For a few years now, I've been able to enjoy various Lagunitas Brewing Company beers in the Midwest. I'm particularly found of their IPA and Lil' Sumpin' Sumpin' - one of the few wheat-based beers that I like. My beer fridge usually has one or the other in there most of the time. Lagunitas became more plentiful in the Midwest when they opened a Chicago facility in the Spring of 2014 and you can find their beers on nearly every shelf in every grocery store or convenience store across the region. During a trip into Chicago earlier this year, my wife had a great suggestion - let's go over to the Lagunitas Taproom at the Chicago brewery. It was a drizzly day outside and it was the perfect day to go check the place out.
Tony Magee was a Chicago native who wandered out to Northern California as a young multi-instrumental musician trying to find himself. He ended up playing in a reggae band that toured the country before he became a musical arranger for commercials for Bud Light, Hallmark and Pizza Hut. He fell into another business as a printing salesman whose biggest client was a San Francisco bank. When the Iraq war hit in 1991, the bank decided at the last moment to cut a promotion on Visa credit card solicitation - pretty much negating what would have been a big payday for Magee. Then in the following weeks the bank decided to move their advertising projects to Seattle and Magee suddenly went from a six-figure paycheck to having bill collectors calling at all hours of the day.
With his marriage crumbling and his house facing foreclosure, Magee was able to stave off doom and gloom for the next few months. Finally seeing the financial light at the end of the tunnel, Magee and his immediate family spent Christmas of 1992 together. His younger brother had been working at a brewpub up in Oregon and he presented Tony with a homebrewing kit as a present. Magee immediately liked playing with the equipment and had been thinking of doing something other than the print-sales game.
Pictured right - Tony Magee. (Photo courtesy Chicago Tribune.)
Magee had been a regular at the Marin Brewing Company, the oldest brewpub in the area. He loved the taste of the craft beers and he was intrigued by what he could come up with on his own. His first foray into brewing was a beer that tasted similar to Anchor Steam. He thought it was good, but his second batch - a pale ale - was much better. That piqued his interest in brewing even more. Magee went to his local homebrew shop and asked, "Which yeast strain might convert the most sugars to alcohol?" The proprietor blew him off saying that a real brewer wouldn't ask that question.
That didn't stop Magee who read a slew of books on micro-brewing. Then he spent his nights and weekends coming up with a business plan to start a microbrewery. The only problem was that he figured that it would cost over $100,000 dollars to get a brewery off the ground.
Undeterred, Magee found a guy through an ad who was selling a Grundy brewing tank system. Thought of as antiquated and obsolete by brewers in the U.S. and Europe, the man bought a number of the Grundy tanks for pennies on the dollar and was offering them to budding brewmasters on the cheap. Magee drove to a small town in the San Joaquin Valley north of Bakersfield to see the tanks and brewing assembly the man had made for a Russian customer who had backed out of the deal. Once Magee found out the cost of the tanks and brewing apparatus, he quickly figured out that there was no way he could afford them. "What can you afford," the man asked. Magee said, "$5000 bucks." The man hesitated, took a long look at Magee and saw an earnest young man who had the passion to start his own craft brewery. The man said, "OK, it's a deal," and Magee went back home to start brewing beer.
In early 1993, Magee ended up renting a 750 square foot space near his home in Lagunitas for his three-tier brewing process. Still with a day job in printing sales, Magee would mill the grains he would use for his next batch around 9 p.m., then get up at 3 a.m. to mash the grains. By the time he boiled the mash and cleaned up, it was 10 a.m. and he went to work.
By his own admission, the initial beers that Magee made ranged from horrid to excellent. The funky brewing system caused some of the fluctuations at first before Magee finally figured the whole thing out. After procuring a $5000 kegging machine, he personally distributed the beers to local bars in the touristy areas of Marin County. His pale ales and amber beers were an immediate hit with many who drank them, but grocery and beer stores were leery of the Lagunitas beers because they had an alcohol by volume content of a minimum of 7%. Most place were selling beers with an ABV of 5%, at most. The store owners were worried that with the higher alcohol content, people wouldn't drink the beer as fast.
It was when Magee came out with his signature India Pale Ale that Lagunitas took off. His small 750 square foot brewery had proved to be too small - plus a pesky septic tank was causing some problems. Lagunitas moved into a larger facility in Petaluma. Along with that, he needed to change his Russian brewing machine and the old Grundy tanks. He was growing at a wicked fast pace, but he soon found that banks were not willing to finance his growing operation. However, he found a number of "angel" investors that believed in his little beer company and he soon proved them correct. By 2000, he had expanded his Petaluma brewery and built a brewpub onto the side of the building.
