09/12/2025
Our brewhouse has found a home. A really good one.
Our new friend Chris at Rites Brewing in New York sent us a message a couple months back to ask about buying the vintage British brewing system (brewhouse in brewer-speak) that was ours for almost seven years at the Ivory Bill. It didn’t take many messages back and forth for us to start really hoping we could make the details work for both of us—this was clearly the right sort of person to delight in open fermenters, British engineering quirks, and manually controlled…everything.
We did in fact come to an understanding, and Chris came with a big truck. Same model yellow Penske box truck we used to bring the system to Siloam from Iowa in 2017. We loaded him up and off he went, back to New York in one very long roadtrip push.
This week Chris brewed his first beers on the system. We’re sending our very best wishes.
We are still beyond sad to have lost the fellowship of the Ivory Bill taproom and the pleasure of making beer for the our friends and neighbors. We miss you. But we’re also so grateful for the good years we had together.
We’re not entirely sure what’s next for us. (Is anyone really?) But we do know we’ll make our way to Long Island before too long to see Chris at Rites Brewing and crush some of his open fermented beers. They’re going to be so good.
