Photo Credit: Dee Von Drasek Photography
When Nate Fakler, co-owner of Faklandia Brewing (3807 S. Packard Ave., St Francis), an interactive storybook-themed brewery, hears from his customers about how the flavors and aromas of his beers remind them of childhood memories or happy times, he grins, knowing that he’s achieving his goal of creating the “strangely familiar,” the brew pub’s tag line.
“It’s fun to meld flavors and make things that will remind you of other things— a strangely familiar but different experience,” he says.
After a few years of home brewing and making beer in contracted spaces, Fakler, along with his friend and Faklandia Brewing co-owner Ben Mantay, found a permanent home in the former 42 Ale House location. The business partners signed a lease March 1, 2020, two weeks before the pandemic shutdown. During that time, they partnered with other craft brewers for a drive-through beer sale. When the stay-at-home order ended, they sold takeout pizza and cocktails until their brewing permit was granted in June.
Faklandia Brewing has a dog-friendly patio with views of Lake Michigan, along with a full kitchen and a wood fired pizza oven, brewing space, and the Faklandia Gaming store/game room. There are 24 tap lines, with five to 12 currently in use. Fakler plans to add more beer once the brewery is fully staffed.
The beers are named after characters in Fakler’s Faklandia storybook; Faklandia also being the name of the basement hangout space in his home. “I had friends in grad school, and they came over to drink beer and we’d play games like Magic the Gathering,” he said.
Customer favorites include Liz Wiz, a cream ale; Thuja, a pineapple pale ale; Salamandra, a strawberry blonde cream ale and one of the first beers he experimented with as a home brewer; and Palladius, an American pale ale. There are nine main characters in Faklandia, and Fakler wants to make a beer representing each one.
“I always like a challenge,” Fakler says. “Our tag line is ‘strangely familiar.’ I’m not trying to change what beer is; I’m trying to change what it isn’t. It’s perfectly okay to make whatever style of beer you want. I try to match the personality of the beers to the characters in the story.”
The upscale pub food menu includes burgers, wood fired pizza with Faklandia’s scratch made sauce, fish fry and appetizers. They make their own mozzarella sticks and potato pancakes. The beer batter for their cheese curds and fish fry is made with their beer. They use Clock Shadow Creamery “Squeaks” cheese curds.
Discovering Beer Styles
Fakler became enthralled with home brewing while helping his dad with home brewing. He wanted to experiment with flavors and styles beyond what was available in home brewing kits. Throughout most of his life, he drank Miller High Life and MGD, but a visit to Café Centraal (now Centraal Grand Café & Tappery) expanded his suds horizons.
“Our server, he might have been a cicerone, was telling me which beers would pair well with what I ordered,” Fakler recalls. “He explained the flavor profile and how it would match with the food I ordered. I tried the beer and was like, ‘holy crap! Beer can taste like this?’”
That beer was a Rochefort Trappist 10, a Belgian Quadrupel, which notes of figs and dates, with a high alcohol content and a sweet-dry finish with wine-like characteristics. That experience inspired Fakler to study to be a cicerone, but he dropped those plans when he was accepted to the Barley to Barrel brewery incubator program. Fakler’s mentors included brewing entrepreneur John Graham and Kyle Vetter of 1840 Brewing Company.
Through Faklandia Brewing, Fakler and Mantay hope to cultivate a space that’s about more than beer and food. “I want this to be a place where people can come in and do what they want to do, express themselves and be themselves,” he concludes.
For more information, visit faklandia.com.
