One of our favorite day trips to make for a good craft beer is to Bellevue, IA to River Ridge Brewing. Since they opened in 2016, River Ridge was in a small space along Riverview St. in downtown Bellevue. But the owners were in the process of renovating it for a larger microbrewery just a couple blocks down the street when the pandemic hit in March of 2020. Because of pandemic protocols, they were forced to close down their small location and offer only growlers to go that were brought out to cars by brewery personnel. They had hoped to be in the new facility by last fall, but the build out was also going slow due to various reasons. Since last fall, we had been anxiously awaiting the news that their new microbrewery would be opening at any time. And it was sometime in April when we found out that they had, indeed, opened the doors to their new facility. On a recent sunny Sunday, we made the hour-long trek up to Bellevue to check the new place out.
The original founders/owners of River Ridge Brewing - local banker Nick Hueneke and his wife Kelly, along with Kelly's brother Jeremy Roth and his wife Nikki - decided to start the brewery after years of experience both as home brewers and working in the industry. Jeremy and Nikki Roth decided to divest themselves from the business in 2018 and the Hueneke's turned to one of their bartenders, Allison Simpson and her husband, Nic Hockenberry, to join them in the business. Simpson and Hockenberry had moved to Bellevue a couple years prior as Hockenberry was the associate director (now director) of the Jackson County Economic Alliance and loved to hang out at the nano-brewery before Simpson started to work behind the bar.
Once Allison Simpson told her father Greg that she and her husband were going to become partners in the brewery, he became very excited. Greg Simpson's primary job was as a health care professional and a political operative in nearby Dubuque, but he had been a home-brewing enthusiast for a number of years. Greg Simpson and his wife Amanda (Allison's step-mother) also invested in the business. On previous visits to the original tap room at River Ridge Brewing, we would see Greg Simpson and talk with him about many of the beers they were working on.
Pictured at right - Nic Hockenberry and Allison Simpson with their son, Henry; and Kelly and Nick Hueneke holding their son, Nile. Photo courtesy River Ridge web page.
Nic Hockenberry and Nick Hueneke had their eye on an old building that was once a implement dealership along S. Riverview that had sat empty for over 30 years. Hockenberry and Hueneke knew that it would take a lot of work to get the building into shape for a brewery, but when they walked out and saw that they could build a patio that overlooked the river, they were hooked. Work began on the new space in 2019.
When they finally opened in April of this year, they were able to expand from their single barrel (31 gallons) operation at their old location into a 3.5 bbl brewery at their new site. Their old space - which was a restaurant before it was a brewery - is presently being converted back into a restaurant, a Mexican restaurant that should open later this year.
River Ridge Brewery is open just 4 days a week - Thursday hours are 4 to 9 p.m., Friday, Saturday and Sunday they open at noon. Friday and Saturday they're open until 10 p.m., while on Sunday they are usually open until 5 p.m. (However, some Sunday's - including the day we were there - are declared as "Sunday Funday" and they'll stay open until 8 p.m.)
It was just before noon when we pulled up to River Ridge Brewery after taking backroads up from the Quad Cities to Bellevue. (see map) There's a driveway down to a parking lot next to the new patio for the microbrewery and some people were already walking down the grade toward the patio. We decided to go in the front door at street level and down the stairs to the brewery's tap room.
Once inside, we found that we were the first people in the place that day, but it filled up inside and out on the patio pretty quickly. Nic Hockenberry and Allison Simpson were behind the bar, as was Kelly Hueneke pouring beers that day. River Ridge has a handful of regular beers including an amber, a honey blonde, a good lager, a very good IPA and the Bale Ale pale ale that my wife and I both like. We got our first Iowa Bale Ale pale ales of the day from Nic Hockenberry and went out to the patio.
The tap room at River Ridge has sort of a contemporary/rustic charm. A stone brick wall was the main visual behind the bar, but concrete columns holding metal beams crossing the ceiling were prominent on the high-polished concrete floor. On weekends, River Ridge has stone-oven pizzas available. We had one during one of our recent visits there and it was just all right for a $12 10-inch pizza.
Since my wife and I like the Iowa Bale Ale pale ale beer, River Ridge has some beer cheese made with the Bale Ale by a local cheesemaker. They have a mild cheese spread and a spicy spread, but I think the mild has a bit of a spicy taste to it on its own. It's $7 bucks for an 8 ounce container of the cheese spread and a sleeve of club crackers. It's a nice little snack to complement the taste of their beers.
The patio features a number of metal-mesh tables and chairs with umbrellas. Strings of lights criss-cross the patio that is situated about 30 feet above the Mississippi River. It was windy that day - abnormally windy - and a couple of the umbrellas had come loose from the base. I helped one table control their umbrella, but an umbrella on a table on the other side of us got loose, went straight up in the air and sailed down and out onto the Mississippi River. Nic Hockenberry came out with the guy who was cooking pizzas that day and they started to crank the umbrellas down, apologizing to the patrons seated outside that it was obvious they couldn't be open. As they did that, a boater had seen the upside-down umbrella spiraling down to the river and he went to retrieve it for the brewery.
The view from the patio at River Ridge is spectacular. The vista goes from Lock and Dam 12 just up the river from the brewery all the way down about four or five miles south into Pool 13 of the river. Not a lot of boats were on the river that day due to the windy conditions, but we did see a barge coming up river that locked through the dam later in the afternoon.
One of the nice things about River Ridge is that they pull people in from all over Eastern Iowa and Northwestern Illinois. We talked with people from Dubuque - about 13 miles up river from the tap room - for awhile. But we also met and talked with a couple who lived over in Cedar Rapids, about a 90 minute drive from Bellevue. But the biggest surprise was when a couple who are friends of ours from the Quad Cities called us to see what we were doing. They had been fishing above the Bellevue dam earlier in the day and had just pulled their boat out and were heading back to the Quad Cities. When we told them we were sitting on the patio at River Ridge, my buddy said, "We'll be there in less than five minutes!" The next thing we knew, we saw them walking down the driveway to the patio. We had a couple beers with them before we all decided to head back home for the day.
About the only drawback - for us - about River Ridge Brewing is that it's a bit of a drive from the Quad Cities up to Bellevue. While the tap room is nice, it's tough to beat the view and ambiance of their patio overlooking the Mississippi River. River Ridge has a nice selection of craft brews - both year round and seasonal - and the people who work there are friendly. While we liked the coziness of their original tap room, the new River Ridge tap room and patio is a great place to spend a couple hours watching the river go by while having a good craft brew.
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