USA, IL: At least four new breweries launching in Chicago in the coming weeks

Not even COVID-19 can slow Chicago’s beer industry. At least not yet, the Chicago Tribune reported on July 16.

As the city navigates life during a pandemic, at least four new breweries are launching in the coming weeks.

All four were in planning long before COVID-19, and all four openings were at least somewhat delayed by the pandemic. But as bars and restaurants open to on-premise customers at reduced capacities, the new breweries join one of the world’s most robust brewing landscapes.

It is, however, a very different landscape from just six months ago.

Taproom sales, once an engine of the industry, have been crippled by the pandemic. After weeks of total shutdown to in-person drinking, occupancy is currently limited to outdoor seating and 25% of indoor seating. With infections on the rise, however, both Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot have threatened to curtail crowds yet again.

Still, the brewery owners — some new and some expanding current operations — say they remain optimistic about brewing in Chicago and its suburbs.

“In the short term I’m bearish, but in the long term I’m still very bullish,” said Greg Shuff, who launches Crushed By Giants, a brewpub in a splashy downtown location on July 17. “The trick is to survive till next summer, basically.”

Also opening in the coming weeks are The Perch Kitchen & Tap, a Wicker Park brewpub for Finch Beer Co.; Orkenoy, a brewery that doubles as an artist enclave in Humboldt Park; and Noon Whistle Brewing’s new production brewery and taproom in Naperville as well as its vastly expanded taproom at its original Lombard location.

Plenty more brewery projects remain in planning, though their futures are hazier than the haziest IPAs.

Odious Cellars, a Logan Square brewery specializing in wild and oak-aged ales, had its efforts to get a loan smashed by the pandemic. Instead of building out a brewery of its own, it is launching as a contract brand at Pilot Project Brewing. Construction is delayed indefinitely, Odious Cellar co-founder Tim Coe said.

“While we intended on filling plenty of barrels in 2020, COVID decided to put us over one instead,” Coe said.

Also in flux is Pipeworks Brewing’s long-planned brewpub in Logan Square, a project that has been slow to develop since being announced in late 2017. Construction has yet to begin — and it won’t until COVID-19 is largely a memory, Pipeworks co-founder Gerrit Lewis said.

“We unfortunately cannot risk sinking money into something that we can’t even operate,” he said.

In some cases, the forthcoming breweries would prefer to delay their openings, but can’t due to financial pressures. In others, such as the expansion that will more than quadruple Noon Whistle’s Lombard taproom, second thoughts abound.

Its new production brewery, which began operating this week, still feels like a smart investment, Noon Whistle co-founder Paul Kreiner said; sales of packaged beer are surging and the new brewery will allow Noon Whistle to make better and more consistent beer.

But any investment in on-premise sales has become an uncomfortable gamble. He and his partners almost assuredly wouldn’t have built a kitchen at their Lombard taproom, Kreiner said. Instead, the expansion opens this week and the kitchen opens in early August.

“The ball is rolling forward so we’re trying to stay positive,” Kreiner said. “But we’re afraid and cautious with every move we make.”

The new and expanded breweries face questions they couldn’t have fathomed when planning began months or even years ago: How do you launch in the midst of a modern health crisis? And can the battered coronavirus landscape support Chicago’s 200 breweries already operating — plus at least four more?

Bart Watson, chief economist for the Colorado-based Brewers Association, said that after years of torrid growth, brewery openings are down about 20 percent in 2020 as compared to a similar point in 2019. The decrease most likely points to a crowded industry rather than the COVID-19 pandemic, he said.

However, Watson said, the pandemic is likely to slow openings further, even if the data — new brewery permits filed with the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau — won’t show up until fall.

“Very few people who had already raised money and bought all of their tanks are just going to give up and say ‘We’re not even going to try to open,‘” Watson said. “So we’d expect this to start showing up over a period of months.”

Shuff, who also operates the Dryhop and Corridor brewpubs, had planned to open Crushed By Giants in mid-May with an emphasis on tacos and a flagship hazy IPA called Neon Werewolf. He envisioned it as the rare downtown brewpub catering to a mix of apartment dwellers, white collar lunchtime diners and swarms of tourists.

