USA, NE: Five-0-Five Brewing Company becomes Fremont’s first brewery

After years of preparation and a move of location, Fremont's first brewery is open, the Lincoln Journal Star reported on January 28.

"It was overwhelmingly positive," co-owner Shawn Morrow said. "We've just kind of been embraced by everybody that's been waiting for this."

Five-0-Five Brewing Company at 349 N. Main St. serves beer and other drinks in downtown Fremont.

The brewery, owned and operated by Morrow and Tim Gesell, changed its original plan to open at the 505 Building, but kept the name within its title.

"Now, we're the 505 at 349," Morrow said. "That will probably be a T-shirt someday."

Morrow's journey to opening the brewery spans decades, beginning when he was hired by Empyrean Brewing Company in 1998.

"I worked my way up to being a brewer and then decided that this was something I wanted to do," he said.

Morrow began home brewing at the time, studying the trade by attending the Siebel Institute of Technology in Chicago and an extension of the University of California, Davis, in Madison, Wisconsin.

"It was always the dream to open up my own brewery," Morrow said. "I tried in 2008, and the market crashed and we lost all of our financing, so I was like, 'Let's regroup, figure out a better time, a better place.'"

After 12 years with Empyrean, Morrow left the brewery to work in manufacturing at Lincoln Industries, where he met Gesell.

Morrow taught the basics of home brewing to Gesell, who went on to practice the craft on his own. Gesell gave some to his friend, Ryan Durant, the owner of the 505 Building.

Having been frequently asked by Morrow if he wanted to start a brewery with him, Gesell agreed to make the career jump in the spring of 2019, and the two began looking for a city that would house their business.

With Omaha and Lincoln "saturated" with breweries and even smaller communities like Alliance having them, Morrow said he focused on Fremont, which he was amazed didn't have one.

"I was told, 'Well, they had a brewery in the '20s, and then it went out of business during Prohibition, and I was like, 'This is the right place,'" he said. "And my wife has family in town, so that was a plus."

Morrow and Gesell set their sights on the 505 Building and went before the Fremont City Council for funding in November 2019.

"Our vision is to be Fremont’s brand, Nebraska's brewery," Gesell told the council. "That's really what we set out to do. We want to embrace the community."

The council unanimously approved providing $165,000 in LB840 funding for the project, which was set to run at the same time as the Lofts @ 505 in the building.

"But the hindering of construction and materials and everything that people can't get nowadays kind of stalled that, so we had to look for other places," Morrow said.

Although the brewery was set to open in late 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the project. Morrow said even with the change in location, he and Gesell wanted to stay in Fremont.

Eventually, the two discovered a new building two blocks south of the 505 Building that would house their future brewery.

"It's the perfect space," Morrow said. "Selfishly for me, it's better for me because I've got a direct route to the alley. I can get materials in and out and we've got all of these beautiful windows in here."

In summer of 2021, the remodeling process began at 349 N. Main St., which Morrow called a "hot mess," starting at Plan A and ending at Plan Z.

"This was not the original aesthetic, but I'm really happy with the way it turned out," he said. "Because we couldn't get booths, couldn't get tables, couldn't get chairs, couldn't get stainless steel, couldn't get sinks, couldn't get coolers, couldn't get anything that we needed."

Five-0-Five has a 10-barrel system in the backroom, which allows it to make 10 barrels, or 310 gallons, of beer at a time.

Other than beer, Morrow said Five-0-Five features a variety of house-mixed drinks and other alcoholic beverages from companies in Nebraska.

"The spirits are from Nebraska, they're from Brickway, our wine is from James Arthur, also in Nebraska, and obviously all of the beer that we're brewing is brewed here," he said.

Additionally, Five-0-Five has merchandise for sale, including T-shirts, sweatshirts, long-sleeved shirts, hats, socks, stickers, pint glasses, bottle openers and koozies featuring its logo, designed by Beth Greenquist.

Even prior to Five-0-Five's opening, Morrow's wife and taproom manager, Lori, handled its social media account, which had buzz from the Fremont community as to when it would open.

"Fremont's been very patient, and we appreciate it because we have not been very patient because we just wanted to get this going," she said.

Throughout the construction process, Shawn Morrow said, he had to keep the public updated on the timeline.

"We did pull a fast one by telling everybody starting almost six months ago, 'Two weeks, two weeks, two weeks, two weeks,'" he said. "Well, two weeks turned into six months."

Finally on Jan. 13, Five-0-Five opened its doors.

One aspect that was surprising to Morrow was the demographics of the crowd that Five-0-Five had.

"We had tables of college students next to millennials next to people in their 70s," he said. "So I was shocked."

Morrow said he was also surprised by Fremont's preferences, because he said a brewery can never expect what the palette of a community will be prior to opening.

"We just kind of threw a bunch of spaghetti at the wall and said, 'We're just going to start with the lightest beer and we're going to brew all the way to the darkest beers and just kind of see what everybody likes,'" he said.

But Morrow said just about every type of beer he's brewed so far has been popular; the light lager sold the most.

"I knew that was going to happen, but I was really surprised with our porter, so we do have a porter on tap, and I was really excited for that," he said.

Morrow said Five-0-Five is trying to keep its pipelines full, with a new stout, sour beer and barrel-aged beers prepared.

"Just to make sure that everybody in Nebraska is represented, we did have Glacial Till on tap until we ran out the first night," he said. "And then we're featuring Keg Creek Brewing, their Marigold Apricot Wheat this month."

Morrow said opening the business has taught him to make sure he's hands-on for any project, from its inception to final nail.

"If I wasn’t down here every single day making sure that everything is exactly the way I wanted it and it should be, then it wouldn't," he said. "So it was a full-time job just making sure this turned out exactly how we wanted it to turn out."

31 January, 2022