An hour before Chicago's newest craft brewery, 5 Rabbit, launched its inaugural event last month, co-founder Isaac Showaki was trying to remember how to be a brewery owner.
It was just the fourth time he had connected a CO2 tank to the blue plastic cooler that dispenses the beer he and his partner, Andres Araya, quit their jobs to create. Soon, a sellout crowd of 80 that had paid $35 each would file into the National Museum of Mexican Art in Pilsen to drink that beer.
Without the CO2, it would come out flat.
"Let's see if I can remember," Showaki said, pliers in hand and fiddling with tubes snaking between the tank and cooler. "Randy knows everything. He showed us how to do this."
Randy is Randy Mosher, a longtime Chicagoan and well-regarded beer teacher, author, label artist and home brewer. It's his experience Araya and Showaki rely on as they make the transition from Mexico City marketing guys to Chicago beer guys.
Mosher, a minority owner, wrote the recipes for 5 Rabbit beer, designed the bottle labels and is the brewery's institutional knowledge. Araya, 33, and Showaki, 27, are the ones staking their young careers on something new not only to Chicago, but the nation — Latin craft beer.
Araya and Showaki met five years ago while working for an international consulting firm in Mexico City. They joined forces on several accounts, including one of Latin America's largest breweries. On a 2007 work trip to Panama, talk turned to opening a brewery of their own, but they envisioned something smaller and, frankly, better than the giant they worked for. In Spanish, the term they batted around was cerveza artesanal — artisanal beer. In the United States, it's called craft beer.
Showaki is from Mexico — though he looks like the Syrian-Turkish-Polish hybrid he is — and Araya is a thickly bearded Costa Rican. Though they considered launching a brewery in those countries, the monopolistic natures of both landscapes made them look north.
Wanting a city with a significant Hispanic population, burgeoning beer scene and affordable living, they chose Chicago over Los Angeles, New York, Miami and Austin, Texas. Now, with the rollout of 5 Rabbit beer imminent, the duo spend their days crisscrossing their new hometown visiting bars, meeting with their distributor and hosting events like the Mexican art museum party.
That evening went well: Each of their three beers (a light golden ale, a cloudy, slightly tart witbier and a mildly sweet, mildly spicy dark ale) came out paired with stunningly crafted ceviche, gazpacho and guacamole prepared by Araya's mother-in-law. The newly arrived Mexican consul general was there, and so was a crew of well-dressed, high-end beer drinkers who nodded approval of the beer in their glasses.
While most new breweries start with the same old styles — golden ale, pale ale, India pale ale, porter and so on — 5 Rabbit is mining its Latin roots with ingredients like ancho chili, piloncillo sugar and passion fruit. After a Dia de los Muertos specialty beer (whether a mole bock or Mexican chocolate coffee stout is yet to be determined), an LPA is likely next — Latin Pale Ale. Even they're not sure what that means yet.
The novelty seems to be taking root. At a meet-and-greet at the venerable Map Room bar last month, the line trailed out the door.
"It was like the Latin Map Room — it was really cool," said Laura Blasingame, Map Room co-owner. "The craft beer scene is mostly white men to be honest, and I'm really excited about that changing. These are Latin guys using Latin flavors, and their beer isn't super-complicated; it will reach out to a group new to craft beer."
For now, 5 Rabbit is contract brewed by Argus Brewery on the city's far South Side. Araya and Showaki hope to open their own facility within a couple of years, though as new business owners, uncertainty still looms.
"It will be cooler to have our own brewery — a physical nexus where people can take tours and fill growlers," Mosher said during a down moment at the Pilsen event.
"We'll need it if we make it," Showaki said.
"When we make it," said Mosher's wife, Nancy Cline.
In the meantime, Araya and Showaki rent a mostly empty 4,000 square-foot warehouse on the West Side. It houses the furniture Araya shipped from Miami, a few empty kegs and the "beer corner" — their indispensible blue cooler and recently-bought home brewing equipment. If they're going to own a brewery, they figure they should understand the process.
There's also a beer refrigerator housing stuff made by others. Among the brews on a Tuesday afternoon was Ska Brewing's Mexican Logger — a bad pun on Mexican lager — that is the Durango, Colo., brewery's attempt at a craft version of Corona.
Araya cracked open a can, poured the golden beer into plastic cups, smelled and sipped. He nodded a mild enthusiasm.
"Better than I thought it would be," Araya said. "But it doesn't have that nice, dry, bitter finish like our golden ale."
Showaki, getting the hang of brewery ownership, went a step further.
"Ours is better," he said.
Tasting the beers
Twitter @traveljosh
