Minnesota's craft brewery scene is hopping. How did it happen?

In 2011, a little Twin Cities brewery with a big buzz made a giant gamble at the Minnesota Legislature. Even bettors didn't know how much it would change the state's beer game.

"Almost everyone who knew anything about the legislature, including editors at the Star Tribune, said we didn't have a chance," Surly Brewing Co. founder Omar Ansari recalled of House Bill HF703.

Better known as "the Surly bill," the law became the big-bang moment for Minnesota's great brewery explosion of the 2010s. It finally allowed breweries to sell their beer for on-site consumption, effectively greenlighting taprooms.

The Surly bill is at the heart of reader Ron Liss' question for our Curious Minnesota community-reporting series: "How many breweries existed in Minnesota before the current popularity of microbreweries today?"

A Chicago-area resident, Liss got hopped up on our state's brewery scene while visiting his son at the University of Minnesota. "It's pretty different from Chicago," he said. "I like that there's a good mix of big, midsized and more neighborhood breweries."

And yes, there are a lot of them now. The number of breweries in Minnesota increased nearly tenfold in the 2010s. The state had about 20 active breweries or brew pubs in the year preceding the 2011 legislation. As of December, Minnesota boasted 196 breweries or brew pubs, according to the Minnesota Craft Brewers Guild, stretching from Forbidden Barrel down in Worthington to Boathouse Brewpub up in Ely. About half are in the Twin Cities metro area.

Evan Sallee, president of the Minnesota Craft Brewers Guild, remembered there being about 60 breweries when he co-founded Fair State Brewing Co-op in northeast Minneapolis in 2014.

Sallee said "it was extremely hard and expensive" to open breweries before the Surly bill legalized taprooms. But he also credited the local boom to the nationwide rise in craft brewers over the last decade. In fact, Minnesota still hasn't cracked the top 10 states with the most breweries per capita.

"There still could be more changes to the laws to help us move much closer to the top," he said.

There are actually fewer Minnesota breweries per capita now than there were in 1875. That's when the number reached its initial peak of 123 breweries, according to Doug Hoverson, author of "Land of Amber Waters: The History of Brewing in Minnesota."

Of course, after nine boom years, Minnesota's brewery scene is suddenly in flux. The COVID-19 quarantine has shut down taprooms statewide for two months and counting. Brewers are also losing valuable sales in shuttered restaurants and bars.

So far, no brewery has closed because of the virus, but Sallee said, "At least half of them have told us they won't last if it drags on much longer."

"Before the coronavirus, I still had not seen a tipping point," he said. "There's really a strong brewing community in the state now that — with the right support — could continue and last a long time."