With all the stories of breweries closing, opening, selling and data that says craft beer is flat, Waukesha’s Raised Grain is celebrating its 10th birthday this year with sales up for the second straight year.

For a long time, the brewery was the only one in Waukesha, which seems pretty amazing, but it have Nick Reistad and his partners – brewmaster Dr. Scott Kelley, Dr. Jimmy Gosset and Kevin Brandenburg – plenty of time to become a part of the community and that relationship led to an outpouring of support during the Covid years.

Reistad talked about that and much more when we sat down recently at the bar at the brewery and taproom, 1725 Dolphin Dr., with a couple NA beers.

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OnMilwaukee: How are things?

Nick Reistad: Flat is the new up in craft beer. So for us to actually be up is really exciting. The year before was slightly up and then Covid was all over the board.  The day after the shutdown, we got a call from (distributor) Beer Capital and they're like, ‘cancel all keg orders.’ Hard stop. So I ran in the back and ...

OnMilwaukee: Put it all in cans?

Nick Reistad: That's what happened. And it worked out. It all went into cans and then it was about a year to the day after that where we got a call from Beer Capital saying, ‘no more cans. We need kegs. Put it in kegs.’ So we switched it over and it was nice because that meant that life was starting to come back. It was slow.

So we got through Covid. We had tremendous support from the community, so that was really, I cool to see and to be on the receiving end.  

OnMilwaukee: Well, and you guys, oddly, for a city the size of Waukesha, had been the only brewery for a really long time. Until now.

Nick Reistad: Until now, The guys down the street seem to be doing a good job and having fun, so yeah.  

OnMilwaukee: Was that kind of a blessing for you guys?

Nick Reistad: I don’t know. The other way to look at it is you have more people come out to both ... that critical mass to draw people out.  

OnMilwaukee: Was that a problem for you guys? Not having that critical mass?

Nick Reistad: It was unfortunate. We opened up in 2015 and then within six months it was like 15 breweries opened up in Milwaukee. So there was a lot of energy down there.  I think we got forgotten about a little bit.  

OnMilwaukee: But then it was two years later that you moved in here?  

Nick Reistad: Yeah, it was about two years later for production; taproom three years later.  

OnMilwaukee: At the moment, you know, for all the talk of craft beer being flat, right, I mean it’s a thing, but for all of that, St. Francis just opened, Hop Yard is opening, Radix is going to build out a facility in Cudahy, Good City closed, but it didn't go away because The Explorium bought them and except for one, they’re all still open. There's others too, right. Gathering Place bought Sahale. But it's a net gain in breweries right now. Is that risky business?

Nick Reistad: I think there will always be a model for small sustainable breweries. There will always be customers coming in. That being said, it's really hard work.  But I think if you open up and you start with very local ambitions, there's still space for that.  

OnMilwaukee: Well, and what's interesting is it for the most part is in the suburbs. There's a little bit happening in Milwaukee, but even Vennture, when they opened a second place, it was Biloba in Brookfield.

Nick Reistad: Yep.

OnMilwaukee: Menomonee Falls, Cudahy, St. Francis, Third Space in Menomonee Falls, 1840 in West Bend, Brewfinity in Pewaukee, Brewed Omen in Hartford.

Nick Reistad: It's an interesting time. We're looking for what the next opportunity is for us. There are a lot of opportunities coming our way from new locations being built to new products to explore. We're waiting for that right one to jump in.  

OnMilwaukee: Has there been talk of opening another location somewhere?  

Nick Reistad: Oh, there has been, for years. Nothing has jumped out at us as the right opportunity at this moment. The big thing is if we just open up a satellite location, what is the raison d’etre? Why is it there? Is it just another space?

We want to make it something that's truly unique and special. Like when you walk in here, it's almost like this we can't replicate . This bartop was bird's eye maple harvested from Wisconsin specially for this bar. The wood that's on the wall came from my dad's cabinet-making company. He's had a lung transplant, so he can't do this anymore.  

So we can't build this. Certainly not for what we were able to build it for. We'd have to pay a lot more. But if it's just a bar, what makes it stand out?  If we want to do another brewery, what's the business case behind that? Because we still have capacity here that we can use.  

So, it has to be the right one.  

OnMilwaukee: The Voodoo thing, that's interesting, right? It's franchised. And they don’t brew. It's 500 miles from home, right? That means you guys could, really, any brewery could go anywhere, theoretically, as long as the laws work.

Nick Reistad: Mm-hmm. And that's all just paperwork, really. The details.

OnMilwaukee: If in 2015 at the old place, I'd come in and said, “so when I interview you in 10 years ...” Could you even think at that point that it'd go 10 years?  

Nick Reistad: Well, I would've never anticipated Covid. That really sucked. For everybody, and in all different ways. But the fun part about this has been getting all the people to just come out and support us. I can walk out here on a Friday after a long week and see a bunch of people that I've gotten to know over 10 years.  

