Beer

New Chicago Beer Company Leaving The Plant

Just a few weeks ago we were talking about the nearly-closed loop that was The Plant, entrepreneur John Edel’s Back of the Yards ecosystem-in-a-building. Two key pieces of it were the 312 Aquaponics farm and the New Chicago Beer Company, insofar as the spent grains from the latter would be fed to the fish at the former, in a textbook example of how to create a near zero-waste cycle. Now, apparently due to delays in the building’s development, which pushed a planned March opening into an indefinite future, New Chicago Beer Company has pulled out of the building and its ecosystem. While it’s certainly not implausible that another brewery can be found, given how much activity is happening on the local beermaking scene, it surely sets The Plant back as well. New Chicago Beer Company founders Samuel and Jesse Edwin Evans expressed support for The Plant’s “amazing space and exciting venture” in a Facebook post, but their primary statement makes it clear that they felt they had no choice but to put their investors and venture’s needs to start operating ahead of The Plant’s vision, which hints at the difficulties any cooperative venture like this faces in serving the disparate needs of all parties. [Chicagoist]

New Chicago Beer Company Leaving The Plant