CHICAGO — There is no shortage of colorful characters on a Critical Mass bike ride. Bicyclists encircle their wheels with pulsing, rainbow lights. A man peddles with ease on a giant, precarious penny-farthing. Two dogs ride in their owner’s boat-shaped sidecar, sniffing cyclists passing by.

Amid this mass of rolling humanity, there is only one Pint Peddler: Lydia Miller.

Avid cyclists and local Instagrammers may already know Miller by her distinctive ride: a blue bicycle — more like a large tricycle — carrying a huge, black metal box on its back wheels. The box houses two taps with four kegs, a boom box blasting Miller’s favorite tunes and an orange neon sign that reads “Drinkers with a cycling problem.” Another colorful sign proclaims, “PINTS TO THE PEOPLE.” 

Miller, 29, often passes out free pints at Critical Mass and other Chicago festivities as a way to share her love of homebrewing and make the events a little more unique.

On a recent Saturday evening, she handed out beverages to fellow cyclists and passersby in the middle of Logan Square before a 10-mile ride to a beach party in Rogers Park. She featured four drinks on tap that night, including a traditional cider, a mango rum beverage and a nonalcoholic seltzer sprinkled with a hint of cardamom.

Lydia Miller pours a beer from the Pint Peddler bike, loaded with home-brewed beer and non-alcoholic iced tea, on a Glow ride, a group ride through Downtown on Friday, Aug. 22, 2025. Credit: Victor Hilitski for Block Club Chicago

Miller envisioned her ultimate party bike specifically for Critical Mass, a monthly bike ride throughout Chicago that aims to take back the street from cars while having a bit of fun doing so.

“Pints to the people” is more than just a sign on Miller’s bike: it’s emblematic of the democratic spirit behind the Pint Peddler. Though she will accept Venmo tips, Miller rejects ever selling her drinks.

“I give it up for free because I don’t want to deal with the business side and this is more for fun, as a community thing,” she said. “At Critical Mass there’s been some people trying to sell things now and it’s not the vibe that I want to go for. Critical Mass is for fun and it’s meant not to be bombarded by people trying to sell you things all the time.”

Lydia Miller and other participants of the Glow group ride gather around the Pint Peddler bike, loaded with home-brewed beer and non-alcoholic iced tea, on Friday, Aug. 22, 2025. Credit: Victor Hilitski for Block Club Chicago

An avid homebrewer who lives in Ukrainian Village, Miller started off making mead and expanded into ciders. She enjoys brewing her own beer but because she has celiac disease, she can’t taste test what she makes.

“I brew every week, so one person or a group of friends cannot drink five gallons a week, or I hope they can’t,” she said. “I just kind of started brewing a lot. And I have always bike commuted and have always been interested in bikes.”

In a moment of inspiration, or perhaps hubris, Miller strapped a five-gallon keg to the back rack of her old Schwinn and pedaled about five feet before the bike started shaking. Her experiment went through several iterations and more advanced engineering before arriving at its current state.

A friend at West Town Bikes gave her an old Divvy bike with a built-in trailer that was used Downtown to fix other bikes. Another friend gave her a motor from his old electric bike. The box that holds the tap towers once advertised Swedish chocolate.

Once Miller figured out that the kegs had to be configured horizontally, she went down a rabbit hole researching different types of silicone tubes.

A moving bar presents several challenges for a good pour, Miller said. Since cycling shakes up the kegs, her initial beers had too much foam, so she started loading beers that were a little flat in anticipation that the ride would create more bubbles.

Lydia Miller sets up her Pint Peddler bike, loaded with home-brewed beer and non-alcoholic iced tea, before heading out on a Glow ride, a group ride through Downtown on Friday, Aug. 22, 2025. Credit: Victor Hilitski for Block Club Chicago

Lydia Miller fixes a leak at the beer tower of her Pint Peddler bike, loaded with home-brewed beer and non-alcoholic iced tea, before heading out on a Glow ride, a group ride through Downtown on Friday, Aug. 22, 2025. Credit: Victor Hilitski for Block Club Chicago

Miller is a multihyphenate who favors vintage, neon-colored shirts from the 1980s that match the retro playlists she blasts from the speakers inside her bike’s box. Not only does she brew and work on her Frankenstein bike, she tinkers with nearly every hobby available at Pumping Station One, the volunteer-run hackerspace in Avondale, in between her day job as a technical designer for a clothing brand.

Pumping Station One maintains its “Weird Science” aesthetic but has evolved beyond computer technology. Inside the sprawling warehouse at 3519 N. Elston Ave., members can weld, woodwork, 3D print, sew, roast coffee and get involved in any manner of making. 

“Just whatever you could think of making, you can go in there and make it,” Miller said. “You’ll just roam around and there’s people that you know, and they’re working on something and you’ll help them out or ask them what they’re doing. So it’s more of a social club with tools.”

She learned welding to cut out the hole for her speaker on her bike and asked the electronic speaker group at the makers’ lab for advice about her amplifier.

“I would just go to somebody that was hanging out there and [say] ‘Hey, how do you do this thing?’” Miller said. “And usually people have lots of ideas on how to do it, and it’s usually like, ‘Oh yeah, here I can show you how to do this part.’”

Lydia Miller, arts area host at the Pumping Station One, is setting up her Pint Peddler bike with home-brewed beer and non-alcoholic iced tea, before heading out on a Glow ride, a group ride through downtown Chicago on Friday, August 22, 2025. Victor Hilitski for Block Club Chicago Credit: Victor Hilitski for Block Club Chicago

That DIY sensibility isn’t limited to two- and three-wheeled modes of transportation. Ahead of the Great River Parade in July, Miller told a friend she wanted to take a boat down the river. A few days later, her friend found a 14-foot fishing boat on Facebook Marketplace. Together they painted it primary colors.

They fit seven people in the rowboat and brought along a keg with a plastic skeleton strapped to the taps, dubbing their vessel “The Pint Paddler.”

None of them knew how to row.

“We’re all really bad at rowing,” Miller said. “So we were zigzagging.”

Miller’s curiosity seems to know no limits. The self-described serial hobbyist said she’s always picking up new skills at the makers’ lab, and she’s constantly refining her Pint Peddler ride.

“There are different renditions, and I’ve always been working on it,” she said. “It’s kind of always the project that I’ve been upgrading different things on.”

Miller plans to pedal — and peddle — at the Chicago Midnight Marathon Ride on Oct. 11.

“We meet at midnight at the Art Institute and ride the full marathon route the night before the race starts,” she said.

Though Miller doesn’t stick to a formal schedule, she typically announces upcoming rides and pop-ups by word of mouth and on social media. Keep up with her on her Pint Peddler Instagram.

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