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Pipeworks Brewing launch quenches built-up demand for 'drinking new' in Chicago area
CHICAGO, Apr 17, 2012 (Chicago Tribune - McClatchy-Tribune News Service via COMTEX) --
Gerrit Lewis and Beejay Oslon spent a long time talking about Pipeworks Brewing. Now, finally, they get to live it.
Four years after first envisioning the brewery at an Indiana beer festival, the duo, who barely knew each other at the time of their idea, sent their first beer into the world in mid-March. That double India pale ale, called Ninja vs. Unicorn, sold out in days.
Their second beer, a milk stout brewed with cacao nibs, cinnamon and ancho chilies, hit shelves the following week. They plan to continue releasing a new brew every week or so, forsaking always-available, year-round offerings the way virtually every other brewery does.
It means drinking Pipeworks will be about drinking new.
"It's kind of surreal," Lewis said. "It's been such a gradual process that it's hard to think we're really here and that we really did it."
In what looks to be a year of marked growth for the Chicago area's craft brewing scene _ up to a half dozen breweries aim to open this year _ Pipeworks sounded the first shot. It took long enough.
Lewis, 27, and Oslon, 29, met in early 2008 while working at West Lakeview Liquors, one of the city's longest-tenured craft beer stores. That April, they traveled to Munster, Ind., for the annual release of Three Floyds Brewing's Dark Lord imperial stout. While standing in line, they decided that they, too, should start a brewery.
Oslon, an experienced home brewer, soon scored an apprenticeship with De Struise Brouwers, a renowned brewery in western Belgium. He spent three months with De Struise brew master Urbain Coutteau (at the time Ratebeer.com's reigning world brewer of the year), learning the intricacies of large-scale brewing, bottling and self-distribution. Oslon and Coutteau also brewed a couple of collaborative beers, including a Belgian strong pale ale called Pipedream that both opened eyes at a Belgian beer festival and gave birth to the brewery's name.
Lewis, meanwhile, stayed in Chicago to complete a marketing degree at Loyola University. As with any worthy long-distance relationship, they spent hours chatting by online video, discussing their budding brewery, what each was learning and sometimes to sip the same brews at the same time and compare thoughts. Lewis joined Oslon for a couple of weeks at the end of the Belgian excursion.
"Before that we knew what good beer tasted like," Lewis said. "But we didn't know anything else about running a brewery."
Back in the States, the duo ramped up fundraising. They posted a cheeky, five-and-a-half-minute video on then-nascent fundraising website Kickstarter.com, hoping to raise $30,000. They netted $40,000 (plus another $60,000 through Paypal.com).
Just as important, the Kickstarter.com video helped brand Lewis, Oslon and their developing product. In the buzz-heavy world of craft beer, where drinkers obsess over the newest and rarest, Pipeworks became something to anticipate. It also made Lewis and Oslon increasingly familiar characters as they showed up at the occasional beer festival with taps of home brew even though they were years from launching the brewery.
Now that they have a five-year lease on a space in a former Bucktown awning shop, Lewis, Oslon and lone employee Scott Coffman, 28, who is buying a small ownership stake in the company, spend most of their days there: brewing, bottling, storing, developing artwork. The yellow floor has been replaced with red tile and a series of flags (Chicago, Colorado, Germany) hang from the rafters. Upstairs is the boys recreation room: a carpeted space with a flat-screen television (video game system included, naturally), dozens of spent beer bottles and Lewis' drum set, which he thought he might need to sell to finance the brewery (though he did end up selling two turntables and a vintage keyboard).
Pipeworks has an unusually small system for a production brewery, which is why just seven barrels _ or 1,200 large format (22-ounce) bottles _ of each beer will be released, making the acquisition of each new Pipeworks beer an exercise in persistence and patience.
For now, the bottles are largely available at about 15 stores, and they will occasionally show up on tap at bars like Hopleaf and Map Room. But by summer, Lewis and Oslon expect most of their sales to happen in a shop at the front of their building, including growler fills.
The model of releasing a series of one-offs is based on what is known in the industry as "gypsy brewing" _ a brewer without a brewery making a series of beers on other peoples' equipment. Even with a brewery of its own, Pipeworks opted for that model.
"You go to a brew pub you know they'll have their staples, but there's always a question of what will they do this week?" Lewis said. "We think that's exciting. It's about pushing the envelope and trying something new. When we find something we really like, you bet we'll do it again, but if everyone always brewed the same thing over and over, we'd all still be drinking Miller Lite."
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(C) 2012, Chicago Tribune.
Visit the Chicago Tribune on the Internet at http://www.chicagotribune.com/
Distributed by MCT Information Services
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