Earlier this year when my wife and I spent a long weekend up in the Decorah area of NE Iowa, one of the places we wanted to go to was the Toppling Goliath brewery. Toppling Goliath has become a destination for beer aficionados, not only from around the Midwest, but across the nation, as well. I especially like their Pseudo Sue American pale ale that has a hint of a citrus flavor to cut into the bitterness of the hops they use in the beer. One afternoon while we were in Decorah, we headed out to Toppling Goliath to check the place out and maybe have something to eat.
You might say that Clark Lewey has been working around beer for most of his adult life. Not actually brewing it, but working for his family's company that made items such as beer coolers with taps, movable beverage carts, and beverage kiosks that you would see on concourses of arenas and stadiums across the nation. He traveled the nation to visit breweries and venues selling his company's products. Lewey grew fond of some of the craft beers he was encountering in his travels, but living in NE Iowa proved to be a wasteland for finding upscale brews. He would travel over an hour's drive one-way to Rochester, MN or La Crosse, WI to find some of the craft beers he craved. But that got tiresome after a few trips.
One Christmas about 11 or 12 years ago, Lewey's wife, Barbara, got him a home-brew kit figuring it would be cheaper to brew his own beer rather than face long drives to pick up the beers that he really loved. Lewey liked the hoppy, forward tasting beers and he started to brew some pale ale beers. While his family didn't really like the beers he was brewing, he was happy enough with them to convince his wife that maybe he needed to open a brew pub in Decorah.
Lewey started brewing his beers in a backroom with a half-barrel system and had to come up with a name. He had founded a consulting firm a few years before calling it TG Inc. that was designed to help small start-up businesses with accumulating the proper applications for grants, as well as helping with business plans. The "TG" stood for "Toppling Goliath" which was a metaphor for the little guys having to deal with big business. However, he never really got the consulting business off the ground, but he did file the proper paperwork for trademarking the Toppling Goliath name for his business. When he started his small brewery, he filed a trademark amendment to change the business from a consultancy to a brewery.
One of Lewey's first beers was the Dorothy's New World Lager, a California common lager that was named after his grandmother who Lewey said introduced he and his brothers to beers at a very early age. His grandmother died shortly before he started his small brewery, and naming the common after her was a tribute to her memory. But it was probably Lewey's hoppy American pale ale - the Pseudo Sue - that garnered the attention of beer lovers in Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota.
Pictured right - Barbara and Clark Lewey. Photo courtesy of Travel Iowa.
Lewey connections to breweries both big and small through the family business steered him in the right direction for getting the word out on his beers. He initially self-distributed his beers and focused on college towns such as Iowa City and Madison, WI. (I remember having a Pseudo Sue with a friend at a bar/restaurant in Iowa City about 8 years ago and thinking that it was a fine beer.) As demand for his beers grew, he had to find another spot in the area for a larger brewing system.
Just outside of the downtown area, Lewey found a building that had been everything from a pizza place to a record store to a flower shop. He put in a larger 10-barrel system and was soon approached by a young guy by the name of Mike Saboe who said he wanted a job at the brewery. Saboe had dabbled with brewing beers and he soon convinced Clark Lewey to take a chance on him. It worked out pretty well as Saboe helped concoct many of the signature beers Toppling Goliath has become famous for both nationally and internationally.
The 10-barrel system soon became too small for the demand for Toppling Goliath beers, and Lewey had to find another place locally that could house a bigger system. They found a building outside of Decorah and put in a four-vessel, 30 barrel system. They continued to self-distribute to places in Eastern Iowa, Southeastern Minnesota and Central and Western Wisconsin, and by 2015 they were having trouble keeping up with the masses who loved the beers. It was then that Lewey contracted with Brew Hub, a Florida-based contract brewery headed by a former Anheuser-Busch executive, to brew many of the Toppling Goliath beers and to distribute them in other states. (Mike Saboe temporarily left Toppling Goliath over the decision to contract out to Brew Hub, but he was back in the fold with Lewey months later.) That contract ended in 2017, and in the meantime Lewey contracted with Wisconsin Brewing Company in Verona, WI to brew many of their beers for distribution in Wisconsin and other upper Midwestern states.
