Maplewood’s status as a brewery and distillery lets them write liquid narratives in which grains move from beer to spirit and back again. One such narrative is Pug Stout Whiskey, which was inspired by their Fat Pug Oatmeal Milk Stout, a recent Great American Beer Festival medal winner. And with their Juice Pants series, Maplewood is spinning a web of related beers that could compete with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. For Maplewood, each ingredient and style offers a new venue for creativity, and it’s all connected.
Founders Adam Cieslak and Ari Megalis (who started as homebrewers), along with partners Paul Megalis and Kevin Holl, founded Mercenary Brewery & Distillery in 2007 but rebranded as Maplewood in 2015 due to a legal dispute over their name. Also in 2015, another homebrewer, Adam Smith, joined them, and the business took off not long after. After brewing 1,000 barrels a year in 2016, they were set to at least triple that number in 2017, and their beer can be found all over Chicago and Illinois and in parts of Indiana and Michigan. By embracing (and relentlessly varying) the New England/hazy IPA while innovating new crossovers between beer and spirits, Maplewood is making a massive impact in a crowded beer scene.
Maplewood is best known for its hazy IPAs, such as Son of Juice and Crushinator. Cieslak says they came to their signature style gradually, and it started with Charlatan American Pale Ale, which went through “many iterations” and was in part a response to Half Acre’s Daisy Cutter, one of the most popular and well-regarded beers in Chicago: “We love Half Acre. We were inspired by their hoppy beers and wanted to make a rival pale ale that’s equally as good as their pales. It’s not as easy as you would think to make a really balanced but hoppy pale ale.”