A new Lake County brewery is opening its doors this month, joining a host of other local breweries that have begun operations thanks to the growing popularity of craft brewing.
The Fenton Brewing Company will officially open in Mundelein on Saturday, taking over the former home of the Tonality Brewing Company at 169 N Seymour Ave. Owner Ben Fenton, a Mundelein native, says the community’s concentration of breweries makes it a destination for craft fans.
The brewery joins a long and storied — if sometimes illicit — history of alcohol and brewing in Lake County.
Ben Fenton grew up in Mundelein and has worked in the restaurant industry for a decade. He went to the Ballymaloe Cookery School in Ireland, but not for brewing. While in school, he felt it would make a “cool story” to brew a beer in Ireland, and in the process of making a few batches, he fell in love with beer making.
It was actually the wife of the school’s head sommelier who told him he should go into brewing as a career, and he’s spent the last few years working at different restaurants and breweries to learn “every bit” of the business. That includes Mickey Finn’s Brewery, the first brewpub in Lake County.
During the pandemic, he took a brewing course through the Siebel Institute of Technology in Chicago, the oldest brewing school in the country, going back to 1868, which moved this year to Montreal.
With Mundelein growing, his brother reached out, saying it was a good time to come back. In March, they took possession of their new building. Formerly Tonality Brewing, it already had most of the equipment needed for the business.
They’ll serve a variety of brews, Fenton said, with a specialization in British- and Irish-style beers, and with a newly installed wood-fired pizza oven.
Back in his hometown and starting a business, Fenton is excited to officially open the doors, with plans to offer weekly events and music performances. He’s already run into familiar faces, he said.
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“It’s a homecoming,” Fenton said.
‘Push and pull’
Lake County didn’t always have such a cheerful relationship with alcohol. Diana Dretske, the Lake County historian at the Bess Bower Dunn Museum of Lake County, talked about the “push and pull” the county saw over alcohol consumption going back to the 19th century.
Even before Prohibition, there were strong anti-drinking sentiments throughout the county, with smaller communities going “dry,” creating laws prohibiting alcohol in various fashions.
It proved an issue for any brewers shipping through the county, such as the Besley Waukegan Brewery, which began in 1853. They’d have to redirect shipments around dry communities, which was especially difficult in the days of horse-drawn carts.
Across the country, women were major advocates for Prohibition, and their efforts were a key step in giving women a place and voice in society, Dretske said.
“Women had been dealing with not having an income, so you have to rely on your husband, but then he’s spending it all at the bar,” she said. “It was hurting families the way it was before, just how available it was.”
As the temperance movement grew, the Besley Brewery attempted to change with the times, but was later sold around 1912. Only a few years later, Waukegan itself voted to go dry, a change driven in part by women who had recently gained the right to vote, Dretske said. It was the “death knell” for the brewery.
But in 1920, the rise of Prohibition created a new era for some Lake County communities. Chicago gangsters, or “ne’er do wells” as Dretske put it, would come up north to drink, party, and generally cause trouble.
The Chain O’Lakes area is especially well-known for its gangster connections back in the day. Fox Lake has what remains of the infamous Mineola Hotel, with its various Chicago mob connections, and Manning Hotel, the location of the “Fox Lake Massacre,” a 1930 gangland shooting in which three were killed.
While local farmers were known to operate their own small stills even through Prohibition, there wouldn’t be another large official brewery in Lake County until 1942, Dretske said, when the Zeman Brewing Company opened in Gilmer. That remained in business until 1964, when a tornado destroyed the building.
Another brewpub wouldn’t open until the 1990s, with Micky Finns in Libertyville, Dretske said. Recent decades have seen the rise of a new kind of brewing culture, as younger people began creating different drinks and brews, experimenting.
But Fenton, who considers himself part of the latest craft boom, said the industry has shifted as the trend has fallen. Breweries need more to stand out.
“It’s definitely a hard time to be entering the industry,” Fenton said. “These days, it’s not enough to just have good beer. There are plenty of great breweries out there.”
After all, the Fenton Brewery’s current home was formerly Tonality Brewing Company. In the online post announcing its closure, Tonality said the “industry is hurting now more than ever.”