One hundred years ago, the beer Chicagoans drank came from long-forgotten places like the Illinois Brewing and Malting on 38th Street, Ogren Brewing on Irving Avenue and Pfeifer’s Berlin Weiss Beer Company on Leavitt Street, among many others, according to Bob Skilnik’s 2006 book Beer: A History of Brewing in Chicago.

Today, Half Acre Beer Company is dialing up blends in North Center while Goose Island Beer Company does so near Lincoln Park, in Wrigleyville and on Fulton Street. Revolution Brewery opened earlier this year in Logan Square. And this fall, Pete Crowley’s drafts will spill out of taps and into pint glasses at the forthcoming Haymarket Pub and Brewery in the West Loop.

For Crowley, the award-winning brewmaster at Rock Bottom Brewery in Chicago until May, Haymarket and other beer makers are returning Chicago to an era when neighborhood-based brewers crafted beer for a local community.

“I think we’re going back to the time when there was a brewery and pub on the corner of your town and that’s where you drank and where you went,” he said during a recent tour of the Haymarket space at Randolph and Halsted.

Haymarket is the brainchild of Crowley and his friend and partner, John Neurauter. A mutual friend introduced them about three years ago, and the pair quickly bonded over a shared love for well-prepared beer and food.

“We realized we had the same philosophy on slow-cooked, good, homemade food and the idea of not wasting time with crappy beer or crappy something to eat,” Neurauter said. “Make it right. Make it delicious.”

That shared love provided the inspiration for Haymarket.

“We’d be toying with the idea — ‘Oh yeah, we’d like to open a brewery’ — back and forth,” Neurauter recalled. “It was casual at first and it didn’t die.”

The two began scouting locations, scanning restaurant space listings and talking to friends in the industry. Late last August, Neurauter said they walked through the space at the southeast corner of Randolph and Halsted. Bar Louie and Blue Point Grill had shuttered their doors just days earlier.

The location was “home run,” Crowley said, big enough at 9,000 square feet to accommodate the necessary brewery equipment, a kitchen and seating for patrons. It offered links to Chicago’s culinary lore as the former home of Barney’s Market Club, which closed in the early 1990s after a more than 70-year run, and local history.

The Haymarket Affair, the 1886 confrontation between Chicago police and labor organizers that took place just blocks away on Desplaines, was selected as the brewpub’s namesake.

“We never looked at newer places.” Neurauter said. “It just felt like we need something with a little soul in it.”

With the location in place, planning for the brewpub started in earnest. Crowley and Neurauter found a chef in Chris Buccheri, who was introduced to the pair by yet another mutual friend and recruited away from Three Floyd’s Brewing Company in Munster, Ind., to work at Haymarket.

The brewpub will be split into three areas. Up front near Randolph will be a dining room, outdoor beer garden and the main bar. The middle section — which Bar Louie and Blue Point used as a shared kitchen — will be opened up to showcase glass-encased beer fermenters, a walk-in cooler and the kitchen.

The back room, finally, will accommodate a second bar, seats and a stage for Drinking & Writing, a theater series that explores the connections between imbibing, creativity and literature through readings, personal narratives and audience participation during approximately one-hour performances.

Drinking & Writing will make the location its permanent home, and program the space with monthly shows, according Sean Benjamin, one of its organizers, including the forthcoming “The City that Drinks,” which will examine Chicago writers and their habits with alcohol.

“I think it’s going to be one of the first brewpubs … in the city that integrates a theater into it,” Benjamin said. During performances, Drinking & Writing will take a door charge, while Haymarket makes beer sales.

The back space could also be used for tastings, private events, televised football games and, eventually, for live music.

As one meanders through the space, the idea is to carry a pint with you, Crowley said, and see the process of creation. In the open kitchen, Buccheri will prepare and plate homemade sausage, rotisserie chicken and smoked brisket. In the brewing rooms, Crowley and helpers will turn different grains into fermented, sudsy alcohol. Expect to see steam rising and water flowing, mashing, boiling, scrubbing and cascades of hops, malts and rye.

At any given time, Haymarket will offer 16 house-made beers on tap, ranging from classic Belgians and American pale ales to a rotating European-style lager and beers that combine different elements and flavors.

“There has been a really cool emergence in the craft brewing world of a crossover — we call them contemporary American styles — that might take some aspects of American beers, say IPAs, which are very hoppy, and making Belgians that way,” Crowley said.

From the basement, imperial stouts, barley wines and beers laced with coffee will age anywhere from three months to one year in at least 60 charred bourbon barrels.

Ten “guest taps,” meanwhile, at the main bar will be reserved for Chicago- and Midwestern-based brewers, and the bar will stock several dozen bottled beers from other microbreweries.

As it stood last week, Haymarket remains essentially a shell awaiting the equipment for the kitchen, dining room, bars and brewery. Dust still covered some of the stools left behind by the previous tenants, and Buccheri was considering tea samples when a reporter first walked in. Paper covered the windows.

By August, the trio hopes to start serving food, with the first beers made in the West Loop flowing the following month. Then the challenge of cultivating a customer base from the neighborhood and beyond will begin. Crowley believes the local ethic his team plans to bring will help them find their audience. You’ll know who is making your food and drink, he promises.

“Haymarket Pub and Brewery is ours. It is not seven people you’ll never see. It is not some guy who lives across the country who owns 94 percent,” Crowley said. “We own it. So when you come in and you order a beer, you’re talking to the people in Chicago who own it. And we’re here every day.”

Contact: mmaidenberg@chicagojournal.com

---

By Laura from West Loop
Posted: 08/06/2010 2:32 PM

This will bridge a gap for the West Loop - fantastic dining options, a few bars, but nothing like Haymarket - can\'t wait for the grand opening!

---

By Armando Chacon from West Loop
Posted: 07/26/2010 5:03 PM

Welcome to the west loop. We wish you the best and look forward to seeing the space.

---

By Rich R. from Huntsville
Posted: 07/26/2010 1:00 PM

Can't wait until it opens!

---

By J. Hoppie from Old Town
Posted: 07/23/2010 10:31 PM

Sounds like this is going to be a great place! I work in the area and am really looking forward to enjoying a few pints at Haymarket.

---

By Annette from West Loop
Posted: 07/23/2010 10:52 AM

Really looking forward to this new addition in the neighborhood! We'll be there as soon as it opens!

---

By N. from Pilsen
Posted: 07/23/2010 10:25 AM

Nice story. As someone who works in the West Loop, Haymarket Brewing will be a welcome addition.