Lagunitas' Sneak-Peek Party
by Jim Vondracek on 12/09/12
Last Thursday, Nancy and I went to a fantastic party thrown by Lagunitas Brewing. Lagunitas is opening a brewery in Chicago, near 16th and Rockwell on the near southside. Thanks to Jamie Hale and AJ Hudson's Public House for inviting us - it was great fun.
The party was thrown in giant warehouses owned by Cinespace Chicago Film Studios (the largest film stage space outside of Hollywood, we're told, and where Chicago Fire is filmed), there had to be over five hundred guests, entertaining performers and servers from Red Moon Theater, food trucks, and of course, Lagunitas beer.
We saw my friend-in-beer Jessica, her friend Tim, and visited for a while. Jessica writes a really good blog, girlslikebeer.net - I'd say she approaches it like a journalist. She is one of the best resources for information about the exploding brewery scene around
Jessica wrote a blog post about the Lagunitas sneek-peak party and has a couple of photos http://girlslikebeertoo.net/2012/12/07/lagunitas-brewing-company-offers-a-sneak-peek/
The new brewery is going to be built-out in another Cinespace building, which in its former life was a Reyerson Steel plant. We took a flashlight tour through the darkened soon-to-be-brewery. Its huge - seven football fields can fit into the building. There will be a glass-sided, elevated tap room right in the middle of the brewery. The tap room will be open in March 2013, well before the brewery is open - sounds like it would be fun to visit, drink some Lagunitas and watch them build the brewery!
One of the highlights of the evening was, as we were leaving (at our customary early hour because we're old), briefly chatting with Lagunitas' founder Tony Magee. Told him we were friends of Steve Kamp (through our homebrew club, the Brewers of South Suburbia) who brewed his Fusion 8 beer at Lagunitas a few months ago and Tony lit up. After a few minutes, we thanked him for the most fun we've had at a party in a long time, and headed out.
