A Chicago Beer, Brewed Right Here in Wisconsin
It looks local and talks local, but Half Acre
Lager isn't quite local--yet.
August 24, 2007
By Martha Bayne
The Chicago Reader
The brand identity of the new
Half Acre Beer—which launched its first brew, a
lager, last week—is all about Chicago. The label’s
dominated by the silhouette of an iconic Chicago
water tower. The company has office space in the
meatpacking district. And the marketing slogan touts
the label as “growing in Chicago”—eliding the fact
that Half Acre Lager is brewed in Wisconsin, by Sand
Creek Brewing up in west-central Black River Falls.
Now, contract brewing is nothing new—did you know
that Samuel Adams Boston Lager has been made,
variously, at large regional facilities in
Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Rochester, and Portland,
Oregon? But the idea of farming out business across
state lines doesn’t quite jibe with the image of
craft brewers as hands-on artisans, back in the
garage geeking out over hops into the wee hours.
I asked Half Acre cofounder Gabriel Magliaro,
whose business card gives his title as “point man,”
what the deal was. He pointed out that opening a
brewery in the city of Chicago is notoriously
difficult and notoriously expensive, and he and his
partners, Brian Black and Maurizio Fiori, aren’t
interested in losing their shirts. This way, he
said, they can try to accumulate a little capital
before diving into the financial deep end with their
own brew house.
He’s not alone. Contract beers make up about 30
percent of Sand Creek’s business, says brew-master
Todd Kruger. In addition to the brewery’s own roster
of 11 beers, Sand Creek produces peat-smoked stout
for Spring Green’s Furthermore Beer, pilsner for
Saint Louis’s reborn Griesedieck Bros., and green
tea-infused Zen IPA for Madison’s BluCreek. He sums
up his attitude toward contract brewing this way:
“It’s your beer, pay us, have a nice day!”
Until last year Magliaro was the ad director for
Chicago Life, the glossy
magazine supplement to the local edition of the
New York Times, and his
beer-making experience was limited to home brewing
and a couple courses at the Siebel Institute, on
North Clybourn. He’s spent the last 18 months or so
developing Half Acre Lager, working with
brew-masters at Siebel and then at Sand Creek to
fine-tune the recipe. (His partners are mostly money
men.) Along the way he also inked a distribution
deal with Chicago Beverage Systems—after many, many
meetings. “We’re a unique client for them,” he
admits, but the “adult beverage” industry is
changing so fast, with the booming interest in
small-batch and artisanal products, that it’s in the
best interest of outfits like CBS—which was the
subject of some unflattering press last year when
Bell’s pulled out of the Chicago market as a result
of a conflict with the distributor—to figure out how
to deal with the little guys.
Right now bottled Half Acre Lager is available at
six outlets, and most are within spitting distance
of one another in Bucktown and Wicker Park: Jerry’s,
Pint, the Charleston, the Always Open convenience
store at Milwaukee and Wabansia, and the 7-Eleven on
Damen across from the park. (The sixth is Bacino’s
downtown.) Magliaro’s hoping to have about 40
accounts by next month and just bought his first
batch of kegs, so draft lines should be forthcoming.
A Half Acre ale is in the works, on track for
mid-November. Beyond that, he says, he wants to keep
things pretty simple, adding maybe just a seasonal
beer or two as inspiration strikes, and then, y’know,
maybe build that brewery.
But enough about the business plan—how’s the
beer? It’s pretty good: hoppy (for a lager), with a
light, airy body and clean finish. It’s also got
this subtle, unusual citrusy-sweet note that tasted
(and smelled) of oranges. But Magliaro says any
fruitiness is a natural by-product of the
fermentation process: the only thing in his beer, he
swears, is water, yeast, and “lots and lots” of
German malt and Czech Saaz hops. It’s unusually
robust—minimally filtered and lagered for a full 30
days. Good enough to brave Pint for? You be the
judge.
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