Maybe I don't have time to have a beer with them, but it's great to see them and catch up and see them enjoying themselves. So that's one of the most rewarding things, and that's why Covid was so hard. Because I couldn't walk out here and see that enjoyment.  

OnMilwaukee: Well, it must have been striking to walk in here and it just was empty all the time.

Nick Reistad: Yeah.That was an obstacle that nobody could have foreseen coming. But 10 years on, I don't think I would've imagined us being here, but I, I don't really know if at 31 you can really envision what it's going to be like 10 years on.  

It's been fun. We've had a lot of great people work here. We have tremendous people on staff right now, and they're helping us organize, helping us brew better beer, helping us brew more beer, helping us sell more beer. And really focusing on the experience so when you come in, you can just relax and have fun.  

We take care of all the details and if we do it right, you just can focus on the beer, the food and the people that you're enjoying the beer with, which is the most important part of everything.

OnMilwaukee: If you could tell 31-year-old Nick something, I'm gonna guess it's like, 'watch out for this covid sh*t.' But what else could he not have imagined? Other than Covid. 

Nick Reistad: The first, the first two years were just an intense amount of work, and it wasn't sustainable and it probably wasn't healthy. To work 90 to 100 hours a week, for a whole year, then start on two years where we just really couldn't afford to bring on people to do that. So you have kind of got to do it if you want to grow, but that was really hard. And I don't think I anticipated that going in, but it's one of those character building things and it makes you really feel the reward for what we've done.  

OnMilwaukee: At the moment now then, it sounds like things are good, you're up, you're happy, you get to see people when they come in. What keeps you up at night, uh, about getting to year 20. Tariffs? Are you worried about returning to flat? If it goes flat again, can you survive?

Nick Reistad: We’re right-sized  to where we don't have a 30-50-barrel brew house. We didn't go too small to where we've gotta just be running turn after turn. At 20 barrels, we can do some really small tap-only stuff and burn through it really quickly, and then do something fun and new. But we can also scale it up because it's a very automated system.  

We've got five staff brewers, and are looking to expand that team a little bit. They can be working on multiple things, keeping an eye on the brew, but largely the brewhouse does what it needs to do and we can step in if something goes wrong or if there are the steps where it needs human interaction, we can step away from what we're doing. So we can scale up and brew a lot of beer. So I think we're really well positioned for where the market is right now.

OnMilwaukee: Have the tariffs affected you yet, in terms of aluminum, etc.?

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Nick Reistad: Not yet. Fortuitously, we had ordered a bunch of cans right before any announcements hit.  And the way that I look at tariffs ... just a story from my previous life. I was a professional bike racer. My first year as a pro, I moved down to Tucson, Arizona for a huge block of training with my team and I got tendonitis in my knee right away. So everybody's doing all of their miles, they're coming home from their training rides exhausted, and I'm just sitting there with a bum knee and I can't pedal.  

So, I talked to my coach and he said, ‘control what you can control. Don't worry about the other things.’  So that's something that I've carried forward. I can't control the tariffs, so there's no sense in worrying about it. What can I control? You know, there are certain things here that we can control and we'll deal with those when we get to them.  And if it's beyond that, I’m not going to worry about it.  

OnMilwaukee: So back to, to the next 10 years. Is it a stay the course kind of time at the moment?

Nick Reistad: I still think there's going to be a lot of shakeout in the industry. Even though we're talking about a lot of smaller places opening up. Shelf space is not increasing at retail. Consumer preferences are changing. There's a lot of talk about people going away from alcohol in general. I don't know if that's necessarily true. There's a lot of ups and downs, people shifting to liquor to away from wine.  

OnMilwaukee: That's always sort of cyclical, isn't it? Ask the bourbon industry.  

Nick Reistad: Right, right, yeah. The way I look at it, there have been three main categories for thousands of years:  beer, wine and spirits. I don't think those are going away. At some point they're going to come back in. Beer's not out. And there are other types of beverages that are now available that weren't available just a couple years ago.  

OnMilwaukee: Are you guys doing things like CBD stuff?

Nick Reistad: Not currently. We've been doing seltzer since 2019.  

OnMilwaukee: Is that the only non-beer thing you're doing at the moment?  

Nick Reistad: We have some NA beer. You wanna try?  This is our Guitar City NA. It’s really just a non-alcoholic version of our Guitar City Gold Lager.  But we're really happy with how this turned out.  

OnMilwaukee: Do you guys make it here?

Nick Reistad: Yeah, We have an Alchemator (made in Waukesha by ProBrew). So we run it through and then it becomes an NA beer.  

OnMilwaukee: Is that a bit of a financial commitment? You guys must be sort of all in on this.  

Nick Reistad: Everything in this business is a financial commitment.  The one thing, going back to 30-year-old Nick, everybody when I was doing my business planning was like, ‘it's very capital intensive.’

