Lagunitas Brewing's Chicago Facility Is Now Operational

By Chuck Sudo in Food on Apr 21, 2014 8:30PM

Chuck Sudo/Chicagoist

Last Friday marked a milestone occasion in Lagunitas Brewing’s Chicago brewing operations as the brewery began bottling beer at its Douglas Park facility.

Lagunitas has built a massive facility. Its current capacity of 500,000 barrels a year easily makes Lagunitas the largest brewery in Chicago. And they aren’t finished with construction; Lagunitas will begin construction of another brewhouse within the facility in autumn that will expand their brewing capacity to 1.3 million barrels a year.

If the speed with which Lagunitas built their current facility is an indication the autumn construction will go by in the blink of an eye. Executive vice president of operations Ash Notaney said the build-out took around six months between receiving the German-built brewhouse equipment and the first pouring of concrete to the first mash hitting the kettle two weeks ago.

Lagunitas’ Chicago facility will concentrate on making the brewery’s core brands. Both Notaney and Mary Bauer, the head brewer for the Chicago facility, said the Douglas Park site will brew beer 24/7 with periodic shutdowns for cleaning and sterilization of the brewhouse and keg and bottling lines. Bauer, an Aurora native, and her team will work closely with Lagunitas’ Petaluma team to ensure quality control and the taste profiles of the beers remains consistent. This is necessary as the beer leaving the Chicago brewery will fill orders from the East coast to the Rocky Mountains.

Lagunitas' head brewer in Chicago, Mary Bauer, gestures to the brewery's Meridian grain silos. Each of the 8 silos is capable of holding 110,000 pounds of grain. (Chuck Sudo/Chicagoist)

"Right now, we're trying to keep up with the demand for our beers with retail and tavern accounts," Bauer said. "Dialing in the recipes and brewing as constantly as we will here will go a long way toward making that happen." As for whether there will be space available in the facility for barrel aging and experimental beers Bauer said that isn't in the works, "but it could be down the line."