Old Bakery Beer Company

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OLD BAKERY BEER COMPANY is the sustainability champion of Alton, Illinois, and the 2023 Food For Thought Sustainability Award winner! All of their beer, made right on site in historic downtown Alton, is Certified Organic and made with hops and malts grown in North America. Their flagship, Citrus Wheat, is made with wheat flakes from Janie’s Mill, locally grown and milled in Ashkum, IL.  Their new line of Herbarium NA sparking herbal teas, Lavender Lemongrass and Ginger Roselle, are made in collaboration with Flourish Farmstead. They’ll make you feel like you’re walking through the garden!

Old Bakery composts all of their food waste and sends all of their spent grain to a local farmer to feed to their chickens and pigs!  Fruits and veggies are sourced when possible from Theodora Farms and Flourish Farms. They serve Excel soda, a locally manufactured, cane-sugar alternative to traditional sodas, wines from Grafton, and they offer several local spirits, including their house vodka, which is from Cow Creek Farm. Their drip coffee is from Idle Coffee Co, a local coffee roaster.

Vegetarians and vegans always have lots of options at Old Bakery, who offers Impossible Burgers and Reubens, and other meals that showcase plants and plant-based proteins to pair with one of their many delicious beer options. Old Bakery has also recently put their dough rollers to use making mouth watering pizzas in house from scratch, many of which can be made vegetarian or with vegan cheese. Pizzas are only available on Thursdays. Old Bakery takes their used plastic tops for 4-packs of beer back so they can reuse them, keeping a non-recyclable item out of the landfill. Nearly all of Old Bakery’s to-go material is compostable and/or made from post consumer products, minimizing single-use plastics in their restaurant.  Single-use plastics are some of the most common forms of litter, and litter near the river makes its way downstream, breaking into smaller pieces, eventually winding up in the ocean.  Old Bakery Beer Co is a certified PakTech collection site, so the next time you plan a visit bring your used can carriers with you. PakTech can carriers cannot be recycled in single stream recycling and must be sent back to the manufacturing facility to be reused or recycled.

Old Bakery is also one of the few GDA Members to score 5 stars in the chemicals category. Many of their chemicals are made by Blue Planet, a certified sustainable chemical from Safer Choice. This is important because of the proximity of Old Bakery to the river and because of their role as a destination river-town.

Their décor is made from repurposed and reclaimed materials. Their tabletops are made from reclaimed wood and designed by Mwanzi (a local STL artist) and their bartop is made from remnants of a 100-year-old one-room schoolhouse! Even their building is repurposed – it was a large-scale bakery in the 1800’s, which burned down and was rebuilt in 1930.

The brewery offers discounts on reusable growlers, reducing waste while saving their customers money. Take a trip to Alton, ride your bike along the gorgeous River Road, and visit Old Bakery for dinner and a locally made, lovingly crafted Certified Organic brew!