RAVENSWOOD — Craft breweries are known for their artisanal methods, but Ravenswood's tiny Spiteful Brewing has taken "handmade" to a whole new level.
Every bottle and can of Spiteful beer is personally filled and labeled by a member of the nano-brewery's five-man staff.
"Nobody else is doing this in Chicago," said Jason Klein, who co-founded Spiteful with Brad Shaffer in 2009.
And why not?
"It's a lot of work," said Klein, who goes by the title of Business Guy #1, with Shaffer serving as head brewer.
Patty Wetli discusses her day at Spiteful Brewing:
On a recent Monday morning, Klein's first day back on the job after getting married the previous week, the Spiteful crew was busy transferring a limited-release brew, Diggable IPA, from a seven-barrel fermenter into four packs of 16-ounce cans.
The assembly line looked something like this: Klein filled blank aluminum cans — blank giving the brewery greater flexibility — two at a time, which he then passed off to Luke Snobeck, seated an elbow's length away. Snobeck, Spiteful's art director who creates the brewery's quirky labels, added lids, one at a time, operating a kind of "presser" machine — the grinding sound of which Snobeck said has become white noise.
Andy Lautner, assistant brewer, worked the label cranker-outer with his lone good hand, his left wrist currently held together by a trio of screws following a bike-meets-pothole crash that also cost him a pair of teeth.
Business Guy #2, Calvin Fredrickson, who handles marketing duties and deliveries, manned the final station, connecting the four-packs via plastic rings. Shaffer, meanwhile, was a study in perpetual motion, grabbing empty cans and lining them up for Klein, and shuffling trays of filled cans to Lautner.
The entire process takes about four hours, Shaffer estimated, and nets approximately 1,500 cans.
"We're having fun, but we're working. It's very much work," said Fredrickson, who came on board at Spiteful earlier this year after a stint with Goose Island.
"There's a misconception that people who work at breweries sit around drinking all day. There's not a lot of sitting around and hanging out," he said, though he did concede that a certain amount of alcohol is consumed.
"To crack open a beer at 10 a.m. is not uncommon," said Fredrickson.
Gradual Growth
For Klein and Shaffer, to be working full-time as brewers, with a staff of three employees, would have been inconceivable just two years ago.
After founding Spiteful in November 2009, the pair, both in their early 30s, maintained their day jobs for the next three years, home brewing on nights and weekends to perfect their recipes, saving up funds to launch the brewery and searching for the right-sized, right-priced space.
"We never approached it as a hobby," said Shaffer.
They eventually settled on digs in the basement of a building at 1815 W. Berteau Ave. With three five-barrel tanks and scarcely more than 500 square feet of room, they brewed Spiteful's first beers in November 2012.
"Most people would never start this small; most breweries start on a much bigger scale," said Klein.
Key for the partners, who've been friends since they met as kids playing hockey in Buffalo Grove, was the ability to get to market sooner than later and to remain independent.
"We don't have investors telling us what to do," said Klein. "For us, money's not the motivating factor. We just want to do what we want to do."
Growth has been gradual and purposeful.
Spiteful now occupies 950 square feet at the same address, where the brewery shares a common storage area with neighboring Letherbee Distillers, and recently upped its number of fermentation tanks to 11 — seven five-barrel tanks and four seven-barrel (with a fith on the way).
Shaffer and Klein initially only packaged their brews in 22-ounce bottles — called "bombers" — and a handful of kegs.
When Snobeck was hired in fall 2013, bringing the brewery's employee total to three, Spiteful was able to add cans to its repertoire.
"You can bottle with two people, you can't can with two people," Klein said.
Year-round brews are packaged in six-packs of 12-ounce cans, and 16-ounce "tallboys" hold limited-release beers.
More affordable and portable than bombers, cans have made Spiteful increasingly accessible to craft beer fans.
"We're just doing retail stores for cans — we can't keep pace with them," said Klein. "We don't want to spread ourselves too thin."
For a list of retail stores and bars that stock Spiteful, click here.
With the added capacity, the brewery is on pace to double 2013's output of 430 barrels. By comparison, Half Acre produces 14,000 barrels per year, which it expects to increase to 30,000 once it begins brewing out of its new 60,000-square-foot facility in Bowmanville.
"The plan is to get bigger and have our own building," said Shaffer. "But we're growing at our own pace."
Don't Fight It, Spite It
Klein was raised on a steady diet of Miller Lite and Miller High Life — "I was one of those people," he said — until Shaffer, who attended college in Colorado, introduced him to craft beer.
"Chicago went from really not having a scene ... to within a year, brewers popping up everywhere," Shaffer said. "It's cool to see consumers ... realize there is something better out there. If you put something out there, the beer nerds are going to give it a try."
Though Shaffer said Chicago is far from being saturated with craft brewers, "until every neighborhood has its own brewery," the fact remains the playing field is increasingly crowded.
Spiteful aims to differentiate itself in a number of ways.
If beer is capable of having attitude, Spiteful's is, well, spiteful. "Don't fight it, spite it" is the brewery's motto, with beers bearing names like Corporate Guy Wheat Wine Ale, God Damn Pigeon Porter, I Hate My Boss Coffee Stout and Selfies Are for Wieners Double IPA.
"People used to just take pictures of themselves. Then they had to call it 'selfies,' " Shaffer said.
Klein and Shaffer credit Snobeck, who has a bachelor of fine arts degree in painting, for translating the brewers' innate crankiness into label art, which has in turn created a Spiteful brand.
"The stuff we make fun of in the brewery, he takes it and puts it on a can. He's able to harness it and put it on a label," said Shaffer. "If a label catches your eye, you'll at least pick up that can. The label art has really helped us."
But ultimately a brewery lives and dies by the beers it makes.
Spiteful hangs its hat on quality, freshness and creativity.
"It's important to have something sustainable for customers — a beer they always drink — and be experimental too," said Shaffer. "It keeps people interested; it keeps us interested."
The team has weekly meetings where the guys talk about what they want to brew next.
"The amount of hops available is huge," said Fredrickson. "There's no shortage of ideas in terms of hops and malts."
Klein is the chief recipe developer, often creating samples by adding spices and other flavors to a base beer.
"If we can come up with the style of beer and ingredients, he can write the recipe," Fredrickson said.
Spiteful's most recent new releases were a trio of barrel-aged beers, which sat in salvaged whiskey barrels for nearly a year. Prove It Gruit is a rarity that revives an ancient hop-less style of beer, brewed with mugwart, bog myrtle and lemon verbena.
Though Klein and Shaffer said they rarely have time to reflect on how far they've come in the last five years, they do appreciate the turn their lives have taken.
"It's nice to show up to work and be happy to go to work," said Shaffer. "Instead of 'Aw s---, I've gotta go to my b.s. job,' I get to make beer."
