Scratch Brewing Company
When Marika Josephson settled in southern Illinois in the early 2000s, she was fresh from the hustle and bustle of New York City, where she had been pursuing a life in publishing and writing. The slow pace and expansiveness of the terrain appealed to Josephson, but she missed the seemingly endless varieties of beer she was used to in the big city. So she decided to take matters into her own hands and start home brewing.
Josephson grew up with a father who was also a home brewer, so she knew the basics. As she integrated into the community near Murphysboro and Ava, Illinois, she discovered a lot a lot of like-minded home brewers. They gathered often to share their recipes and techniques. That was how she met Southern Illinois native Aaron Kleidon, who regularly brought in beers with ingredients he had foraged for in the forests near them. Josephson was impressed with the flavors and ingenuity. It wasn’t long before she, Kleidon and a now-former partner named Ryan Tockstein sketched out plans to open their own brewery using the home-grown and foraged philosophy. Scratch Brewing Company opened its doors in 2013 on five acres of Kleidon’s family farm.
Kleidon and Josephson are “completely in sync” when it comes to division of duties and direction of the company.
“I leave Aaron to what he loves, which is foraging and growing the ingredients. I’m more math-minded, so I do the business stuff and oversee the brewing,” Josephson says.
When he’s not in the woods collecting roots, leaves, bark and plants, Kleidon oversees plants he’s cultivated over many years the like elderberry bushes that line the path to the woods. He also plants and harvests the season’s inventory of peppers, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, basil (very important!), corn and much more, on a plot just down the road from the brewery. Josephson determines the brews of the week according to available ingredients and oversees mashing and boiling over Scratch’s huge wood burning kettle.
Scratch sells 75% of its beer onsite and ships 25% to buyers across the state and county. In all, they brew about 250 barrels of beer a year.
Then there’s the pizza. Scratch has developed a highly curated, seasonal menu for guests, and the star of the show is pizza. Josephson and Kleidon grind their own grains, make their own sauces and buy cheeses from local artisans exclusively (the adorable goats on the property were passed over for their milk and cheese potential). The results are so outstanding, that Scratch was named by the New York Times as one of the 25 best places in the US to get pizza in 2024. Not to mention multiple James Beard nominations for their beer and pizza.
Josephson and Kleidon take it all in stride – because there’s far too much work to do to keep their small operation going. But Josephson wouldn’t have it any other way.
“When I come back here from a trip to big cities and I walk down our steps, it’s a huge sigh of relief,” she says.
“This is where I want to be.”
For more information on Scratch Brewing Company, visit their website.
