USA, IL: Is/Was Brewing’s grand opening is set for noon Saturday, August 17

Ravenswood’s newest brewery is hosting a grand opening Saturday, August 17 to celebrate its new headquarters and showcase its flagship beers, Block Club Chicago reported.

Is/Was Brewing’s grand opening is set for noon Saturday, August 17 at the brewery’s new home at 5121 N. Ravenswood Ave.

“We’ll have a fresh batch of our flagship beer, live music from Andrew Lawrence and the Harold’s Chicken Truck will be there too,” owner Mike Schallau said.

The taproom will have 10 of its saison beers on tap in addition to guest drafts from Goldfinger Brewing Company, Hop Butcher For The World and Begyle Brewing.

The grand opening coincides with Is/Was Brewing’s fifth anniversary of first releasing Will Be, its saison-style farmhouse ale, at Beer Temple, 3173 N. Elston Ave.

Schallau got into craft brewing while attending DePaul University, he said.

“DePaul didn’t have classes on Friday, so I would take the bus to Half Acre. I ended up falling in love with beer and started home brewing while in college,” Schallau said.

After graduating with a music degree in 2011, Schallau got a job at West Lakeview Liquors, 2156 W. Addison St., where he continued a self-directed education in craft beers, he said. At the pioneering craft beer store, Schallau was introduced to and fell in love with European craft brews, specifically saisons, he said.

“While working at West Lakeview, I met two guys who had started Pipeworks Brewing Company because they’d actually met and had worked at the same liquor store before I started working there,” Schallau said. “I started volunteering for them and would go down doing whatever they needed me to do.”

Schallau cut his teeth at Pipeworks, eventually becoming its director of operations, overseeing recipe development, its barrel aging program and other daily responsibilities. He later became a partner there, he said.

During his seven years at Pipeworks, Schallau enjoyed making beer, but it wasn’t until he enjoyed a La Vermontoise saison brewed by Brasserie de Blaugies and Hill Farmstead that he decided to open what would eventually become Is/Was Brewing.

“This is why I got into this in the first place,” he said. “I wanted to make a saison really well via a very specific process that’s unique to the yeast we use as well as the timing and temperatures and just a bunch of other things.”

Saisons are generally low-alcohol beers with fruity and natural flavor profiles.

About five years ago, Schallau put in his notice at Pipeworks and launched Is/Was, initially using the equipment at Marz Community Brewing and Begyle Brewing to make his artisan beers, he said.

The brewery’s name comes from Schallau’s interest in philosophy, including concepts focused on someone’s sense of self across time. He referenced the “Ship of Theseus” thought experiment, which asks if a ship that has all of its component parts replaced over time is the same shop.

This philosophy ties into Is/Was Brewing’s saisons because they’re all bottle conditioned — which means the beers are re-fermented in the bottle which allows the beer to change over time, Schallau said.

“The idea being, the beer is something now, was something else when it was in the tanks was something else when it was initially released. And it’s going to be something else every time you interact with it,” Schallau said. “It’ll continue to evolve in the bottle further down the road.”

Is/Was Brewing’s new taproom and production brewery is the former home of Urban Brew Labs, 5121 N. Ravenswood Ave., which closed in 2022.

Schallau quietly opened the brewery in July after moving in with the goal of first introducing Is/Was Brewing to Ravenswood’s neighbors before hosting a larger opening event this weekend, he said.

“We’ve really been very lucky in that we don’t have to do much infrastructural changes to it. We were able to focus more on creature comforts and the aesthetic for the taproom,” Schallau said.

The brewery will continue to focus on producing saisons, but its new facility lends itself to experimenting and eventually expanding its offerings.

“Before moving into our own space, that entire time, we’ve only made saisons. It was never the plan to only do that. But we were making such a small amount of beer I figured it was better to get really good at the thing we really cared about before branching out into other stuff,” Schallau said.

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