A visit to Minnesota’s smallest commercial brewery.
While in Winona, Minnesota on business for a couple of days, I did as I always do when on the road, I searched out places to find good beer. This is not exactly an easy task in Winona. The choices are rather limited. However, while eating lunch at Culver’s, I looked across the parking lot to see that the bowling alley sign also read “Wellington’s Backwater Brewing Company.” Back in my hotel room I looked it up online and sure enough, there is a brewpub in the bowling alley. Of course I had to check it out.
That night I went in for dinner. I immediately ordered a sampler of all the house brewed beers which included a wheat, a pale ale, and a nut brown ale. They also brew an oatmeal stout, but that was out. Sadly, with the exception of the wheat, the beers were all very dissapointing. Each had a slightly vegetal and stale taste that was not pleasant. So, I ordered the wheat to accompany my BBQ sampler platter. The menu says that the wheat beer is a Kolsch style. I think I would classify it more as an American wheat, as the body and overall flavor profile were not as delicate as I would expect from a Kolsch. Whatever you want to call it, it was pretty tasty and went very well with the fine BBQ. As I was getting ready to leave, I saw the brewer, Chris Gardner in the brewery and took a moment to introduce myself and arrange to meet with him the next evening.
The next night Chris filled me in on the history of the brewpub. The bowling alley had been started by Chris’s father in the 1960’s. The idea for the brewpub came in 1995. At the time Chris was homebrewing and working at a liquor store/homebrew supply store connected to the bowling alley. One day while reading the Midwest Brewing News, he saw an ad for a 1-barrel brewhouse that Bell’s Brewing was selling. He talked to his brother, by then the majority family owner of the business, about buying the system and adding house beers to the menu. This was at a point in history when brewpubs were popping up all over the place so it seemed like a natural. One year and a lot of money later, the brewery was operating. Chris, a graduate of the short course at the Siebel Institue in Chicago, has been producing four house beers and an occasional specialty ever since. He brews once a week for a total annual output of around 55 barrels.
I tried all four beers again on this visit. I must say, they were all much fresher tasting. Chris explained that he has a hard time getting the staff to run the beer out of the lines at the start of an evening. I suspect that the samplers I had were first pours that consisted of beers that had been sitting in the lines overnight. The stout, that Chris took straight from the bright tank, had a rich, creamy mouthfeel and nice chocolate and roast malt character. The pale ale tasted very fresh with a bright citrus hop character and underlying caramel malt. The brown was toasty and lightly bitter, but seemed a little on the sweet side for my taste.
I very much enjoyed my visit to Minnesota’s smallest commercial brewery and my conversation with Chris. While none of the beers are outstanding, if you find yourself in Winona looking for a decent beer, I would recommend a visit to Wellington’s Backwater Brewing.