Vennture Brew sells all the brews: Beer and coffee
Vennture Brew Co. is selling all the brews — as promised. The brewery/coffeeshop at 5519 W. North Ave. opened to the public Tuesday with six beers on the menu and a choice of coffees from pour-overs to cold brews. Owners Simon McConico, Robert Gustafson and Jake Rohde are behind the concept and behind the bar at Vennture, named for the diagram that serves as both logo and business plan: Beer + coffee + community.
“It feels like it should feel,” McConico said, while Rohde admitted to “a combination of excitement and nervousness.”
If opening day sets the pace of the new brewery’s success, the three years it took from conception to reality should be worth the risk.
McConico, Gustafson and Rohde didn’t announce they had opened Vennture, but
they let pictures of a soft opening for family, friends and people who backed the business during a Kickstarter drive tease it out on social media.
Several people took the bait, showing up for coffee in the morning and beer when the time seemed right.
By 5 p.m., the tables were mostly filled and empty chairs at the bar were hard to snag. Counter seating is also available at the front of the brewery facing North Ave., which becomes a parade of cars and prime people watching during the evening commute.
Rohde is the coffee guy. He hands over a Mexican espresso, which he describes as tasting of peanut butter and citrus. Among the cold brews are a few that were aged in a rum barrel.
He’s also the man who created the menu boards — hand-cut tiles with coffee selections at the front of the house and beer selections on the back wall. He created the Vennture logo, which set the brewery/coffeeshop’s blue-and-white color scheme into play.
All the partners put in the sweat equity that turned a former hardware store into a brewery. It started as three photographer friends going on beer adventures (also inspiration for the Vennture name). They traveled to Colorado and Michigan, where they noticed crossover between coffee and beer and found that the people they met in craft beer and specialty coffee spots seemed to share the same values in terms of what they were looking for in their beverages.
McConico, Gustafson and Rohde hope to emulate the communal aspects of beer and coffee they found with Vennture.
It begins with beer names, all of which were influenced by stories during brewery building. The Heights is a table beer, a saison.
“We love the idea of Belgians having a table beer,” McConico said.
It fit with the neighborhood feel of the brewery. Bruv is a Berlinerweiss, which tastes of lemonade. McConico will happily add homemade syrups to the summer beverage. The choices are blueberry ginger and cascara, made from the cherry fruit of a coffee tree. The Throw Parties saison with notes of grapefruit and other citrus is named for a song the trio heard while they were putting together brewing equipment. Also on the menu is 49th St., a Northeast IPA with hints of tropical fruit and melon. Critical Adjustment is a tropical stout — a little sweeter than a typical stout — with tastes of dark chocolate and hints of toffee. Critical Adjustment with Coffee is the tropical stout with rum barrel-aged Brazil coffee.
The Critical Adjustment story is a tale of malfunctioning equipment times two. Go ahead, ask.
Beer prices range from $2.50 for a taste of The Heights to $6 for a full pour of Critical Adjustment. Coffee prices start at $3; a barrel-aged coffee is $4.
The brewery’s bar is made from an old floor at the back of the house. So are the table tops and a bench that sits atop an old radiator. The trays for a flight of beers were also made with repurposed wood.
A refrigerator at the front of the taproom is empty, but McConico said the plan is to fill it with cans. The brewery will offer 16-ounce cans to go that are sealed at the bar. It’ll also offer water from the brewery’s reverse osmosis equipment so people can make their own best coffee at home, McConico said.
Customers can bring in food to eat with a beer or coffee. Vennture also sells bakery items.
Vennture is open from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 5 a.m. to midnight Friday and Saturday.