Our Kedzie Brewery Expansion

Our brewery expansion at our Kedzie production facility is officially underway! We’ve had crews digging, drilling and filling to make way for our new 120-barrel brewhouse and 800-barrel fermenters. 

While digging for the foundation of our new brewhouse, we uncovered some pieces of Chicago history. Crews started finding a bunch of old dairy containers, soda bottles and even a beer bottle in the ground. Many of these came from companies like Borden Dairy, United Dairy Co., H.W. Tessendorff, and Standard Brewery.

Our logistics Manager Katie knows some folks who know about the bottles. ​“A buddy of mine works Union Pacific Railroad and said that this area was a railroad switchyard. The concrete company that’s next to us was also a concrete company a long time ago. There is a gravel quarry in Elmhurst who would dump gravel over here, that would be later be ground for concrete. The majority of what we found was dairy container, medicine bottles, and soda and beer bottles. All of these were likely discard from railroad workers.”

Workers also found a larger, very rusted wrench in the ground. It now hangs proudly over our brewery workshop. 

Check out our photo gallery above or in all its high-resolution glory here to see some shots of our construction and some of the cool artifacts we found. We’re excited that these pieces of history revealed themselves to us.