Crystal Lake Brewing wants to bring craft beer to masses

CRYSTAL LAKE – Before Ryan Clooney starts on a new batch of craft beer at Crystal Lake Brewing, he makes sure all the equipment is spotless.

After Clooney has cleared 1,200 pounds of spent grain out of the huge tank, the brewmaster will get inside with a cloth and bottle of cleaning solution to make sure there’s nothing left over from the last batch that could alter the flavor of the next one. He also cleans the system pipe by pipe and valve by valve.

Then he uses a reverse-osmosis water purification system to fill a water storage tank. Using computer software, he’ll add minerals in exact specifications to match the profile of drinking water found in Munich or Dortmund, Germany, or Burton-on-Trent, England, depending on the style of beer he’s brewing.

“I’m not going to make a beer that’s not to-style – I don’t want to just make some weird off-the-wall beer to say I did,” Clooney said. “Our production beer will always be to-style. When you try our IPA or our Oktoberfest, it’s a great representation of that style of beer.”

That’s because Crystal Lake Brewing is serious about good beer. The company’s 13,200-square-foot production facility at 150 N. Main St. started brewing this summer and opened a large tap room in August. And it has big plans for the future.

“Ryan is kind of a rock star in the brewing world – he has his own following – and he shares our vision, so we leave the beer up to him,” co-founder John O’Fallon said, adding that many of the tap room’s first customers were people who knew Clooney and wanted to try his new creations.

Clooney’s role in the business can’t be understated, and his passion is contagious, Ross said.

Clooney, 43, has come a long way since he started as a home-brew hobbyist in the 1990s. An alumni of Siebel Institute of Technology, America’s oldest brewing school, Clooney had 13 years of commercial brewing experience before joining Crystal Lake Brewing as a partner with co-founders O’Fallon and Chuck Ross.

“When I do a brewery tour, I usually tell people that unless you’re an astronaut or a professional golfer, my job is better than yours,” Clooney said. “And that’s pretty much true. You’d be hard pressed to find somebody else who loves their job as much as I do.”

Crystal Lake Brewing also is as serious about bringing craft beer as many people as possible. The company wants its beer to be on tap in bars and the shelves in stores throughout the Midwest.

O’Fallon and Ross, longtime friends who both own their own businesses, dreamed up Crystal Lake Brewery while drinking on a boat, Ross said.

The two Crystal Lake residents talked about renting 3,000 to 4,000-square-feet of space and seeing what they could. But the plan – and budget – has grown significantly since the idea was first hatched.

“We want to bring more people into the craft beer fold,” O’Fallon said. “A lot of breweries focus on these really big, strong, heavy beers. They have dragons on their labels. We want to be the antidote to that. My concept has always been beer that is easy to drink and hard to put down.”

When Ross and O’Fallon found the former Chevrolet dealership building at 150 N. Main St. in Crystal Lake for sale, they started to think on a bigger scale. It offered a great retail space in downtown Crystal Lake with room for a large tap room and enough space to accommodate future growth.

“The sky is the limit,” Ross said. “Our beer is more traditional, it’s true to style, it’s very session-able. We think we have products that people will continue to enjoy year after year.”

Crystal Lake Brewing started distribution earlier this month with McHenry-based distributor Chas. Herdrich & Son Inc.

“We don’t just want to be a small town brewery,” O’Fallon said. “We want to be a significant regional brewery.”

Crystal Lake Brewing’s facility is able to make about 2,000 barrels of beer a year. That puts it in the growing ranks of microbreweries across the country. Microbreweries produce less than 15,000 barrels a year. Regional breweries have annual production of between 15,000 and 6 million barrels. Large breweries make more than 6 million barrels a year.

With help from Chas. Herdrich & Son Inc., Crystal Lake Brewing hopes to introduce its beer to a wider audience. The company also has plans to begin selling 22 bottles of its beer starting in late October or early November as a way to get its beer into retail stores before next spring, when it plans to start a canning line at the Crystal Lake facility for wider distribution, O’Fallon said.

“We hope to grow throughout the Midwest, but it’s important for us to hit a home run in our backyard,” he said.

Crystal Lake Brewing faces mounting competition. Microbreweries are popping up all over McHenry County and the rest of the country. Nationally, craft beer sales increased 17.2 percent in 2013 while overall beer sales declined 1.9 percent, according to statistics from the Brewers Association, a trade organization. In 2013, craft beer made up 7.8 percent of total U.S. beer sales by volume. In the $100 billion overall beer market, craft beer accounted for about $14.3 billion, a 20 percent dollar sales growth.

“We’re seeing some of the smaller players grow rapidly,” said Bart Watson, staff economist for the Brewers Association. “Ten years from now, these breweries could be much larger.”

In such a competitive market, expanding distribution and maintaining consistent quality can be challenging. But it’s possible to break into the market with a superior product.

“It starts with the liquid,” Watson said. “You need to make a great beer – something that stands out – and make it consistently.”

Opening a brewery hasn’t been easy. Ross and O’Fallon have kept their full-time jobs running their separate businesses. And as the brewery project has grown, the friends have been putting in long hours – often 16- to 18-hour days – on everything from designing logos and making labels to getting permits and training employees.

Expenses also mounted as the project grew. Although he declined to provide specifics, O’Fallon said they invested “a substantial” amount of their own money into getting the business started. And they’ve run into some costly unexpected obstacles. For example, because the tap room has room for more than 180 people, city code requires it to have a sprinkler system. They hadn’t counted on paying $100,000 to install a sprinkler system in their all-concrete building, O’Fallon said.

But opening your own brewery comes with its own perks, too, including just about as much beer as you can stomach.

“It’s been phenomenal,” O’Fallon said. “People have really embraced it. It’s exceeded our expectations.”

Ross agreed: “Opening the doors and having customers just love the place, seeing their faces light up when they drink our beer – it’s been a lot of fun.”

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Crystal Lake Brewing

What: A 13,200-square-foot brewery with a 186-person tap room with three flagship beers and four or five seasonal beers, test beers and specialty brews on tap.

Flagship beers: Slalom King Rye IPA, Wake Maker Pale Ale, Beach Blonde American Wheat Ale

Where: 150 N. Main St., Crystal Lake

Hours: 4 to 10 p.m. Mondays; closed Tuesdays; 4 to 10 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays; 3 p.m. to midnight Friday; noon to midnight Saturdays; and noon to 9 p.m. Sundays.

Information: crystallakebrew.com or 779-220-9288