yeast, and the combination of the cacao and the subtle esters from the yeast yielded an almost Belgian impression, with notes of pome fruit and banana, a silky, fruity cacao note underneath, a touch of earthy and herbal spice, and a gentle but lingering chocolate note.
“I love the dryness it felt like the chocolate was providing at the end,” says Raiye. “It's definitely a chocolate beer, but it's not sweet. It's not thick. I loved that. I loved that approach to it that was so different from what you see elsewhere.”
I can’t wait to taste version 2.0 at this year’s Feast.
Burning of Woes
The most iconic images of the 2022 Feast for me were the Goat Queen herself—a male-identifying performer played the queen, and brought such a vibrant, welcoming, and sensual spirit to the celebration—and the burning of woes.
“When people entered, they met the Goat Queen herself, which was played by our friend Ty Lockhart,” explains Raiye. “Ty invited people to provide offerings at the Shrine to the Goat Queen, and those offerings were in the form of things that are really not useful to you anymore, your woes.”
Guests wrote those woes on small slips of paper which were then stuffed into a wire cage. Well after dark, the lights were turned off and a fire hooper named Aurora began her dance. At the very end of her performance, she set the cage full of papers on fire, symbolically burning away our woes.
“People were really cheering and what I had hoped was that we would feel this sense of communal release,” says Raiye. “And I think we did.”
When the Goat Queen handed me my slip of paper when I arrived, I knew what I wanted to be rid of. I wrote it down, folded the paper, and stuffed it into the basket. Late at night when the lights were cut and Aurora began her fire dance, I moved closer to the fire bin, and when it began to burn and smolder, I tried to believe it would mean something, that the things that weigh us down really can be offered to the night sky. I grew up in a fundamentalist religious home, and left belief behind a long time ago. I try, in fits and starts, to believe there can be something mystical in the world that amounts to more than spiritual cosplay. Sometimes I can believe it, sometimes I can’t. Late at night at the Feast of the Goat Queen as the ashes of woe rose into the night air, I was, for a moment, able to.
As I sipped on Crown of Horns into the night, I was moved by the celebratory joy and sense of camaraderie between attendees, some of whom had never met before the event. The Goat Queen carried a beautiful and graceful kindness that truly welcomed guests into the space. I can’t wait for this year’s edition when we once again offer our oblations to this symbolic goddess.
Feast of the Goat Queen 2023 will take place Saturday, July 22. Tickets are on sale now. Come out, drink some beer, make some friends, and watch your woes burn. Antlers, of course, are optional.