Part Seven: An Introduction to New Chicago Beer Company

Jesse Evans, owner of the New Chicago Beer Co. Photo by Alex Rich.

In 2003, Chicago natives Jesse Edwin Evans and his brother Samuel began their first brewery in Oakland, California. They started small, brewing two recipes and working out of their home, selling to whatever bars or liquor stores would take their product.

"We had a really good opportunity," Jesse said. "We were basically doing a home brewing set-up that was not as nice as this at all. It was like one turkey frier."

A few years later, after selling off their company in California, the brothers are starting on an entirely new undertaking on Chicago's South Side. In an old meat packing plant, a dilapidated old building undergoing major renovations, the brothers hope to be brewing beer by this summer.

But the brewery will be part of a larger ecosystem of businesses, including a restaurant and bakery, that will be housed in the building at 1400 West 46th St. The goal is to have a completely self-sufficient food and drink collective. The Chicago Reader has a good graphic on how this will be achieved, but the basic rundown is this:

1. Beer production produces lots of waste from grains used to make malts and produce different flavors, which are usually discarded. At New Chicago Beer Co., they will be used to produce bio-gas when mixed with thousands of pounds of animal waste from a nearby animal processing plant (the 50/50 mix of carbohydrates and animal fat is best for producing bio gas).
2. The bio-gas, is then put into a massive turbine (which used to be an engine on a decommissioned military bomber) which uses the natural gas to create steam power, which will heat the building, create electricity, and, perhaps most importantly, heat the kettles that will brew cook the beer.

The eco-friendly experiment in brewing will