Grain, Grit, and Gratitude: A New Chapter at Hopskeller

As a busy (albeit wet) spring gives way to summer, I’m sitting here in the brewery with a fresh delivery of grains from Sugar Creek Malting. I’m stoked; my newfound friends in Indiana are the closest craft maltster to Hopskeller, and with a little luck they’re going to play an important part of Hopskeller’s story going forward.

Beyond the delivery, this Friday afternoon has been buzzing with activity. Cheese gets shredded, gallons of fresh pizza sauce made for the weekend; I file taxes, update the accounts, mill grain, move kegs with my dad, clean a toilet, take out trash, chat with customers. All in all, a pretty typical day around here. I’ve always thrived in a degree of chaos, and every day bringing brand-new (and occasionally unknown!) tasks keeps the day-to-day running of the brewery fresh.

In some capacity or another, I’ve been either planning or running Hopskeller for a decade now. As someone who tends to make massive, life-changing transitions every 5 years or so, a decade feels like an absolute lifetime. Despite the challenges – a fire and the rebuilding process, COVID, an industry broadly in decline – Hopskeller has been very successful. Being in Waterloo is no small part of that success; I’m eternally grateful to all of the people, from the staff to the customers, who have made the brewery a mainstay of downtown Waterloo and a destination in the broader area.

But success naturally breeds a kind of… well, complacency isn’t quite the right word, but certainly a feeling that there’s no need to fix what isn’t broken. From there, also naturally, was the worry that I was falling into a creative rut. For the past few years, I’ve looked wistfully at other pubs and breweries and thought to myself, it must be nice to do X. If only I could do Y! Then I’d be really excited about what I do.

This year, a switch flipped in my head: there’s no reason I can’t.

These email updates, part of an ongoing series, are going to highlight why I fell in love with the idea of running a brewpub in the first place and to document those new ideas and changes. This is partially a way to brag on the incredible people and places that make up their own threads in Hopskeller’s tapestry, but also to remind myself, in a way, that Hopskeller is fundamentally intertwined with the people, the land, and the history of this area (and well beyond). I’m a history nerd at heart, and in this series, I will bring to the forefront the places and people who make this place as special as it is. I’ll also occasionally indulge a deep dive into history, both to scratch a personal itch and to inform and (hopefully!) entertain. It’s not a stretch to say that Hopskeller is a product of centuries of history, and draws upon a technological and geographical history far older than that. That’s something worth exploring and celebrating in its own way.

While circumstances will dictate what form this series ultimately takes, I hope to send something out every few weeks. Thanks for joining me in this; if you have any requests on things to write about, feel more than free to ask!