But Lewey was looking at doing something even bigger in Decorah. In 2016, Toppling Goliath broke ground for a brewing facility/tap room/brew pub just east of Decorah that would boost production ten-fold. In February of 2018, the new Toppling Goliath facility opened allowing for the increased production and distribution of their beers which are now found in 20 states. The building is 52,000 square feet that sits on 15 acres of land. Special releases of Toppling Goliath beers such as Kentucky Brunch and SR-71 will attract hundreds, if not thousands of beer aficionados to Decorah. And earlier this year, Toppling Goliath announced that they were going to get into distilling their own whiskey at some point.
After getting into Decorah and checking into our hotel, we took off to the eastern outskirts of town just past the Decorah Municipal Airport to Toppling Goliath's location. (see map) It was a massive structure with a grey and red fabricated metal facade with a stone wall accent. The large parking lot was full on that Saturday afternoon and we were forced to park near the loading dock on the side of the building. We saw cars with license plates from Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, Kentucky and North Carolina in the lot that day. A number of Iowa plates from other counties were also parked in the lot.
Entering Toppling Goliath we found a massive open area with a number of tables throughout the tap room. A large stone hearth with matching gas burning fireplaces enclosed in glass was the centerpiece of the room. Three large deer heads hung from the stone hearth. The place was very bright from large windows letting in natural light from the outside. Even for a cloudy day, it was rather bright in the place.
The brewing facility was located in the back of the large building. Windows on the second floor offered glimpses into the brewing area. The 100 barrel brewing system at Toppling Goliath is a long way from the half-barrel system Clark Lewey started out with just 10 years ago.
The main bar area is to your right as you walk into the tap room. They featured 25 beers on tap the day we were there. Nearly every seat at the main bar was taken at around 1:30 when we got there. On the opposite end of the tap room from the bar area was a large gift shop that we had to stop at to grab some stickers - a tradition we started a few years ago to mark our visits to various brew pubs.
Upstairs was a second bar area that is used primarily for overflow and functions. In addition to tables and chairs, there were couches for people to relax in while enjoying a beer.
We took a seat in a booth along the wall that separates the tap room from the brewing facility. A young lady brought over a beer list along with a food menu. Of course, I had to get the Pseudo Sue APA while my wife got another one of Toppling Goliath's more popular beers, the Golden Nugget IPA after trying that as well as the Pompei IPA and another pale ale they had on rotation.
The food menu at Toppling Goliath isn't all that extensive. They have pizzas, sandwiches, a burger, tacos, salads and appetizers available in the tap room. We weren't really all that hungry, but my wife - who needs to have three square meals a day or she gets "hangry" - said she really needed to have something. We thought we'd share a couple of things.
What she picked wasn't what I really wanted, but I went along with her on that. She got the roasted tomato and rosemary hummus plate that was served with carrot and celery sticks, sliced cucumbers, and sliced bread. I tried a bit of the hummus on a celery stick and, quite actually, it was pretty good. It had a bit of a spicy bite on the backside of the taste. My wife was very happy with the rather healthy food choice she made.
I thought about getting either the burger or the pork bahn mi sandwich that featured sliced slow-roasted pork with a daikon radish slaw and a Thai chili aioli on a hoagie bun. But that was all trumped when I saw that they had blackened mahi mahi tacos on the menu. Three small flour tacos with chunks of grilled and blackened mahi mahi along with cilantro and a chipotle mayo sauce were on the plate along with a side of a ginger cabbage slaw. (Cojita cheese is available with the mahi mahi tacos at Toppling Goliath, but I don't care for cheese on fish tacos.) The tacos were pretty good. The mahi mahi had a nice spicy taste quality and the chipotle mayo had both a cooling and spicy flavor. I did add some of the very good ginger cabbage slaw to the two tacos I had. I shared the third taco with my wife and she was impressed with the flavor of the taco.
