In July 2008, at the second annual AleFest Chicago at Soldier Field, I came across a bearded man serving beer from a jockey box made from a double-decker Craftsman toolbox. Bearded men weren’t in short supply at the event, but the Craftsman box was new to me, and so was the beer. In fact, it was new to everyone: Metropolitan Brewing, owned and run by Doug (the bearded man) and Tracy Hurst, didn’t even technically exist yet. Its Ravenswood facility was still under construction. When it began selling beer six months later, it would be the first new brewery in Chicago in ten years.
The Hursts remember a meeting of the new Chicago brewers in 2010 at the Hopleaf, where they were joined by Gabriel Magliaro of Half Acre and Josh Deth of Revolution. “Michael [Roper, owner of the Hopleaf] walked by and said, ‘Whoa, the entire Chicago beer scene is sitting at one table,’” Tracy says. And Metropolitan has helped develop the rest of Chicago’s beer scene: John Laffler and Dave Bleitner of Off Color, Gary Gulley of Alarmist, and Kevin Lilly and Dave Dahl of Lo Rez all interned at Metropolitan before starting their own breweries.
As for what’s next for Metropolitan, Tracy says that the new bigger space will allow them to do more. “When we were in Ravenswood we were too cramped, so we couldn’t fit one-off [collaboration] brews. We’ll do more collabs here now that we have the space. We’ll expand [distribution] this year into some neighboring states,” she says.
Sat 1/19, 8 PM-midnight, Metropolitan Brewing Taproom, 3057 N. Rockwell, 773-754-0494, metrobrewing.com, $80.
