Ahnapee Brewery to host Spring Fest

ALGOMA – Join Ahnapee Brewery for Spring Fest on Saturday, May 24 from noon to 4 p.m. for music, food, community and craft beer.

Local musician Hunter Gatherer will be playing original music from 12:30-3:30 p.m., and local food truck Steel Belly BBQ will be serving up their Smash Burger menu lunch starting at noon through 3 p.m.

A unique tapping of a Strawberry Basil Blonde will also begin at 1 p.m.

The Ahnapee Brewery, originally established in the 1800s, closed in 1886 due to competition from Green Bay breweries and a fungus affecting hops in Wisconsin. The building was intended to be a brewery from the start, and was the biggest building in Algoma when it was completed.

The brewery housed several local businesses over the years and was revived as a winery and distillery in 2013 as the von Stiehl Winery.

“We revived the name in 2013 with the winery, and we served the beers out of the two stall garage, kind of right next door to the winery,” current Ahnapee owner Nick Calaway said.

Calaway was brewing as a hired hand of Aric and Brad Schmiling, owners of von Stiehl Winery. On Feb. 1, 2017, Calaway took ownership of the brewery.

“When the brewery started, I was the brewer and manager. The deal was that I would be able to buy it in 2017,” he said.

Calaway opened a second location in Suamico in 2020, and moved the Algoma location to a larger garage two blocks south of the first garage they operated out of in 2022.

Calaway said the biggest draw of Ahnapee is their consistency in quality and wide variety of beer.

“The beer we produce has a little bit of something for everybody. There’s 16 different beers on tap, and somebody’s looking for something sour or something hoppy, or something light and crisp or something dark and multi, we have all those bases covered and [customers] get the beer they’re expecting to get,” he said.

The Algoma location offers 16 different beers, including award-winning varieties like the Two Stall stout, a chocolate milk stout which won a bronze medal at the 2022 World Beer Cup, and the Hail Mary Helles Lager, which won a gold medal at the 2015 Great American Beer Festival.

On average, the brewery releases a new beer every few weeks. A sour ale is currently in the works as a seasonal summer drink, which will be released soon.

“We’re working on Cosmic Berry Smash, which is our sour ale for the summer, so that’ll be coming out here very soon. It’s in the tanks as we speak, and should be out and about, but it’s got raspberry, strawberry, cranberry — a little bit of everything. It’s got a little bit of sweetness to it, but it also has a nice, tart finish, and just makes it something nice and summery to drink on,” Calaway said.

Calaway said the brewery tries to do one event a month at each location to connect with the community, like Saturday’s Spring Fest and an upcoming Father’s Day celebration, where pint glasses will be given away to fathers as they come in to enjoy a beer.

The Ahnapee Brewery is certified by the Brewers Association, which verifies that independent breweries are not owned by larger breweries.

“We’re a part of the Brewers Association, and what they do is they certify that we’re independent, and other breweries are independent, by seeing who owns the brewery,” Calaway said.

“Probably 10-15 years ago, there was a kind of a snatch up of macro breweries, bigger breweries like Miller and Bud, who would purchase these smaller craft breweries and they’d have a hand in it.

An independent craft brewery seal is something that shows consumers that we’re owned locally and we’re not part of the big brewery system.”

While Ahnapee does not have a full kitchen, they do serve snacks like chips, pretzels and beef sticks, and have partnered with the restaurant next door to their Suamico location for food delivery through a QR code system. Customers are also welcome to bring in food from local restaurants or grocery stores at both locations.