You have to say that it's rather remarkable that in less than 10 years Toppling Goliath went from a half-barrel nano-brewery in a small backroom to a large 100 barrel facility cranking out over 20,000 barrels of their variety of world renown beers in the small town of Decorah, IA. Their brew pub/tap room/brewing facility on the east side of town is a must stop if you make it to Decorah at some point. It was a pretty impressive facility that was lively, yet comfortable. The service we had - which turned into a tag team effort between about three or four young men and women - was fine. And the food we had was fine for a brew pub. But the beer at Toppling Goliath is the draw and they have some very good ones to choose from. This will definitely be a destination drive for us in the future.
And while you're in Decorah...
...and you're looking to try more brew pubs in the area, here are a couple more.
Pulpit Rock Brewing Company -
Pulpit Rock - named after a geological glacier formation outside of Decorah - was founded by Pete Espinosa, Kristi Wolf, Jon Tollefson, and Mark Bjerke. All four are actually family members - Espinosa is married to Kristi (Tollefson) Wolf's twin sister, Kari, and is Jon Tollefson's brother-in-law. Bjerke is married to the Tollefson's sister, Jodi. The group was able to wrangle away a couple of Toppling Goliath's assistant brewers - Robert Slack and Justin Teff - to be the co-head brewers at Pulpit Rock.
Pete and Kari Espinosa had bought the building at the corner of 5th St. and College Ave. that used to house a car repair facility on one side and a laundromat on the other. Wondering what to do with the space, they brainstormed with other family members and came up with a nano-brewery that would have limited - as in only in Decorah - distribution. They opened Pulpit Rock Brewing Company in August of 2015.
In one of the former garage bays is the bar area. It's not very big, but there is a front room that was in use for a graduation party the day we were there. My wife and I grabbed a couple of their delicious IPA's - a Foggy Notion for her and a Saftig for me. The Saftig was more forward in the hoppy taste than the Foggy Notion.
There's a couple of outside beer patios that feature tables, chairs and picnic tables. The weather that day had been iffy, sort of all over the place in terms of sun, no sun, cool, warm, rainy, not rainy. When we were there it was warm enough for us to enjoy our beers on the side patio by the bar. Pulpit Rock is not a large place, but we did hear earlier this summer that they had purchased the building just to the north of their brewery that used to house a furniture store for an expansion that is planned for next year.
PIVO Brewery - Calmar, IA
I have to give credit to my wife on this one. She's actually becoming a pretty good brew pub hunter on our trips and she was reading about a place in the small town of Calmar, IA, about 10 miles south of Decorah, called PIVO Brewery. On a cold and somewhat rainy Sunday, we made our way down to Calmar and found Pivo just on the outskirts of the north side of town. (see map)
Craig Neuzil was a native of the Calmar/Spillville area of NE Iowa and he traveled the world as a communications officer for the United States Air Force. He and his wife, Sara - who also grew up in the area - lived in a lot of different places during his 20+ year career for the military. One place where they lived was Colorado Springs where Craig worked at the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). During his off-hours, Craig's hobby was home-brewing. And when he wasn't doing that, he was working at any one of three brew pubs in the greater Colorado Springs area learning the trade from the ground up. As long ago as 2005, Craig and Sara began to plan for life after the Air Force and Craig thought that his home area of Decorah/Calmar needed a brew pub. This was four years before Toppling Goliath opened up and a full 10 years before Pulpit Rock opened their doors!
When Craig retired in 2015, the couple moved back to Calmar to start their second life. Sara was already an artist whose specialties included decorating eggs - goose eggs, ostrich eggs, chicken eggs, etc. - and the art of Azulejo, which are blue and white ceramic tiles that she learned about when the Neuzil's were stationed in Portugal. The couple decided to pair their passion for art and craft beers by building a two-story structure in Calmar that would house both an art studio/gallery and a brewery.
