Is Lagunitas Chicago expanding their brewing plans already?
Yes.
We awoke this morning to this post from the everpresent Adam Nason at Beerpulse, who informs us of the announcement (via Twitter, of course) from Tony McGee that they’re expanding the planned capacity for their Chicago based brewery to add a second brewhouse and fermentation cellar. According to McGee, that means the near Southwest Side brewery will be able to produce 1.7 MILLION barrels of beer.
Whoa.
Per Nason, this primes Lagunitas to be the second largest craft brewery in the world (when you include their California based operations), behind Boston Brewing. If you adhere to the no-publicly-traded-beer rule laid out by Aleheads earlier this month, that means the biggest damn craft brewer around has set up shop right here in Chicago. Take that, Asheville, Grand Rapids and all of Oregon.
This is all going on in our backyards.
“The world belongs to craft brewing.”
Awesome, huh? Good Friday, indeed.