Against the Grain: The Resilience of Minnesota’s Craft Beer Scene

Beer has become as complex as wine, with styles like bruts, sours, milkshakes, and various IPA types—East Coast, West Coast, and Cold IPAs, which use lager yeast. Now, beer sommeliers, or cicerones, are even a thing.

Minnesota’s relationship with alcohol has been complex and sometimes contentious. “At times, some Minnesotans have embraced alcohol consumption,” says Bill Convery, director of research for the Minnesota Historical Society. “At other times, they’ve struggled to control it, or prohibit it altogether. It all depends on who, and where, and when.” From Lieutenant Zebulon Pike’s whiskey-fueled 1805 treaty to the German immigrants who founded the state’s first brewery in 1850, alcohol has played a key role in Minnesota’s history—now home to over 220 breweries.

The Twin Cities’ craft beer scene remains somewhat complicated, but for different reasons. The pandemic, of course, played a part in shuttering a number of beloved neighborhood joints, including Tin Whiskers, Lakes & Legends, Able Seedhouse + Brewery, to name a few—the breweries themselves having been replaced by other breweries or businesses, their websites erased or, in cases like Tin Whiskers, reduced to a kind of elegy: “Sorry, We’re Closed/Thanks for the memories.”

“There’s no denying that openings have slowed down immensely, and we are now seeing more closings of breweries than we’re used to,” says Bob Galligan, director of government and industry relations for the Minnesota Craft Brewers Guild. “However, we’re still seeing more openings than closings. Ultimately, craft beer saw success because the consumers were engaged and could lean on craft producers for quality and community.”

Blackstack Brewing - Photo by Pete Lapinski

And some mainstays have weathered the volatile climate—thrived, even.Barrel Theory Beer Co. and BlackStack Brewing—arguably the cool-kid pillars of Twin Cities craft beer innovation; undoubtedly the local authorities on IPA—not only managed to seamlessly adapt a more to-go business model during the pandemic, but they kept the hype and came out swinging.

“We opened June of 2017,” says Timmy Johnson, head brewer and co-owner at Lowertown St. Paul’s Barrel Theory Beer Co. “But we used to have lines, we had a member program, people were out the door.”

Johnson, a former pharmacist and Surly Brewing Co. vet, discovered Barrel Theory’s signature IPA flavor profile on the East Coast: “Soft, juicy, no bitterness, with a bubblegum flavor like Juicy Fruit mixed with Flintstones Vitamins.” Though craft beer consumption may be down, he notes, “It’s a different culture now—people are drinking local pilsners instead of big brands like Hamm’s or Miller High Life. Put a craft brewery in the right spot, and people will come.”

Timmy Johnson - Photo by Pete Lapinski

Across town in the Hamline-Midway neighborhood, Murphy Johnson (no relation to Timmy)—co-founder, director of creative and product development, and vibe curator at BlackStack Brewing—puts his own unique spin on IPA, and both guys talk about the process like two chemists you’d want to party with.

Unlike Timmy, Murphy started brewing in a class at University of Wisconsin-Madison. Fast-forward: Murphy gets a call from his dad, Scott, who wants to open a brewery. “I moved back in 2014,” he says, “and we opened March 13, 2017.” And like Barrel Theory, it’s been a local gathering place ever since.

Murphy Johnson - Photo by Pete Lapinski

As for the state of craft beer, Murphy says: “If you’re doing service by your customers and you know how to make that exciting and approachable and something that people want to gravitate toward, there will always be room. I didn’t get into this to put lines around what people should and shouldn’t be drinking; I got into this because I wanted to give people who work their asses off tangible moments of joy.”