Turner Haus Brewery Founder receives Diversity in Brewing Scholarship

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BY TIA CAROL JONES

After trying the grapefruit lager, which is named after their grandmother who passed away, Aikens and Turner started to think about starting a brewery. Aikens was starting to get into craft beers, while Turner had been into beer for some time.

Turner Haus Brewery officially launched in 2019, taking time to perfect the recipe. All the beers are named after matriarchs in Aikens and Turner’s family. Aiken’s husband is the head of marketing, her brother is the head of customer experience and her other cousin is head of branding.

They were in the process of opening a location when the pandemic hit in 2020. In 2021, they picked back up and have spent the last couple of years preparing to open Turner Haus Brewery in Bronzeville. The taproom will be located at 78 E. 47th St. It will be the only Black-owned brewery in Chicago, with a physical space.

Aikens recently received the Illinois Craft Brewers Guild’s Diversity in Brewing Scholarship. The aim of the scholarship is to build a more inclusive, representative Illinois craft beer industry through equitable access to education and technical training. With the scholarship, Aikens can take one of two courses, which are offered by the Siebel Institute and the World Brewing Academy. Aikens is taking a brewing and technology course at the Seibel Institute.

“From that course, it will really just help me expand my beer and brewing knowledge. I am not the brewer per se, I assist my husband and Jason with the brewing process. It will just deepen my knowledge of the brewing process and I can apply that knowledge back to the business,” she said.

Aikens became interested in craft beer after college, while she was in graduate school. She started to explore and taste craft beers to figure out what her palate was. She enjoyed the craft beer space. Through brewing with Turner, Aikens fell in love with craft beers even more.

“I have a slight background in microbiology, so the science was really interesting to me. And, just the fact that you could make such a wide variety of beers with four simple ingredients,” she said.

Turner Haus Brewery did some collaborations with Alulu Brewery and Pub, located at 2011 S. Laflin St., working with the head brewer, Jason James. Turner Haus Brewery currently brews out of Alulu. While craft beers and brewing is a predominantly white, male space, there are a few Blackowned breweries in Chicago.

Aikens and the rest of the team at Turner Haus Brewery believe that bringing diversity into the industry is really important. Even in thinking about the location of the taproom, they were intentional about picking Bronzeville.

“There really aren’t that many breweries and taprooms on the South side of Chicago at all, they’re all predominantly on the North side. So, we definitely wanted to bring the craft beer industry to that space and have more avenues for people to enjoy craft beers on the South side of Chicago,” she said.

For more information, visit turnerhausbrew.com.

State Treasurer Michael Frerichs Returns $20.8 Million In Unclaimed Property in April

SPRINGFIELD – The Illinois State Treasurer’s Office returned nearly $20.8 million in unclaimed property during April, Illinois Treasurer Michael Frerichs announced.

The total includes nearly $19.9 million in cash and interest and more than $895,600 in stock value returned. All told, 24,417 claims were paid.

“Putting money in people’s pockets is a way my office helps the Illinois economy,” Frerichs said. “I have revamped how we return unclaimed property to make the system more efficient.”

Illinois’ unclaimed property program — also known as I-CASH — is one of the state’s oldest consumer protection initiatives. The State Treasurer is tasked with safeguarding unclaimed property, such as the contents of overlooked safe deposit boxes, unpaid life insurance benefits, forgotten bank accounts and unused rebate cards. Illinois holds more than $3.5 billion in unclaimed property.

The Treasurer’s Office has returned more than $1.6 billion since Frerichs took office in January 2015. When Frerichs first became treasurer, there were 60,000 claims paid in a single year. That number has increased six-fold to 362,352 claims paid in a year.

The record-setting performance is the result of a complete restructuring of the unclaimed property process under Frerichs. The state treasurer’s office has added electronic claims, eliminated red tape that slowed small-money claims, and leveraged technology to allow payments to be made without a claim even needing to be filed.

Frerichs recently added a Friends and Family “share” feature. When visitors to the I-CASH website come across the name of someone they know, they can select the “share” icon and provide the email address of their friend or relative. Frerichs’ office then will notify the individual by sending an email that mentions the unclaimed property, along with the name of the friend or relative who spotted it. Then, that individual can start the process of retrieving the property.

In addition, “Abe,” an automated chatbot, is available to anyone visiting the I-CASH website. Abe provides an interactive way for people to obtain information when they ask short, simple questions about unclaimed prop-