Pictured right - Sara and Craig Neuzil. Photo courtesy The Decorah Newspapers.
The Neuzil's decorated the building with a number of reclaimed and repurposed window frames, doors, and barn boards. Craig installed a 15 barrel steam heated system in the brewery, while Sara put her studio on the second floor. And to help with the brewing process, Craig recruited Richard Mar, an assistant brewer at one of the Colorado Springs microbreweries that he befriended during his days in the Air Force, to come to Iowa to be the head brewer. Mar's wife, Laresche, was hired to be the tap room manager.
In a nod to their Czech heritage, Craig called the brewery Pivo - which means beer in Czech. Sara's grandmother used to call her "Blepta", which meant "chatterbox" in Czech, when Sara was a little girl. She decided that would be the name of her art studio/gallery. The couple opened the building on November 22, 2017.
At first, the Neuzil's focused on the beer, but in early 2018 they added a small menu of food that included sandwiches, charcuterie plates, cheese curds, and chips and salsa. And to keep the locals happy in case they didn't quite care much for the beers that Neuzil and Mar were brewing, PIVO also features Grain Belt, Hamm's and Old Style beers on tap.
When we pulled up to the place, we were sort of confused. It looked like a big two-story farmhouse with a pole barn attached to the rear. But once we went inside and saw what was going on, it became clear to us what Pivo was all about.
The tap room was a large open area with a bar whose front was paneled with seven or eight different types of wood. A number of tables were placed throughout the room (more on those in a bit), with old feed sacks hanging from the wall. Burlap sacks were also part of the drop ceiling in the tap room giving it sort of an industrial/rustic feeling to the place.
We sat at the bar and found that the bar top was a collection of medals, patches, coins, and foreign currency under an epoxy shield. Many of the items were from the Neuzil's travels and their immediate families collections from when the Neuzil's were young kids.
They have about 25 beers, sours and ciders on tap at PIVO and many are made with locally-grown, naturally-raised grains, fruits and nuts. Many of the beers are named after communities in the area - Cresco Cream Ale, Festina Farmhouse Rye, Protivin Czech Pilsner, Jackson Junction Pear Cider - not only as a nod to the surrounding communities, but to cut down the chances that Neuzil accidentally named one of his beers the same as another brewery in some other part of the country. (Trademark lawsuits between microbreweries have escalated over the past few years as more breweries come on line.)
My wife and I tried a couple beers and my wife settled on the Ossian IPA, a hop-forward beer that was actually pretty smooth, and I got the Lawler Irish Ale, a nice sipping beer that also had a pretty smooth finish. After I finished my Irish Ale, I got an Ossian IPA for my second beer.
We walked around the tap room looking at the tables they had. Nearly all of them had a decorative theme with an epoxy top over the items. One table featured a number of political campaign buttons, another had beer coasters from other breweries. A table made with shiny new pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters was featured, as well as a table made out of flattened bottle caps with "PIVO" spelled out in red bottle caps in the middle.
As we were taking pictures of the table tops, we were stopped by a couple who asked why we were taking pictures. I told them that I thought the table tops were pretty cool. It turned out they were close relatives of Craig Neuzil. They asked us where we were from and we said the Quad Cities. They wondered what we were doing in Calmar and we told them we were spending a long weekend in the area, visiting brew pubs and other things. The lady said, "They get a lot of people who come up for Toppling Goliath that end up down here." We told them that we thought PIVO was possibly the most interesting of the ones that we visited in the area.
And with that, our visits to the three area microbreweries was complete. If you're into good craft beers and are looking for a great weekend getaway, I can't recommend more highly a trip to the Winneshiek county area of NE Iowa for stops at Toppling Goliath and Pulpit Rock in Decorah, and a side trip to Calmar for the PIVO Brewery. I don't think you'll be disappointed.