At Northern Brewer, aSt. Paul, Minn.-based home-brew and winemaking supply company that opened aretail store in West Allisin November, Assistant Retail Manager David Kelley witnesses the DIY movementdaily. “The exponential growth of companies like Dogfish Head Brewery, Rogueand Sierra Nevada is a testament that peopleare enjoying craft beer,” Kelley explains. “We’re finding that people who enjoythose beers want to make something different too. They want to try to do itthemselves.”
One might say NorthernBrewer has its roots in Scotland.Before founding the company, Chris Farley studied abroad in Edinburghwhile attending Macalester College in Minnesota.He arrived in the European country a teetotaler and returned to the Statesarmed with a deep appreciation for good beer. Committed to learning more aboutthe burgeoning microbrewing scene of the early-1990s, Farley scored aninternship at James Page, a Minneapolis-based microbrewery. He learned from hisvantage point behind the scenes that the company was earning most of itsrevenue from the small home-brew supply shop, not from brewing beer.
In 1993, two of Farley’scollege buddies each loaned him $4,000 to open Northern Brewer, his ownhome-brew supply store, on Grand Avenue in St. Paul. The entrepreneur expanded his reach with animpressive mail-order catalog and established his company on the Web early. Theretail store soon proved to be too small to accommodate all of the salesgenerated from the mail-order business, so Northern Brewer opened an enormouswarehouse in 2004 and expanded again in 2007. A move south to Milwaukee seemed like a natural progression.
“We spoke with some ofour vendors from the Milwaukeemarket and their information indicated that, for the size of the city, theamount of home-brewing retail was very low,” Farley explains. “The city hassuch a great history for beer and brewing… It made no sense to me that Milwaukee wouldn’t be agreat market for home-brewing.”
Northern Brewer hasdeveloped a large customer base and a trustworthy reputation through itssubstantial online presence and mail-order business, so when the company openedits 11,000-square-foot store in an old furniture warehouse at 1306 S. 108th St.less than five months ago, DIY brewers and winemakers flocked to the location.
“You can see a pictureof a product,” Farley says, “but to be able to get your hands on it, kick thetires, so to speak, is, for a lot of people, pretty important.”
A visit to the NorthernBrewer retail store is a study in how accessibility has made the DIY game areality for so many people. “Twenty years ago, a home-brewer could find onetype of malt extract available and a couple hop varieties,” Kelley explains.“Now we have close to 50 different hop varieties in the store, nearly 100varieties of yeast, 20 kinds of dry and liquid extracts and 80 types of grainsin one room. Anybody can brew any beer they can ever imagine.”
Northern Brewer carriessuch an expansive range of equipment for making beer, mead, cider, sake, wineand soda that people can choose how invested in the hobby they want to be. Thecompany’s most popular products are the home-brewing starter kits, whichcontain all the specialized equipment needed to start brewing 5-gallon batchesof beer at home. Unlike many proprietors in the home-brewing industry, NorthernBrewer creates its own starter kits based on personal experience with theequipment, so the kits are designed for ease of use and producing qualityproduct.
Northern Brewer helpsmake the leap into the DIY state-of-mind even easier with a series ofinformative classes that range from beginner topics, such as “Intro toBrewing,” to more complex areas of study, like “Going All Grain.” While thedo-it-yourself work ethic focuses on completing tasks without relying onprofessionals to do it for you, it’s reassuring to know the staff at NorthernBrewer’s retail store is there to help you make your DIY project a good one.
