Tim: Your current beer list shows great variety across the board. I know that Ninja vs. Unicorn has been a top seller for you guys. Is there any one beer or few selling out faster than the others?

Beejay: Yeah, the double IPA’s are definitely the homeruns for us right now. We just released the Citra Ninja, which was our follow up and that beer sold out immediately which was really exciting. It’s an amazing beer. The double IPA’s have become kind of our flagship thing, I guess. We didn’t expect it, honestly, when I was contracting hops for this first year we were kind of trying to break down what percentage of beer’s out of your total barrelage is just going to be IPA’s, one is going to be malt-driven beers. I think we estimated 20% IPA’s or something and then it turned out Ninja vs. Unicorn , the first beer we released was just so widely sought after and highly received. It was like, “Well, you got to keep making that beer.”

Tim: What beers can we expect to see in the upcoming winter months?

Beejay: In the winter months, we’ve been doing our Abduction which is our Russian Imperial Stout. We’ll probably see some variants on that we’re definitely going to do a coffee-vanilla version of that. We have a new barley wine, kind of an American style barley wine and Imperial Red IPA thing cross hybrid beer which is going to be Santa vs. Unicorn in our Unicorn series. Also, we have a new double IPA that’s using galaxy hops from Australia that we got.

Tim: Do you guys have any updates on Pipeworks’ planned bottle shop?

Beejay: Not right now, we’re definitely aiming for early 2013. We’re finally getting all our ducks in a row. We are getting a new brew house hopefully in the next three months and that’s going to help us get enough production so that we can actually have growlers fills going and we have serving tanks and so on.

Tim: There have been a lot of rumors flying around about raw materials shortages, especially with the crazy drought, demand for specially hops, etc.? How do those supply issues affect you, if it all?

Beejay: We’ll see. The new hops haven’t come out in pallet form yet so we’ve contracted all the hops that we suspect we’d need for next year. We’ll see how well I did next year, but you never know if you’re actually going to get what you contracted. Right now, I haven’t seen a problem except for the obvious that I went through my first brew year without any Amarillo, Centennial, Simcoe. We got Citra from Sam Adams on the hop share program right at the end and immediately just made Citra Ninja. So I mean it’s hard, hops are being bought out very quickly.

Tim: When you’re formulating recipes are you looking only at what you have on hand or are you taking chances on hoping to get specialty ingredients, because you want Citra in that beer?

Beejay: We kind of brew with what we can get. I mean, obviously if I find out, if I’m on Probrewer and some brewery has got a surplus of Citra, you better believe that Citra beer is coming out real soon. Same thing with Simcoe. We also follow the farmers. Cranberry season just happened so we worked with the local farmer in Wisconsin to do the Cranberry Berliner Weiss. We o try to keep things seasonal and local when we can.

Tim: Most of the hops grown in America come from the Northwest but there are some farms creeping up here in the Midwest, do you use any local hops?

Beejay: We haven’t yet but we would want to use local hops. The Michigan hop scene is getting really big and I would love to be able to source more ingredients closer. We’ll see how well they can compete with the proprietary hops. The hard thing is the proprietary hops: Amarillo and Centennial and Simcoe. They are going to stay in the Pacific Northwest and we still want to brew with them. We’re always willing to experiment with new ingredients, new sources.

Tim: Are you content with the brew capacity you currently have or do you have any extension plans in terms of adding new equipment?

Beejay: We started out with three tanks and we are now at ten. We’re getting pretty close to full capacity. I think we can fit maybe two more tanks in here and hopefully that’s just the beginning. I would love to see a larger facility in the future. Right now, we’re really happy with this. It’s been amazing in one year to over triple in capacity. We used to brew once a week, if that, maybe once every two weeks and now we’re brewing pretty much three times every week. It’s been awesome, we’re happy with this space; it will be great once there’s a bottle shop associated with it. I would love to see a production facility with a greater distribution network.

Tim: There’s a forum thread that said you guys are expanding distribution to the suburbs. Any plans to expand distribution beyond the greater Chicagoland area?

Beejay: Not right now because as I said, we self-distribute and even the suburbs put a little bit of a strain on us. It takes a long time to deliver beer. We deliver everything in a hatchback so it’s around 35 cases at a time. So, we’re a little inefficient at the moment but as we grow and we can have a full time driver, hopefully pick up a van this year because I don’t know how the hatchback can handle the winter in Chicago.

We’ll see. I want to keep moving out but at the same time we also want to take care of the local community. We’ve seen Half Acre growing and growing in capacity and still not being able to make it too far out of Chicago because there so much demand for their beer and we always want to satiate the local thirst first.