Finch's Beer Company

Our Story:

The Finch Family is from Norfolk, Virginia originally, and in 1997, Ben Finch migrated to Chicago to attend The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. For 4 years he worked towards a degree in Visual Communication after having originally been accepted on a sculptor scholarship. For 9 years after his graduation in 2002, he was Managing Director of The Killswitch Collective, a Chicago Graphic Design and Website Development Company.

It was there that he discovered craft beer, and really fell in love with the architecture and design of beer. Drinking the likes of Goose Island and Two Brothers Brewing, two of the original Illinois Craft breweries, he quickly learned that creating something from scratch was a lot like his sculptor days in high school. He wanted to get back to that and saw beer as a way to do so.

From 2009 to late 2010 while still managing Killswitch, he began looking hard at what it would take to start a brewery. He reached out to Richard Grant, a brewer he knew from his college days, and the two of them forged ahead with Ben's Dad's help in early 2011. They spent 16 months planning, and only 3 months building. And the rest is history.

Finch's broke ground in January 2011 at its Elston brewing and packaging facility and began shipping draft beer that same June. A year later they began sending packaged beer out in cans, and then added a warehouse facility in early 2013, bringing the total footprint of the brewery to about 18,000 sq ft.

Finch's sells 4 pack cans as its core line up of beers, and is leading the charge as one of the 1st semi-national cannery brands. As the 4 pack of pint cans continues to gain steam in the marketplace, canned craft beer increases in popularity every day. We do not have a tap room at Finch's, so you can only find our beers at your friendly neighborhood pub or local liquor store.

Today, Ben's younger brother, Mike Finch manages sales and is based out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and their father Paul Finch is based out of Norfolk, Virginia and acts as an advisor to the brewery. Steven Slater leads the brewery as Head Brewer and Ben is based out of Chicago, where he lives with his wife, twin girls, and 9 year old step daughter.