Brewpubs

SDSU alums show off brewing talents

The national interest in craft beer brewing has not bypassed South Dakota. There are more than 25 breweries and brewpubs scattered across the state.

Jackrabbits are well-represented in the management of those breweries, including two located in Brookings.

Wooden Legs Brewing Company started in 2013, run by partners Seth Koch ’07 and Brant Mathiason ’96. Eponymous Brewing Company opened in March 2018 under the management of partners Sean Weber ’14 and Kyle McElhany ’15.

Koch and Mathiason discovered their mutual affinity for home brewing over the cubicle wall when they were both employed at Daktronics. Weber and McElhany, who roomed together in college, got their start as home brewers as well.

“Time went on and people were drinking our beers and enjoying them,” McElhany said. “We’re thinking, ‘Hey, we have a pretty good product.’”

Mathiason moved to Brookings in 1990 from California where he had learned to love craft beers. He was disappointed that at the time there were none available in Brookings.

“I couldn’t get it here, so I had to start making my own,” Mathiason said.

Today Wooden Legs has a kitchen offering pizza and sandwiches, has 20 employees and the capacity to brew 21 barrels, or 630 gallons, of beer at a time. Eponymous is a smaller operation with six on the staff including Weber, McElhany, Weber’s brother Kyle who is also a part-owner and three employees. Their brewing capacity is 16 barrels.

Brewers at both locations are moved when they see a patron enjoying a product they created.

“That’s the awesome part that got both of us into it,” said Wooden Legs’ Mathiason, “that creativity side of it.”

McElhany at Eponymous agrees: “It’s a great feeling. At the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about.”

Interviewed separately, the brewers echoed each others sentiments about how brewing can be full of surprises.

“I’ll brew a beer sometimes and I’ll think I just knocked it out of the park and other people drink it and it’s, ‘Ah, I don’t know about this,’” McElhany said.

“You can make some well-designed, well-crafted beers that a certain segment of the population really enjoys,” Koch said, “and another segment is like, ‘I don’t like that style.’”

Both brewpubs offer flagship beers that are always on tap. At Wooden Legs, one of the flagship beers is Wild Hare, a cream ale. Since the beer is always on tap, controlling the quality from one batch to the next is important.

“A lot of it is the process,” Koch said. “Make sure that everything is done to the exact same temperature, to the exact same volume, to the exact same time, every time we do it.”

Following the same process in exacting detail is also the key at Eponymous where the flagship beers are Citranym IPA and Funkzilla APA.

“That’s something we really focus on and we’re very careful in making any process adjustments on those beers that we brew often,” McElhany said.

Both brewpubs face the challenge of getting potential patrons to put aside a mass-produced favorite and try a more flavorful craft beer. At Eponymous, McElhany has brewed Citranym and Funkzilla to be more approachable by the craft beer novice.

“We try and temper the extreme bitterness, so we have a lot of hoppiness but not a lot of bitterness,” McElhany said. “That approachability is what the noncraft beer drinkers are looking for, what appeals to them.”

At Wooden Legs, Mathiason has some advice for people who are new to craft beers: “Don’t judge a beer by its color. Taste the beer. Sometimes we will use some darker-roasted malts and make a darker-colored beer, but it’s very similar to a light-colored beer in flavor, texture, taste. It’s a pretty easy drinking beer.”

SDSU has played a role in the brewers’ success. Koch’s decision to be an interdisciplinary major allowed him to take a broad array of classes.

“The ability for me to pick and choose through a lot of these programs was incredibly beneficial,” Koch said, “because we could, forgive the word, ‘craft’ an idea or a path forward.”

Koch’s partner, an electrical engineering major, credits his SDSU education as well as an atmosphere at Daktronics that nurtured his interest in being an entrepreneur.

“There’s always been an encouragement of striking out on your own or that entrepreneurial side,” Mathiason said. “That kind of community encouragement probably helped us in deciding to open a brewpub.”

Prior to opening Eponymous, McElhany majored in microbiology.

“I went to school kind of at the same time I got into brewing,” McElhany said. “I would just tie things (in class) back to brewing. I think it was a good foundation for what I do today.”

Weber, a business economics major, put his classroom experience to work by writing the Eponymous business plan.

“One of the big parts of small business management (class) is writing a business plan,” Weber said. “Just having that ability kind of made it possible.”

The Eponymous business plan is being tweaked already as Weber and McElhany have planned an expansion.

“We’ll actually be doubling our brewing capacity,” McElhany said, “which is really exciting for me. We’ll also be adding some seating and some additional storage.”

After five years in business, the owners of Wooden Legs seem to have hit a sweet spot that fulfills what they set out to create.

“We wanted a cool place where we could drink beers that we like and hang out with people we enjoyed being around,” Koch said. “I think when we started out many years ago, that was the check box we were going to tick. We are there.”

– Dana Hess