Hangar 24, I & I Brewing, Dale Bros., Inland Empire Brewing, Packing House Brewing and more could make the Inland Empire a beer destination. A business park in Chino is a long way removed from an Iowa cornfield, but the owners of I & I Brewing can't help but compare their early success to a 1989 baseball movie.
People have called Chuck Foster saying they cannot find his 2-month old brewery, and it's not hard to see why. Like many a maker of craft beer, his I & I Brewing (14175 Telephone Ave. Unit J, Chino; iandibrewing.blogspot.com) sits in a nondescript manufacturing and commercial district, one in which I & I's Unit J looks identical to, say, Unit B. Yet with zero advertising, and only enough beer to be open two days per week, Foster, a full-time field service engineer by day, can barely meet demand. "This is really like the 'Field of Dreams,'" said Foster, referring to the Kevin Costner film in which a ballpark is erected in the middle of nowhere. "If you build it, people will find it."
The same could be said for the entire craft beer scene in the Inland Empire, a suddenly burgeoning brewing hotbed. I & I doesn't bottle or sell kegs to local restaurants, but it does have 14 taps, many of them filled with unique ginger- or peach-enhanced concoctions. The tasting room, however, is the size of a closet, and the space can comfortably hold about as many people as it has spigots. Still, it is just one of many thriving breweries in the Inland Empire, a destination that is now home to one of the fastest-growing breweries in America, Redlands' Hangar 24.
"By our count, there are 20 breweries that are either open or planning to open in the Inland Empire," said Hangar 24's head brewer, Kevin Wright. "I think there are 10 that are planning to open in the next year. This is definitely a growth area."
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