New brewery opening up shop in Superior’s former Old Chicago location

SUPERIOR — A slight shift in wind direction and maybe Bambei Brewing Co. never happens. 

The new brewery, expected to open this year in the former Old Chicago space at 100 Superior Plaza Way, was spared by the Marshall Fire but many of its neighbors were not.

Husband and wife Sean and Casey Bambei bought the property last summer and were on vacation in Hawaii when they learned about the blaze. 

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“We didn’t know if our building was even standing. Luckily it survived, but the hotel next door didn’t,” Sean Bambei (pronounced like the Disney movie, hence the brewery’s deer-themed logo) told BizWest. “We thought, ‘Well, now we’re in a community that needs [a local gathering place such as a brewery] even more.’”

Bambei got into craft brewing during college at Colorado State University in the early 1990s as a hobby — “at the time I was a big fan of Odell’s 90 Shilling,” he said — before taking a series of engineering and computer science positions over the next couple of decades. 

Eventually Bambei decided that brewing “is something I may want to do forever” and went back to school at the University of Vermont to study the business of brewing.

After he got laid off from a corporate job last year, Bambei recalls a friend telling him: “Well, I guess it’s time you opened that brewery.”

Bambei Brewing Co. is building a seven-barrel system in the roughly 6,600-square-foot building that formerly housed the chain pizzeria.

The location is expected to feature about a dozen Bambei beers on tap at any time, a variety of flavors of house hard seltzers, a full bar with cocktails made with booze from local distilleries, and a kitchen with a limited menu featuring American bar food favorites such as burgers and wings.

Additionally, the brewery will have “a good number of TVs, because I’m a huge sports fan,” Bambei said, and space for live music. 

The Bambeis hope to be open by November or December.

“There are supply-chain issues that we’re still figuring out, but that’s the time frame we’re hoping for,” Sean Bambei said.

This article was first published by BizWest, an independent news organization, and is published under a license agreement. © 2022 BizWest Media LLC.