SLEEPY EYE, Minn. (AP) - Five buddies who like to brew beer thought they’d upgrade their home equipment. They ended up opening the state’s newest brewery.
“It started as a plan to buy a $5,000 home-brew kit for more efficiency and it rapidly exploded,” said Adam Armbruster.
Sleepy Eye Brewing Co. opened recently on Main Street in the former Pix Theater building.
“We’ve been crazy busy,” said Armbruster, who owns the business with Judd Walter, Dan Schmid, Blair Folkens and Adam Fischer.
The group has a diverse background. Walter is an electrician who oversaw the massive renovation of the building. Fischer works for an electric co-op. Schmid and Folkens are financial planners. Armbruster is a medical doctor in Sleepy Eye.
“As far as I know I’m the only doctor-brewer in the state,” Armbruster told the Mankato Free Press.
The brewery is located on one side of the building with Sleepy Eye Coffee Co. on the other side. The two businesses share a seating area and bathrooms.
The coffee shop is owned by Armbruster’s wife, Karlyn, who is also a physician in Sleepy Eye.
The couple always wanted to open a coffee shop and as the idea of a brewery began to grow they decided putting both in the same building made sense. The Armbrusters bought the old theater in 2017 and began a major renovation.
“It’s been unoccupied since the early ‘90s,” Adam said. “The roof had fallen in around then. The owner I bought it from had put a roof on and leveled the floor but never used it after that.”
The marquee was restored and lit and there are other nods to the building’s past, including an old film projector on display that is circa 1950 and was stored in the old theater building.
Armbruster said they’ll keep about 10 beers on tap with five or six staples and then rotate other brews in and out.
He said their best sellers so far have been Crazy Aunt Kolsch and Sleepy Eye Cream Ale. The next favorite has been Wide Awake Stout, a coffee stout.
The brewery uses a three-barrel system. That’s smaller than many breweries but there wasn’t room for more in the building. “If we go bigger we’d have to do off-site brewing,” Armbruster said.
Christina Andres, Sleepy Eye Chamber of Commerce director, said the new businesses have been a hit with area residents.
“Everyone is really excited and pleased with it. Sometimes we short sell ourselves as a small town and think something can’t fly here but it’s flying,” Andres said.
She said a new brewery and coffee shop aids in keeping young people in town or attracting those who left for college or work somewhere else.
And she thinks it will create more interest in downtown.
“We hope it sparks new interest in our Main Street. We have some businesses but we hope for more and reviving some of those store fronts. And having them restore the old Pix Theater is nice.”
Armbruster said locating downtown was intentional. “Financially, it would have been smarter to build a steel shed on the edge of town. But all of us wanted to kind of revitalize Main Street. We hope this will get other people to try stuff downtown.”
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