In the summer of 2015, brothers Javier and Jose Lopez started brewing beer out of their childhood home in Chicago’s Hermosa neighborhood.
The decade before that, Jose had managed a band and worked in food service. Javier was an IBEW Local 134 electrician with a passion for craft beer. Both were looking for something new, so they bought a stove-top brewing kit for $600 and started making beer as Casa Humilde.
As Javier and Jose started offering their beer at art shows and festivals, plus catering at backyard parties and pig roasts, they invested another $30,000 into their at-home operation. In 2019, the brothers joined District Brew Yards, a collective of breweries that opened a beer hall that year in Chicago and added a Wheeling location in 2022.
But the Lopezes were always looking to start their own brewery.
By June, Javier and Jose Lopez will open Casa Humilde at 7700 Madison Street to sell their beer, plus cocktails, wine and food. Before opening, the property will undergo a cosmetic change and the brothers will secure federal, state and local liquor licenses, which can take a few months.
“We’ve been looking for our location for a while, for years now,” Javier said. “When we saw this opportunity come up, we went to look at the space, and we thought it was a good fit for us.”
Not only is Forest Park a central location between the city and the suburbs, right off the highway, but Casa Humilde is also taking over the space of Exit Strategy Brewing, which closed in October 2023, so the brewery and kitchen were already built.
“What I have learned in the last three, four months is that the brewing industry itself has some challenges. People are drinking less craft beer,” said David King, president of real estate firm David King & Associates in Oak Park. “You have to be more than a craft brewer to be successful today.”
While Casa Humilde will offer up to a dozen beers on tap — like Maizal, their top-selling, Mexican-style lager — it will also sell ciders, seltzers, cocktails and a variety of wines, highlighting those from Mexico. For the last two years, Javier and Jose have also operated Casa Humilde Coffee Roasters, processing beans from Mexico.
“The focus is still going to be the beer, but we also want to have options for people who don’t drink beer,” Javier said.
“We’re a brewery, but above all, we consider ourselves more of a beverage company,” Jose added. “We want it to be a space as if you were coming into our home.” To emphasize that element of hospitality, Casa Humilde will also serve food, which they didn’t sell at District Brew Yards.
“The main focus of the kitchen is going to be maize,” or corn, Javier said. Maize will be cleaned, soaked, milled and cooked to make from-scratch tortillas for entrees like tetelas, thick tortilla triangles filled with beans and cheese, topped with sour cream.
Casa Humilde’s kitchen will also cook al pastor on a spit and incorporate beer and coffee into some of their desserts. The brothers are finalizing hours and hoping to be open for dinner around 4 to 10 p.m., and earlier for brunch on the weekends.
King said that Exit Strategy Brewing stopped selling food six months or a year before it shuttered, a factor he believed contributed to its closure.
Katherine Valleau, who opened Exit Strategy Brewing with her husband, said the reasons for the closure were more nuanced. The time frame King cited is false, she said, and cutting food service did not contribute to her business closing. Rather, she largely attributes the closing to supply chain issues and post-pandemic inflation.
“The beer industry is changing, consumership is changing, market share is changing,” Valleau said. “That’s what drove the decision. It was data-informed.”
It was time, she said, to do what was best for her and her husband’s mental and emotional health.
“Do you keep pushing the boulder up the hill? Or do you have to say, ‘All right, we got this boulder as far up this hill as we possibly can, but there are now forces working against us that are out of our control,’” Valleau said.
After Exit Strategy Brewing moved out, King said he re-leased the building in three months.
“That’s fast, and I would not suggest that’s fast because David King is a good salesman. I would suggest it is a result of where Forest Park is today. Businesses see us as a great community, and they want to be a part of it,” King said. “In the last five years, in the Village of Forest Park, specifically Madison Street, 75-to-80% of the new businesses that have come to town have been an upgrade from what previously was there.”
Javier and Jose Lopez plan to bring even more people to Forest Park by hosting live music and featuring local artwork on Casa Humilde’s patio, which can fit up to 150 people.
Before opening in Forest Park, Casa Humilde sponsored podcasts and interviewed local Mexican and Latin musicians. The past two years, the brothers have hosted Casa Humilde Fest, a live music event in Joliet, garnering over 1,300 attendees.
“We’ve kind of built our brand around that,” Jose said. “For us, it’s beer, good food, good people and music. You can’t go wrong, it’s always a good time.”
Editor’s note: Comment from Katherine Valleau, co-owner of Exit Strategy Brewing, was added to clarify the reason for the brewery’s closure.