No one wants to talk about the pandemic, especially regarding business. But when it comes to the beer industry, there’s no way to avoid it.
For worse – and, admittedly, for the better – the pandemic reshaped the craft beer industry. Overnight, taprooms were closed or faced occupancy limits, and with all that product just sitting in vats, breweries had to find a way to move it, in crowlers and cans, into consumers’ hands. Brewers started packaging and expanded distribution.
Covid forced Bryan Schubert of Millpond Brewing to pivot on his entire business model – but it also forced him to make decisions that ultimately led to Millpond becoming one of the metro’s most recent success stories.
In 2019, after nine years of award-winning homebrewing, Schubert’s wife Lizzy had urged him to open a brewery of his own in a smartly rehabbed old Shell gas station in Millstadt, Illinois. But in so doing, he initially wanted to help other hobbyists realize the same dream. The original name on the shingle was Millpond Brewing and Incubator. Yes, it was to be a place for Schubert to indulge his own passions; but also set it up to where fellow homebrewers who might not have had the resources could brew on a larger scale and get their beers in front of customers. “Opening up a brewery is really hard,” said Schubert. “It takes a lot of work and a lot of money and not everyone has that opportunity. The plan was to have this incubator side to the brewery where, occasionally, we’d allow an aspiring brewery owner to come in and brew their recipe and sell it to the public.”
When Millpond opened, Schubert even had an aspiring brewery owner lined up. (Jason Thompson, formerly of Urban Chestnut and currently of co-owner and head brewer of Midtown St. Louis’s newest beer star Blue Jay Brewing). But then in March 2020 … well, you know. People wanted to stay away from each other – and stay home and drink beer. Schubert took the opportunity to focus fully on brewing the beers he wanted to make. Fortunately, Schubert’s tastes lean toward hazy IPAs, a hophead staple which had solidified its ubiquity in tap rooms and brewpubs nationwide; craft lagers, which had been steadily emerging as a crushable craft go-to; and barrel-aged stouts and barleywines, which were still highly sought-after, if a longer-term investment. And because social distancing put a damper on taproom gathering, Schubert looked straight to packaging his wares and telling his story, which trickled out of tiny Millstadt and gradually built a groundswell of response throughout the region.
Last summer, Millpond launched distribution in Missouri after doubling its production capacity. Today, you can find cans of their Old Millstadt, a replica pre-Prohibition lager and Dunkes Bier German-style pilsner throughout the metro. “It’s been huge for us,” said Schubert. “Before, people may have heard about Millpond from a friend. But now their first experience is a four-pack that they can buy close to their house. And that is now bringing people to Millstadt.”
308 E. Washington St., Millstadt, Illinois, 618.476.9933, millpondbrewing.com
