Suburban craft brewer Pollyanna is buying and reopening Chicago’s shuttered Alarmist brewery and taproom

Banking on the shelf life of a shuttered Chicago craft brewery, Pollyanna Brewing & Distilling has purchased Alarmist Brewing, with plans to reopen its Sauganash taproom and bring back its acclaimed beers this year.

Alarmist Brewing, best known for its flagship Le Jus, an award-winning Hazy IPA, closed the doors on its 12-year-old Peterson Avenue brewery and taproom in February amid a flat post-pandemic craft beer market.

Lemont-based Pollyanna, a 12-year-old brewery with three suburban locations, is making its first foray into Chicago, looking to expand its geographic reach, brewing capacity and portfolio with the Alarmist acquisition.

“Our long-term strategy was to get into the city in some capacity, but in a way that we could be relevant to our community,” Ryan Weidner, president & CEO of Pollyanna, told the Tribune. “Finding out what Alarmist had built in that Sauganash neighborhood was really a perfect alignment for us.”

The acquisition, announced Thursday, includes Alarmist’s 11,000-square-foot brewery and taproom, its beer brands and intellectual property. In addition to a six-figure purchase price, Weidner said Pollyanna will make a significant investment into upgrading the Alarmist facility.

Plans include expanding the courtyard, converting 4,000-square-feet of warehouse space into a private events space and building an artisanal pizza kitchen from scratch. Weidner is hoping to reopen the enhanced taproom and brewery by the fourth quarter, with three Alarmist beers on tap: Le Jus, Pantsless and Crispy Boy.

“The only change is the sign on the building in the Sauganash neighborhood will be a Pollyanna sign,” Weidner said.

Weidner is hoping to get the Alarmist beers back in distribution by Labor Day to bars, restaurants and stores, initially utilizing a contract brewer. Once the Peterson Avenue facility is upgraded and approved by regulators, Alarmist production will move back to its old home, along with some high-volume Pollyanna beers to take advantage of the increased capacity, he said.

While both Pollyanna and Alarmist launched amid an explosion of Chicago-area craft breweries in 2014, the suburban brewery has not only weathered a broader industry downturn, but positioned itself for opportunistic expansion.

Pollyanna started with a taproom and brewery in southwest suburban Lemont, adding a smaller satellite operation in Roselle in 2017. In November 2019, the company opened a microdistillery in St. Charles – just before the pandemic hit.

As business recovered in 2022, Pollyanna opened a fourth location – a cocktail lounge and social club – in Lemont. While sales across the company have been flat in recent years, Weidner has been on the lookout to acquire struggling breweries that would dovetail with his expanding operation.

There have, unfortunately, been plenty to choose from.

The number of craft breweries in Illinois fell to 288 last year, down 5% in the past two years, according to the Brewers Association, a Colorado-based trade group. Meanwhile the economic impact generated by the mostly small Illinois craft brewers has dropped 10% to $2.8 billion as beer sales decline across the industry.

The Chicago market has seen dozens of closings and consolidations in recent years, including Metropolitan Brewing, one of the city’s oldest craft breweries, which filed for bankruptcy and closed in 2023.

In March, pioneering Chicago craft breweries Half Acre and Maplewood merged under one corporate umbrella, maintaining separate brands while sharing brewing facilities to better navigate a challenging craft beer industry.

When Gary Gully opened Alarmist in 2014, it became a fixture in the Sauganash neighborhood and a major player in the Chicago craft brewery scene for its whimsically-branded beers, especially Le Jus, the first Hazy IPA to win gold at the Great American Beer Festival in 2018.

But post-pandemic sales never fully recovered for Alarmist and Gully made the decision to close the doors and cease production on Feb. 1.

Weidner had been in discussions with Gully since the beginning of the year, and the pair finally reached a deal to merge this month.

“We are thrilled that Pollyanna is continuing Le Jus, Pantsless and our other beers,” Gully said in a news release. “The reopening of the taproom with a restaurant will be a game-changer for our friends in the Sauganash neighborhood.”

While financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, Gully revealed an incentive that may have pushed it over the top.

“I’m also thrilled that Ryan has offered me free lifetime beer and pizza,” Gully said.

rchannick@chicagotribune.com