These days there's no shortage of reasons to get excited about Minnesota beer -- a new startup here, another tap room there. But local beer brass will tell you we've still got a ways to go before we catch up with more froth-forward markets in Colorado, Oregon or San Diego. Like, miles.
An exciting part of watching our burgeoning beer scene bloom will be seeing how newcomers fill style gaps, broadening the local palette. Enter Badger Hill Brewing Co.
"We want to be unique and not try and create a different version of something that's already out there," said co-owner Broc Krekelberg over the echo of humming fermenters in the Minnetonka brewery Badger Hill shares with Lucid Brewing.
Along with his wife, Brittany, and younger brother, Brent, Krekelberg trotted out an extra special bitter for their first foray into the market -- a style scarce outside of local brewpubs since Summit sadly discontinued its strain a few years ago -- and followed up with their Three Tree American Rye, which they celebrated with a launch party in early August.
"This is probably the biggest risk we took," said Brent Krekelberg of coming out with a relatively esoteric style in the brewery's nascent stage (look, Ma -- no IPA!).
Still, it wasn't entirely a dare-to-be-different philosophy that drove the Krekelbergs to more seldom-found styles. Of the 23 different strands the brothers beer produced the in past three years, the Minnesota Special Bitter and the American Rye were two they were more confident in (a few awards justified their moxie). While becoming some novelty brewery isn't the plan, the Badger Hill bunch doesn't mind being adventurous with its beers. In the queue are their Foundation Stout (standard enough) and a cherry-infused hefeweizen that Brent seems particularly fond of. "I like fruit beers," he said with a guilty grin, twisting his baseball cap and glancing at his senior sibling.
"There's a joke there," Broc responds, showing baby bro the mercy a Miller Lite "Man Law" commercial wouldn't have. Feel the brotherly love?
Badger Hill first made headlines with its unique business model -- an alternating proprietorship with Lucid, which allows the breweries to share space and equipment, freeing up capital to invest in such big-time brewery gadgets as a customized bottling line and a computerized quality-control system. Filling out the 4-inch-thick federal alt-prop license application was probably worth the potential hand cramp, considering the arrangement has given them twice the annual production capacity they would have otherwise, Broc estimates.
