Something's brewing in beer-making

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. (AP) - His fondness for a beer made at the former Illinois Brewing Co. in downtown Bloomington led Chad Bevers to take up a new hobby - brewing beer at his Heyworth home.

Thirteen years later, he's on a quest to open Lil' Beaver Brewery, which he envisions as a small operation with a tasting room in south Bloomington.

The man sitting next to him at the now defunct downtown bar was the guy who brewed the beer Bevers liked.

"He said, 'Thanks, that was my recipe.' He took me down into their brewery in the basement and he showed me the whole process," recalled Bevers. "I was like, 'This is awesome. I could do this.'"

Within a week he bought a home brewing kit.

"The next thing you know I was making beer on my kitchen stove, and I've progressed from there," Bevers said. "It was something that I really adapted to and really enjoyed. I kind of upgraded my equipment over the years. I got some pretty high-end stuff."

More than 1.2 million people brew their own beer at home in the United States, according to the American Homebrewers Association - host of the world's largest beer competition that last year awarded Bevers a silver medal for his spiced stout.

The national advocate for home brewers also estimates that home brewing grows between 10 to 16 percent every year.

"And we've definitely noticed in the last four years that it's grown in this community," said Kyle Karraker, owner of Twin City Homebrewing, a supply store in downtown.

Karraker said his store, which has between 75 to 100 regular customers, saw a 20 percent growth in its client base between this year and last.

"I think one of the reasons is the explosion of craft beers," he said. "There are so many new breweries opening up every day. There are now 40 or 50 breweries just in the Chicago area."

A lot of the people starting those breweries started off as home brewers, said Karraker, also noting that the owners of two Twin City breweries, Bryan Ballard and Matt Potts, started off as home brewers.

Ballard owns White Oak Brewing and The Hop Shoppe in Normal. Potts, who opened Destihl, a brew pub-eatery-microbrewery, in 2007 in Normal, is expanding with construction of a $14 million beer-brewing complex in northeast Normal.

"If you look at the craft beer giants like Dogfish Head, Sierra Nevada, Fat Tire or New Belgium, they all started out pretty much as home brewers," said Kevin O'Leary, president of the Association of Bloomington-Normal Brewers, which its members affectionately call Abnormal Brewers.

"It was a passion of theirs and they wanted to take it further," he said. "They wanted to get their beers to the public because they thought it was good enough to share."

Being able to share his home brew more widely also is motivating Bevers, a warehouse manager for Midwest Food Bank in Bloomington, to go into business for himself.

"No matter where they live, home brewers cannot sell their products unless they open a brewery," said Bevers. "That's the only way to do it."

Bevers has donated his home brews for sampling at Bloomington-Normal Jaycees' Bruegala charity fundraisers, "and the fans have consistently asked for more," he said.

"I thought it would be fun to see what the general public thinks about the beer I make," added Bevers. "The response was amazing. People were lined up. People were chanting for my beer. They really, really enjoyed. It felt good."

After he placed second in 2015 in two of the largest home brew festivals in the country, Bevers decided the time was right to turn his hobby into a business.

"The craft beer industry continues to grow at an amazing rate, and I feel Bloomington is a good location for us to start our brewery," said Bevers.

But not many home brewers are able to make the leap to a business venture.

"It's somewhat cost prohibitive to open a brewery," said Bevers. "We're going to be spending over $100,000 on just equipment alone just to open up a very, very small brewery."

For a nano-brewery about one-third the size of a microbrewery with total output of about 1,000 barrels a year, Bevers and business partner Dale Thomas settled on a building at 16 Currency Drive to lease.

It was zoned for business/agricultural use.

He asked for a Bloomington code change, which city staff decided to expand with City Council approval in June to include small-scale production of everything from craft beers to artisan candles without forcing businesses to be in a manufacturing district.

"That was a big, key thing to happen," said O'Leary. "Maybe something like that possibly can happen for Normal, too."

Bevers said it could be six months to a year before he can open because it could take that long to get regulatory approval at federal, state and local levels.

Source: The (Bloomington) Pantagraph, http://bit.ly/2aSN1yn

Information from: The Pantagraph, http://www.pantagraph.com

This is an AP-Illinois Exchange story offered by The (Bloomington) Pantagraph.