Lagunitas came out with a number of wacky brews with wacky names. Magee embraced the marijuana counter-culture in Northern California and detested the "elitist" beer drinkers who had a tendency to look down their noses at some of his beers. Magee despised this established pompous culture so much that when asked his philosophy behind his beers by beer "experts", he would purposely write up long-winded and very wrong synopsis of what made him come up with a specific concoction. Many of these reasonings had very thinly veiled marijuana references throughout the writings. Suffice to say, the beer "elitists" weren't amused. (When I read that in Tom Acitelli's great book on the history of the craft brewery movement in America, The Audacity of Hops, I immediately liked Magee and I liked his beers even more.)
It was no surprise that Magee thumbed his nose at both conventional thinking and at authorities with some of the names of his brews. His Kronik beer was deemed by the federal government that it was not a suitable name because of the thinly veiled urban reference to marijuana. Magee put a "censored" sticker over the front of the bottle, reapplied for the name to be accepted and the government said it was OK. In 2006, Lagunitas was shut down for a period of time after federal agents observed some patrons smoking marijuana during an open house before the current brewpub was opened at the Petaluma facility. Magee came up with a commemoratory brew called Undercover Investigation Shutdown Ale.
Many of the Lagunitas beers had "420" references on the labels - the universal code of hipsters for smoking marijuana - until Atlanta-based SweetWater Brewery - known for their 420 Extra Pale Ale (also a very good beer and a sometime occupant of my beer fridge) - charged Lagunitas with copyright infringement. Magee dropped all the "420" references saying it was time to move on. (Batch runs at Lagunitas, however, all end in 420.)
By 2010, Lagunitas was brewing 106,000 barrels of beer a year. (A barrel of beer is 31 gallons.) In 2011, Magee announced an expansion that would increase the company's brewing capacity to 600,000 annually. To do that, he looked back toward his home town of Chicago and found a property in the Douglas Park neighborhood in North Lawndale on the city's southwest side the used to house the Cinespace Film Studios which moved to a larger facility on 60 acres a couple blocks from its original studio. (Cinespace provides production for movies and television shows that are shot locally in Chicago.) And before Cinespace was in the building, it was a former steel mill. By April of 2014, the Lagunitas facility was up and running and the taproom opened a few months later.
In September of 2015, Heineken acquired a 50% stake in Lagunitas and promptly announced a plan for worldwide expansion of the Lagunitas brand. They announced a larger brewing facility in Azusa, CA that will push Lagunitas output to nearly 2 million barrels annually. Because of Heinekin's investment in the ownership of Lagunitas, the Brewers Association - an organization that promotes small, independent craft breweries - no longer classified Lagunitas as a "craft brewery". Magee scoffed at this and criticized the Brewers Associations guidelines for what "is" and what "isn't" a craft brewery. His beer hadn't changed, he just partnered with an international company to grow his brand. That set off a whole new discussion from both sides of the "purists" and the guys like me who like to drink Lagunitas as to Magee "selling out" his moral obligation to sustaining the craft beer movement. Magee said that the criticism leveled at him by those who deemed Lagunitas not worthy now that they were bought by "big business" seemed like a "frat boy mentality" where they could only see one option - keeping the brewery small and quaint - and not the multiple options Magee sees in the growth of Lagunitas brand.
(As an aside, my favorite beer in the whole world is Kona Big Wave Golden Ale. Kona Brewing Company is a member of the Craft Brew Alliance along with breweries such as Widmer Brothers and Redhook. Anheuser-Busch/InBev bought a 32% stake in the Craft Brew Alliance in 2012. Had A-B/InBev not bought a nearly 1/3 share of the Craft Brew Alliance, I would not be able to walk in to my local grocery store and pick up a sixer of Big Wave Golden Ale. A-B/InBev was able to use its distribution network to deliver Kona beers that were once only available in Hawaii, California, Oregon and Washington just seven years ago to all 50 states today. And guess what? The beer is the same as it was BEFORE A-B/InBev bought them. These large breweries are not going to screw around with a winning recipe these smaller breweries had before they were purchased.)
To make matters even worse for those wringing their hands over the large beer corporations taking over the smaller craft brewers, Magee sold the remaining 50% of his stake in Lagunitas to Heinekin just days before we visited the Chicago brewery and taproom. Magee will stay on as the CEO of Lagunitas and will oversee the day-to-day operations of the three breweries and work on distribution plans with Heinekin to take the brand all over the world.
