E-Malt.com News article: USA, IL: Half Acre Beer Company to open second brewery in Chicago

Founder of Chicago Half Acre Beer Company Gabriel Magliaro is opening a new brewery on Balmoral Avenue, a mile and a half north of the Lincoln Avenue location where the company launched nearly six years ago, Chicago Tribune reported on March 24.

Magliaro said the plan is to make beer in the new Half Acre by October, with a restaurant and taproom to follow. Half Acre will continue to brew at its original location, but with the majority of the brewing heading north, the Lincoln Avenue taproom will likely be expanded.

The Balmoral brewery, which is about 60,000 square feet (compared to 13,000 square feet on Lincoln), will likely take on production of Half Acre's biggest-selling beers — year-round offerings like Daisy Cutter and Pony Pils — in a new 30-barrel brew house. The brewery's offices will also be moved there.

The Lincoln Avenue facility will be home to more experimental and smaller batch brews, Magliaro said.

"There won't be a ton of duplication" between the breweries, Magliaro said. "We'll allow each place to go through its exploratory process."

So what will happen with all that additional Half Acre beer? There will be more releases and they will be more widely available.

Sold primarily in Cook County, Half Acre plans to blanket the suburban counties, Magliaro said. The beer will also no longer be sold on allocation. Because there has been demand for virtually every drop of beer that Half Acre makes, accounts are limited to buying restricted amounts. That will end.

We can also expect to see more seasonal releases in cans, like Heyoka and Akari Shogun.

"We don't have exact ambitions on how much beer we're going to make," Magliaro said. "We're going to take off the allocation from the places where we do business and get the lay of the land."

"We'll see how we feel about things."

Expansion on the East Coast is likely because it is "natural for us to sell beer in places we know," Magliaro said.

"We didn't rush into this choice," Magliaro said. "We explored many scenarios, and slowly started to figure out that having a brewery within arm's reach of the current brewery lets the two buildings impact one another."


28 March, 2014