Tim: There’s been some talk in the Chicago craft beer community about a bubble or an over saturation of the market. What’s your take on this?

Beejay: It’s hard to say but right now I think the more, the merrier. We’ve been such a “brewery-lacking” town forever. You know when you go somewhere, Portland for example, and that tiny little town has 40 or so breweries and it’s like, “Well, if they’re not having a problem I think our giant Chicago can handle a few breweries.” All it’s going to mean is that there’s going to be less beer from far away which I think is better. It’s like, “Why do I want my IPA from California when I could have it made yesterday right here in Chicago?”

Tim: With all the new breweries popping in the area and breweries expanding their capacity, where do you see the Chicago craft beer scene in ten years?

Beejay: Ten years, huh? We’re going to be a craft beer destination; it’s going to be insane. I can’t even imagine. We’ll be at fifty breweries easily at that point. Whether or not that bubble is going to pop, it will be interesting. There’s a lot of nanos coming up but the local movement is really strong right now and I think that’s going to keep us strong as long as people will stay into that ideology.

Tim: An increasing trend in craft beer is using cans instead of bottles; any interest in putting Pipeworks in cans someday?

Beejay: Hell yeah! Absolutely! We don’t really have the room for it in this current location but that’s something that would come with the production facility. We would definitely want to be canning. To get a beer like Ninja vs. Unicorn in this amazing looking can would be terrific.

Tim: You guys said that you spent nearly four years working on making this brewery a reality. Looking back on it, is there anything you would change?

Beejay: We would have moved a little faster. Four years is a long time. There’s quite a bit of sacrifice over that time. It’s a long time to plan something and being as young as we are it was kind of like, “Well, is this just a pipe dream? Is this just a fantasy or can you actually do this?” It’s like, “You don’t have any experience and either opening a business or running a brewery and you’ve made five-gallon batches of beer. Good luck man!” So yeah it would have been nice to be able to move a little quicker but we had a lot to learn as we went. Some education would have been helpful, it would have been great. If I could went to Siebel during that time but after having graduated arts school I was like, “Nope, student loans are high enough I don’t have $17,000 to blow on brewing school.”

Tim: Looking down the road, how big do you hope Pipeworks will get in terms of annual barrels produced?

Beejay: Out of this space, I’d love to see us get above the thousand barrel mark. I think we’ll probably hit a little over four hundred this year. That’s mostly because we started out so slow but I think at that current rate we can easily produce a thousand barrels out of this location maybe a little bit more; then as far as the future, it would be great to see three – four thousand barrels, at a different location obviously.

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Tim Mannion is a resident of Chicago with a background in journalism. He also happens to be a beer guy and joined BeerPulse in 2012 to help out with some things behind the scenes. This is his on-screen debut.

Follow @bigtmannion