Long before today’s craft beer craze, BrickStone Restaurant & Brewery in Bourbonnais was churning out brews and winning awards.
Starting in 2006 with a small 5-barrel system and then expanding to a 25-barrel operation at its brewpub, BrickStone made its mark with awards for its American pale ale (APA) from the Great American Beer Festival, World Beer Cup, North American Brewers Association and Indiana Brewer’s Cup and in BeerInfo.com’s Top 10.
Other styles also have garnered awards, most recently a gold for its Russian Imperial stout called Dark Secret at the World Beer Championship.
Now BrickStone is building on its legacy with a fully automated 50-barrel, four-vessel production brewery that started hoppin’ and steamin’ in August. Equipped with 100- and 150-barrel fermenters and a canning line for 12- and 16-ouncers, the new standalone brewery, a pre-cast building delivered by 32 trucks at the start of the year and located a half-mile from the brewpub, will produce 25,000 to 30,000 kegs annually and enable BrickStone to launch its canned products the last week of September at Jewel, Whole Foods, Binny’s and Kroger chains in Illinois.
The family business – equal partners are Ted and Helen Giannakopoulos and their sons Dino and George along with Helen’s sister Betty Vasilakis and her daughter and son Tina and Tommy – plans to hold a grand opening at the brewery in October.
“When we opened in 2006 there were maybe one-tenth of the breweries there are right now,” Tommy Vasilakis said on a recent afternoon at the new brewery. “Even from when we won our awards in 2012 it feels like we’ve come a long way.”
The flagship BrickStone APA and a double pale ale variant called Hop, Skip & I’m… are available year-round at the brewpub while the Belgo APA sells only in summer.
Other brews include Forbidden Wheat, a Belgian-style witbier; and Golden Promise, an Imperial red. The Smashed Series varies from Right Swipe pale ale and the passion-fruity One Night Blonde IPA to the strong double IPA called Heady Betty. The small-batch Brewers’ Limited Reserve has offered Dark Secret and barrel-aged Dark Secret Imperial Stout, both available in 22-ounce bottles, a chocolate milk stout called Moo-Choo-Kalata and a strong Belgian golden called Gulden Sterk.
BrickStone prides itself on quality equipment and ingredients without exception, even if it means importing blood oranges from Italy and France.
“If we want to brew a beer with a certain ingredient and we can’t find it, we won’t brew that beer,” said Vasilakis, who, like many brewers, started at home. “We host a lot of beer clubs and they’ve helped us design formulas. It’s good to have a lot of different minds and people to give an honest opinion.”
Half-price growler refills are offered on Sundays at the brewpub, which sits about two miles from Interstate 57 or Governors Highway, has an all-weather patio and also serves 16 cocktails such as a hibiscus mojito and cucumber refresher with ginger beer and citrus vodka.
Burgers ($9.19 and up) are big at BrickStone, especially the “Bohemoth” on a grilled cheese bun, and fixings include carnitas, smoked Gouda and pickled red onions.
House favorites include loaded gourmet popcorn cooked in bacon fat and blended with cheese ($4.99), buffalo chicken rolls ($9.29), tomato vodka rigatoni ($13.29 or $16.29 with fire-grilled chicken), jambalaya ($16.99), Mediterranean chicken ($15.99), ribs ($17.99 or $22.99 for full slab), pan-fried Creole tilapia ($16.99) and honey pepper glazed salmon ($17.49).
The menu also has gluten-free options such as grilled halloumi cheese with grilled eggplant, zucchini and peppadew peppers ($9.99), penne pasta with spinach and mushrooms or steak salad with bacon and blue cheese crumbles ($13.99 each), plus sandwiches and wraps ($9.49 and up) and desserts such as pina colada bread pudding ($5.99).
More Top Picks Snow Boot
Located at 557 William R. Latham Sr. Drive, BrickStone is open 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. Sunday to Thursday and until 12:30 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays, with the kitchen closing an hour earlier. The new brewery is located across the street at 572 Brewery Lane (off Brown Boulevard). For more details, call 815-936-9277 or visit brickstonebrewery.com.
Vickie Jurkowski is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.