Stroh family set to open DIY-style Chaotic Good Brewing in Kasson – Post Bulletin

[ad_1]

KASSON — A dream years in the making is finally coming to fruition for Scott Stroh, co-owner of Chaotic Good Brewing Company in Kasson. After earning a brewery license for their at-home operation in 2020 and

expanding to an off-sale permit

in 2021, Scott and his wife, Molly Stroh, are getting ready to open the Chaotic Good Brewing tap room, located at 202 Second St. SW in Kasson.

Stroh said he anticipates holding soft openings in the final week of October or the first week of November. After turning

the former Ocean Mist Car Wash

into a tap room and brewing space, Stroh is down to the final few steps before he can open Chaotic Good’s doors.

“The city council meeting to approve our liquor license … is next Wednesday,” he said. “Once the city approves that, they have to send it to the state, who has to approve it, who has to send it back to the city to actually issue the liquor license.”

It’s just that license and hiring a few employees to join Stroh and his brewer’s assistant, Pat Walsh, in running the tap room.

“I’ve got three kids and a family and so does (Pat),” said Stroh, who was, until recently, working full-time as a science teacher in Rochester Public Schools. “That’s where we get to start hiring and make sure we can have some part-time staff that can be here and pour beer and be knowledgeable about the beer.”

Stroh’s passion for home-brewing beer kicked off about 15 years ago, and it wasn’t too long after he started when he wanted to take his hobby to the next level.

“Up until not that many years ago, a brewery in Minnesota couldn’t do this,” Stroh said. “A brewery couldn’t have a tap room. … But as various laws in Minnesota started changing, ‘OK, now breweries can have tap rooms.’ Well, that’s still a million dollars to get into it.”

For years, the Strohs kept saving up and, in 2019, established a 300-square-foot brewery in their backyard, slowly growing the business while keeping their jobs as teachers. Molly still teaches full-time, but Scott’s primary job now is running Chaotic Good.

“We’ll have 10 tap lines,” Stroh said of the tap room. “The plan is to have nine beers and one seltzer. Not sure if we’ll get all of those on for opening, but we’ll get it full.”

At Chaotic Good’s new building, one former car wash bay is used as a space for the brewing operation, complete with a masher, fermentation tanks and an industrial sink. The second bay — the tap room — looks completely different from its former self, with red- and gray-painted walls and enough tables and chairs to seat 45 patrons. Interior renovations took longer than expected since the general contractor Stroh hired didn’t show up for the job. So, the Stroh family installed almost everything inside the tap room.

One of four “googly eyes” hidden in the bar at Chaotic Good Brewing Company’s new taproom Thursday, Oct. 20, 2022, in Kasson. Co-owner Scott Stroh said they’re looking at having their first soft openings of the new taproom at the end of the month or the beginning of next.

“My 70-year-old mother painted the whole place. My 70-year-old dad and I did all of the framing, did almost all of the tile — an actual tile guy did this tile,” Stroh said, gesturing to the slate gray backsplash behind the bar. “Turns out, me and my dad can absolutely frame up a building, just not quite as fast as a bunch of 25-year-old contractors do.”

And the room’s centerpiece, the handmade bar, combines Stroh’s background as a science teacher and his love for games. The amber-colored wood features several inlays filled with dice, Scrabble tiles, D&D miniature figures, googly eyes and a Nintendo Entertainment System controller.

“I built the bar myself with Pat,” Stroh said, “wanting to have it so that if a gamer walks in, they’re gonna go, ‘OK, yes, this is my people.’ But when the 80-year-old farmer down the road who remembers the ’80s when D&D was ‘the devil’s work’ … isn’t gonna walk in and go, ‘Nuh-uh.’ It needs to be comfortable and approachable for everybody.”

The bar’s wood came from a decommissioned pumpkin-chucking trebuchet once used for Boy Scout pumpkin-chucking events. It came to Stroh as a gift from one his engineering students.

“I had a student come up to me one day, ‘My dad wants me to ask if you if you want a trebuchet,'” he said. “I mean, there was only one answer to that question. You always answer that question with yes.”

For Stroh, the bar speaks to the “chaotic good” philosophy — in D&D games, a character with a chaotic good personality alignment works to do good things for others but acts on their morals in unconventional, unpredictable ways.

“We’re probably the only licensed brewery who has part of our brew stand made out of welded-together bed frames, because I built it and that was the steel I had on hand that day,” Stroh said.

Stroh said updates for the tap room’s soft openings will be posted on the business’s

Facebook page

. Down the road, Stroh said he’d like to host D&D game nights in the tap room.