For a town that loves beer, Chicago makes little of its own.
Until recently, Goose Island was the only brewery in Chicago making packaged beer. The major brewpubs in the city limits — Goose Island’s bars in Lincoln Park and Wrigleyville, Rock Bottom Brewery downtown and Piece in Wicker Park — seem few considering Chicago’s boozy reputation.
Once an important brewery town, Chicago never has managed to reclaim its pre-Prohibition glory days, but a few entrepreneurs will be damned if they don’t try. Two new breweries, Metropolitan Brewing and Half Acre Beer Company, have opened in Chicago in recent months with dreams of restoring the city’s neighborhood brewing tradition, a passion project if ever there was one given the trail of failed microbreweries that have come before them.
“I want Chicago to be known as a craft beer mecca because of what’s made here, not what’s shipped here,” said Tracy Hurst, half of the husband-wife team behind Metropolitan Brewing (5121 N. Ravenswood Ave.), which operates out of a former auto body shop in Ravenswood and brewed its first batch of beer in December.
Half Acre, which brewed its first batch in its new North Center brewery (4257 N. Lincoln Ave.) in February, has brought the number of packaging breweries in Chicago to three.
“There was a void in Chicago,” Half Acre co-owner Gabriel Magliaro said. “I would never have opened a brewery in Denver because there are 100 breweries within 100 miles.”
Metropolitan Brewing, which expects to produce about 840 barrels of beer in its first year (it has the capacity to make 1,440 barrels annually), and Half Acre, currently producing 900 barrels per year (capacity: 4,000 barrels), are tiny in the grand beer scheme. Goose Island, which ranked 25th among all beer companies in 2007 beer sales by volume, produced 99,700 barrels last year (capacity: 140,000 barrels).
Half Acre, founded two years ago, previously had contracted with a brewery in Wisconsin to produce its beer as the company got on its feet. The new North Center digs fulfill a long-awaited goal of making Half Acre a Chicago neighborhood brewery “to bring back that intimacy between brewer and consumer,” Magliaro, 30, said.
Meantime, a massive gut rehab project is under way in Logan Square, where Revolution Brewing, a brewpub, hopes to open by the fall in a former newspaper printing plant.
“The response has been overwhelming,” said co-owner Josh Deth, 34, who also owns Handlebar, a Wicker Park restaurant/bar. “Chicago had a hole to be filled.”
Moonshine in Wicker Park also is getting back on the brewpub scene after taking its brewery offline six weeks ago for renovations. The restaurant expects to make all its beers available again in the next two weeks, brewmaster Bob Kittrell said.
The new projects come as Americans’ appetite for craft beer has grown.
Craft beer accounted for 4 percent of the U.S. beer market last year, up from 2.5 percent five years before, according to the Brewers Association, a craft beer trade group based in Boulder, Colo. Non-craft domestic brews have been flat and imported beer is down.
But Chicago has a long way to go before it can out-brew other cities. Portland, Ore., with 30 breweries, has the most in the country and is known in beer geek circles as “Beervana.”
Home to the oldest brewing school in the country (Siebel Institute of Technology and World Brewing, in Lincoln Park), Chicago is known for its excellent beer bars. And it’s poised to become a major player on the big beer stage, with MillerCoors expected to move its corporate headquarters to 250 S. Wacker Drive this summer.
Once upon a time, though, Chicago was one of the most important brewing cities in the country. Before Prohibition, there were 50 to 60 breweries operating in the city at once, said Bob Skilnik, author of “Beer: A History of Brewing in Chicago.”
But when Chicago went dry, the breweries closed, and post-Prohibition efforts to revive them fell flat. The craft beer craze of the 1990s spawned some microbreweries, but many suffered problems with inconsistent beer, underfunding or inadequate distribution, Skilnik said.
The last two packaging breweries in Chicago were Chicago Brewing Co. in Bucktown (1989-1996) and Pavichevich Brewing Co. in Elmhurst (1988-1997), both of which succumbed to financing problems. Goose Island, which opened its Clybourn Avenue brewpub in 1988 and started packaging its beer in 1995, has been Chicago’s lone packaged beer ever since. “It’s been a little surprising there haven’t been more considering it’s such a beer town, but it’s really expensive to do business in Chicago,” said Goose Island brewmaster Greg Hall, son of founder John Hall.
Goose Island has been smart about distribution, Skilnik said. Now part of Anheuser-Busch’s distribution network, it is available in 14 states, plus England and Sweden.
Half Acre is available in 175 bars and stores in Chicago, while Metro is in 30 bars and stores in Chicago and in the suburbs.
Skilnik, a believer in drinking local, hopes Chicago’s new brewers are successful, but said his message to the Hursts of Metropolitan Brewing was: “God Bless you kids, I think you’re crazy.”
Doug and Tracy Hurst say they’ve learned from the mistakes of their brewing predecessors. But the amount of work the couple is shouldering, with the occasional help of volunteers, does, arguably, seem a bit crazy.
