Half Acre Beer Company


Half Acre Beer Company is a brewery in Chicago, Illinois. The company was founded by Gabriel Magliaro in 2006, with its office located in Chicago. The recipes for the beers were developed in Chicago and the beer was initially brewed at Sand Creek Brewery in Black River Falls, Wisconsin. Half Acre's first beer, Half Acre Lager, debuted in August 2007.

History

In March 2009, Half Acre Beer began production in its own brewery on Lincoln Avenue in the North Center neighborhood of Chicago. Building upon their growing popularity, a tap room adjacent to the brewhouse opened in 2012. A 2013, Chicago magazine annual poll named the Half Acre tap room the city's 8th best bar. Due to its continued success, a kitchen was added in January 2016, completing the transition to a full service brew pub. In 2015, the brewery expanded by opening a second, larger brewhouse on Balmoral Avenue in the Lincoln Square neighborhood of Chicago, approximately a mile and a half from the Lincoln Avenue facility.
Since 2007, the company has sponsored the local bicycle club Half Acre Cycling.
To minimize waste from brewing, the company challenged engineering students from Northwestern University to find the best ways to reduce or reuse byproducts.

Beer

Half Acre brews five year-round beers, as well as a number of seasonal beers. In the past, Half Acre has brewed dozens of other beers.
When asked about the citrus flavor of Half Acre Lager, Magliaro has stated that the only thing in his beer is water, yeast and "lots and lots" of German malt and Saaz hops.
In October 2014, Half Acre Heyoka won a silver medal at the Great American Beer Festival in the category of American-style IPA. In January 2015 Heyoka was renamed to Senita after members of the American Indian Movement objected to the term "heyoka" being used for commercial purposes. In June 2015 the beer was renamed again, to Gone Away, after another brewery claimed that the name Senita infringed too closely on the name of one of its beers.