OnMilwaukee: Well, spending capital on a de-alcoholizer seems funny too because 31-year-old Nick probably thought the market for beer at the time was like ‘more hops, more alcohol. More, more, more.’

Nick Reistad: That's actually where we're now. We're cycling back to where it's either lower alcohol or higher alcohol.  

I had a chat with a couple customers and they were jokingly asking why NA beer cost more than regular beer. And I laughed and I said, ‘because you brew a regular beer and then you're done, and then you do a whole bunch of extra stuff. So it doesn't stop when you've got the beer. You've got to do more, you've got more labor, you've got more equipment costs, you have more cleaning.’

OnMilwaukee: The only thing it has less of is alcohol.  

Nick Reistad: Right. (Laughs). It’s hard work to get it that low. Not to mention sending it off to the lab to make sure that it is under .5 percent (ABV). That doesn't cost a tremendous amount of money, but it's there.

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OnMilwaukee: Is this the first NA?

Nick Reistad: This is the first one, yeah. We have an IPA and we're still tweaking that. We're going to play around with it a little more.  

OnMilwaukee: Are you going to can it?

Nick Reistad: Not yet. We've got to work a few things out before we put it in a can.  

OnMilwaukee: So many breweries are going to these THC drinks and CBD drinks and all this other stuff...

Nick Reistad: Yeah. We have all the equipment.  

OnMilwaukee: So you could do it if you wanted?

Nick Reistad: I'm not going to say we're not going to do it. A lot of it is focus. And I think one of the reasons we're doing well this year is we have more focus out in the market than we've ever had before. Our Naked Threesome IPA is leading the charge on that. It's a fun name. Everyone wants one, and then when you have it, it's a really good beer, so that sells you on your second  one.

OnMilwaukee: Are you guys doing well in terms of distribution?

Nick Reistad: Yeah. Beer Capitol is leading the charge. We've got almost statewide distribution at this point. There are just a couple counties up along Lake Superior that we don't have distribution in. But I think the farther you get away from home, the harder it is to sell beer.  

We've got focus on our core brands out in the market and focus on our home market. So, really growing as deep of roots as possible. Lots of sponsorships this year. Some small, some bigger. We've got some fun stuff going on at the Waukesha County Fair this year.  

OnMilwaukee: How long have you been doing that?  

Nick Reistad: We've had beer there since 2019. Before that we worked with the home brew judging. That was kind of fun.  

Last year we sponsored one of the demo derby cars. That was an experience. They offered to have one of us drive it. I'm glad I did not get behind the wheel. But the guys that were doing it are in love with it

OnMilwaukee: So what are you doing to celebrate the anniversary?

Nick Reistad: We're bringing back a lot of our original beers or many of them that we haven't brewed. So Aha IPA is coming out (this) week. That's a fantastic West Coast IPA. I was just talking to my partner Scott, and we were trying to remember why we pulled it off the list because we're sipping on a can and we're like, ‘this is really good. Why did we get rid of this?’  

But with so many beers coming out, some just fall by the wayside. We replaced it with Everyday Warrior, which is also a really fantastic West Coast IPA.  

We had Hop Doctor double IPA at the beginning of the year. That was one of our original beers from the OG tap room. That was the first one we brought back.  

We have Guitar City Days coming up over Father's Day weekend. We are partnering with Audaxity, which is a cancer research fundraiser through Medical College of Wisconsin. Beer sales that weekend will contribute to cancer research here in Wisconsin, and then they have a ride at the end of the summer.  

That starts at AmFam Field and their goal is thousands of cyclists, millions of dollars and keep all that money in cancer research here. So they're a great partner to work with. The bike connection is good for me.

Then our anniversary party is Sept. 19-20. Friday night, we always bring out Haze Before the Storm, which is our incredible triple IPA ... tons of hops, high alcohol. That almost has more of a following than any of our other beers.  

It's an annual thing, the night before the anniversary party, and then that rolls into our anniversary party and we've got a fun lineup of bands ... Mt. Olive headlines. It's a big party out there. We've got barrel aged beer coming out. We've got some barrels hanging around.

We're going to do a barrel select bottle version of our 10th anniversary beer, and then we'll have a single 16-ounce can of the larger batch. We're going to go through, pick the best barrel, and that's the one that gets the bottle.  

OnMilwaukee: And how many barrels do you have of it?  

Nick Reistad: Either 16 or 20.  

OnMilwaukee: Are they all bourbon barrels?  

Nick Reistad: Yeah.  

OnMilwaukee: And it's all the same age?

Nick Reistad: No, we've got a couple from previous years that are held back and carried forward. So it's really going to be a cool blend of everything. They start from a very similar base recipe, and then the barrels just give it a life of its own.  

For the main beer. It'll be blended. And then we'll probably save some for future years too.  Always thinking ahead.  

OnMilwaukee: You can't have aged beer if you just  ...

Nick Reistad: ... sell it all right away. Yeah. (Laughs)