Instead the menu has been trimmed by one-third and the pandemic has made two of those demographics largely nonexistent. The location, in what previously housed Heaven on Seven on the second floor of a retail complex at 600 N. Michigan Ave., presents an additional challenge during the COVID-19 era: no patio or outdoor dining space.

“The trick right now, more so than ever, is getting the word out that this downtown location inside another building is there and we’d love to pour some pints for you,” Shuff said.

As far as health precautions, Shuff said, he’s doing “everything we can think of,” which includes 6 feet between tables, masked and gloved staff, nightly cleaning and sanitizing, and hand sanitizer stations. Paper menus have been replaced by QR codes that allow customers to see beer and food options on their phones.

Some of the new breweries may be better positioned than others. The Perch (1932 W. Division St.) is a joint investment between Finch and 4 Star Restaurant Group (which also operates the nearby Smoke Daddy barbecue restaurant) in what was previously The Boundary bar in Wicker Park. It is a sprawling 5,000 square feet, featuring an outdoor patio and a large retractable door facing the sidewalk, and sits in the heart of a bustling neighborhood.

Finch will pour its core brands made at its Near West Side production brewery while also employing a 3 ½ barrel brewing system, positioned at the front of Perch, to make “small batch experimental stuff that we always would liked to have done,” said Finch co-owner Jamie Lisac.

Menu items, including fish, steaks, burgers and vegetables, will largely be made on a wood fire grill.

It will be a spacious, family friendly pub, which is something Wicker Park can use, pandemic or not, Lisac said. And even during a health crisis, it’s an important next step for Finch, which has navigated a tumultuous journey, including an ownership change, a name change, an ambitious expansion that never happened, the acquisition of a smaller brewery that didn’t stick, multiple moves and a previous attempt at a brewpub that lasted only six months.

The Perch opens in early August.

“COVID won’t be here forever, and this is a long term proposition,” Lisac said. “This is a hurdle to get over, but we will get over it.”

Operating at a reduced capacity isn’t ideal, Lisac said, but he envisions it “as a temporary thing — six months to a year.”

The size, layout and scale of the space will allow The Perch “to operate and be successful under those restrictions. For some it works, for some it doesn’t,” Lisac said.

Orkenoy is in a very different position. It will be launched in late July or early August by two first-time business owners, Ryan Sanders and Jonny Ifergan, who met while working at Lagunitas. (Sanders, Orkenoy’s chef, worked in Lagunitas’ kitchen, and Ifergan, who will brew, was a bartender. Ifergan, a home brewer of 12 years, also plays guitar for a rock band called The Kickback.)

Orkenoy is hardly a conventional brewery. What was first envisioned as a space doubling as an art gallery has morphed into what Ifergan described as “a creative gathering space where artists can share ideas in a relaxed atmosphere.”

“It was never supposed to be a brewery — it was always supposed to be more than that, more of a lifestyle brand,” Ifergan said.

The beers will be inspired by Nordic farmhouse ales, and also include some harder-to-find guest brews and a cocktail and coffee program. The food menu is “all about shareables and snacks,” including charcuterie and an updated take on smorrebrod, a Danish open-faced sandwich. (One features Spam.)

Orkenoy was envisioned as part of a world where people are out and active; it is in the Kimball Arts Center, which sits beside the western end of The 606 elevated trail. The brewery founders envisioned the trail as “the current bringing things to us,” Sanders said, with people stopping in for a bite and a beer or to grab provisions to go.

All that is now in doubt. The partners have crafted several plans for opening based on the latest government guidance regarding COVID-19.

“We have to set ourselves up for any scenario because literally every day we’re receiving new information and having to adapt to it,” Sanders said.

Orkenoy would wait to open if it was possible. It isn’t.

“The reality is we’ve been working at this for two years and bills are coming due,” Sanders said. “There’s only so long you can get free rent or hold off the bank. If I could wait until things calmed down a bit and everyone was ready, would I? Yes. Absolutely. The reality is we’re incapable of doing so.”

17 July, 2020