When they’re not brewing beer, the Hursts are filling bottles, slapping labels on the bottles, folding cardboard cases and — more often than not — cleaning, they said.
“I think right now we’re getting paid about $1 an hour, maybe less,” Doug Hurst, 40, said before sprinting off to check the temperature on a vat of wort — a water-and-grain mixture that, after fermentation, will become beer.
“If we weren’t doing it together, we’d never see each other,” Tracy Hurst, 36, said as she cut keg collars.
The Hursts are blogging about their experience (metrobrewing.blogspot.com) in hopes it can serve as a “blueprint” for others, Tracy Hurst said.
“We’re taking a huge risk doing this,” she said, “but as far as I’m concerned, that’s what life is about.”
– – –
Kicking it Old Style
Old Style wants Chicagoans to remember the beer that raised them.
A new campaign touting Old Style as Chicago’s neighborhood beer includes new packaging and a return to “kraeusening,” a German double-fermentation process meant to make the beer richer.
Old Style was kraeusened from its 1902 founding in La Crosse, Wis., until it was purchased by Stroh’s Brewery in 1996. Pabst, which acquired the brand in 1999, said it’s bringing kraeusening back at the urging of loyal customers.
The new Old Style is more expensive to produce, and many retailers are raising the price. At Binny’s, for example, a case of 24 cans now costs $16.99, up from $12.99. Consumers likely won’t feel the price hike at bars, Pabst executives say.
Once Chicago’s most popular beer, Old Style lost prominence in the ’90s, due in part to lowered prices that made some people think they were getting a worse beer, said Pabst CEO Kevin Kotecki. Nor did Pabst have the budget or inclination for flashy advertising that drove beer drinkers to Budweiser and Miller.
The new packaging — with a brick motif inspired by Chicago brownstones — and new radio and billboard ads using the “Think local, Drink local” slogan aim to rustle up hometown loyalty.
“We need to remind people of what this brand is about,” said Bradley Hittle, Pabst’s chief marketing officer. Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz
– – –
WHAT’LL IT BE?
We asked RedEye’s loyal Twitter followers — and beer drinkers — for their absolute favorite Midwestern beer. Drink up with RedEye at twitter.com/redeyechicago.
@TheKatoAgency
Boulevard Pale Ale, though the infamous Blvd Unfiltered Wheat is golden, too.
@joeavella
Avellabrau. I make it myself. It’s mostly Robitussin and almond extract.
@blurradial
New Glarus Spotted Cow. But I hear you can’t get NG there. Which is weird for a Wisconsinite to hear.
@Cmannelli
Schlafly. Period. It is the best.
@TheGravityStorm
Three Floyds and good old Goose Island Naughty Goose and Matilda.
@budgetingbabe
Just found Rhodell brewery blackberry ale. … Much better than working on a BlackBerry and great for a summer day.
@CarlosRobertoXN
#312 – Goose Island is pretty awesome.
— COMPILED BY SCOTT KLEINBERG.
– – –
HIP HOPS
These local brewpubs make a trip to their bars worth the drive. Metromix staff
Two Brothers Brewing
30 W. 315 Calumet Ave., Warrenville, 630-393-2337
Despite its obscure location, Jim and Jason Ebel’s 1-year-old brewpub, Two Brothers Tap House, is consistently standing-room-only on weekends. Try Monarch White ($5), an unfiltered Belgian-style white brewed with coriander and bitter orange peel for a refreshing, citrusy finish.
Rock Bottom
1 W. Grand Ave. 312-755-9339
Brewmaster Pete Crowley is constantly recognized for his work at the downtown location of this national chain. Current seasonal brews include Fire Chief Irish Red and Crowley’s Irish Stout. Both are $5.35 a pint.
Moonshine
1824 W. Division St. 773-862-8686
This Wicker Park fixture has come a long way since its BYOB beginnings in 2003: An on-site brewery has been operating for the last year and, starting Monday, a new ESB (extra special bitter) called S.O.B. is on tap for $3 (through Friday; it’ll cost $5 regularly). By mid-April, expect to see a lineup of six new house brews.
Flossmoor Station
1035 Sterling Ave., Flossmoor, 708-957-2739
While Flossmoor Station’s well-regarded brewer, Matt VanWyk, is leaving the south suburban brewpub, you still can taste one of his final creations, X-IPA, which debuted earlier this week. Be sure to toast the new brewer, Bryan Shimkos.
Piece
1927 W. North Ave. 773-772-4422
Jonathan Cutler, resident brewmaster at this Wicker Park mainstay, routinely has delicious award-winning microbrews on tap. Until Cutler rolls out his annual batch of Top Heavy Hefeweizen ($7 22-ounce pints, $16 growlers) in a few weeks, you can sip $7 12-ounce glasses of Mooseknuckle barley wine.
———-
aelejalderuiz@tribune.com