It was a 10 minute Uber ride from the near west side of Chicago to the Lagunitas Brewery, a large nondescript building at the corner of W. 17th and S. Washtenaw. (see map) The parking lot on the north side of the building as packed with cars. We saw some people going in a side door and we followed them in. We were greeted by a guy at a stand checking I.D.'s. He warned us that the wait to get into the taproom would be around 35 to 45 minutes. "Cubs were rained out today," he explained. "Lots of people who were going to the game came here."
The long hallway from the stand was black lit and painted with florescent colors on the wall. It was kind of a surreal feeling walking down the hall, but rather cool, as well.
At the end of the hallway was a large tiled piece of art that depicted the lady on the logo of the Lagunitas Lucky 13 red ale that was first brewed in 2006 to commemorate 13 years of business for Lagunitas.
If there was any immediate fallout from beer lovers with Lagunitas being fully purchased by Heineken, well, it wasn't evident that day. The line to get into the taproom started about 20 feet before the end of the black-lit hallway, then curved around and stretched down another long hallway.
The tasting room was open allowing those in line to go get a beer and enjoy it while they were waiting to get into the taproom. If the amount of people in the tasting room and in line was any indication, there were a lot of people waiting to get into the taproom.
Like most breweries, there's a gift shop at Lagunitas. We took some time to browse around to take a look at what they had to offer. Our neighbor likes to collect stickers from breweries and brewpubs so we picked up some stickers from the gift shop to give to him. They had a nice collection of clothing, glassware, and other various tchotchkes to choose from.
After a nearly 40 minute wait (I normally don't like to wait, but we were there, and, hey! What else were we going to do on a rainy Saturday in Chicago?), were allowed to go up the two flights of stairs to the taproom level. We encountered sort of a common area just outside the taproom where people were seated on couches and comfy chairs enjoying a beer.
Inside the taproom, we found a large room with community tables full of people. There was a bar area on one end and on the opposite end was a stage that featured live music. That afternoon the Black Oil Brothers were playing on the small stage. Lagunitas is planning on building an amphitheater that will seat 500 to 600 people for concerts, as well as a roof top bar. Both are scheduled to open in 2018.
We were fortunate to get a couple seats at the very busy bar. It's a long rectangular bar that had about a half-dozen bartenders working furiously to keep up with the beer orders. It took us a couple minutes to get the attention of one of the bartenders so we could order up some beer.
We got a couple of freshly brewed Lagunitas IPA's to enjoy while we listened to the music and took in the scenery. They have a short food menu in the taproom that features sharable snacks like a sliced meat and cheese tray, chips and salsa, nachos and beer mussels. There's a short list of burgers and sandwiches on the menu that proudly announces there are no microwaves or deep-fryers in the tap room's kitchen. The food on the menu at the Lagunitas tap room is also locally sourced, organic, and seasonal and nearly everything is made with beer.
Outside of the tap room was another common area that overlooked the brewery, itself. More sturdy wooden tables were found out there for people who wanted to get away from the din of the tap room.
The brewing facility was rather impressive. The total square footage of the Chicago plant stands at 300,000 and they are planning on adding an additional nearly 10,000 feet for a shipping facility in 2018. The labyrinth of pipes that symmetrically wove through the plant was pretty impressive. When the Lagunitas Chicago operation first opened in April of 2014, they were able to brew 2,000 barrels of beer daily. Additional installed tanks and brewing apparatus doubled the output by November of that year.
There are tours daily at the Lagunitas brewery in Chicago at 1 p.m., 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. (The first two tours are tasting tours, while the 5 p.m. tour is not.) There was a 3 p.m. tour that was going on on the catwalks over the brewing facility when we were there. Quite actually, from inside and just outside the tap room you could see a large portion of the brewery.
Other than the long wait to get into the place, we had a good time at the Lagunitas taproom. It's certainly tough to beat fresh beer and live music in a casual setting on a rainy afternoon. If you're into craft beer - and Lagunitas is still craft beer in my book contrary to what the Brewers Association says - and you don't mind that a large European brewery now owns Lagunitas, it's a great place to visit for a tour, to have a beer in the tap room, or to check out the gift shop. (The taproom at the Lagunitas brewery in Chicago is open five days a week - Wednesday thru Sunday - from 12 noon to 9 p.m.)
Hello, I love this biography of Tony and the company. I am writing a paper on Lagunitas, and I am wondering what sources you used to learn about the details of the company's growth? Could you forward me your sources or please explain how you came to learn this info?
Thanks.
Posted by: Andrew Spores | November 24, 2017 at 01:03 PM