E-Malt.com News article: USA, IL: Kaskaskia Brewing Co. to open in late April

Brothers Derek and Jared Kueker hope to expand St. Louis' craft beer renaissance to their hometown of Red Bud, Ill., when they open Kaskaskia Brewing Co. later this spring, Stltoday.com reported on March, 16.

"St. Louis has been turning into such a phenomenal beer location in recent years, but the other side of the river here in Illinois is a desert," says Jared Kueker, 26. "You go to any bar in our town, and the tap selections are horrendous."

Jared is an engineer at Caterpillar, and his brother, 28, is an actuary. The two have been homebrewing for several years, a hobby that Jared picked up the day the InBev takeover of Anheuser-Busch was finalized.

"I was sort of disheartened when A-B sold out to InBev," he says. "I went and bought my first brewing book that day, and four months later I had probably brewed about 50 batches of beer."

The two have filed for federal and state licensing and hope to have Kaskaskia up and running by the end of April.

They'll start with a 3-barrel system and plan to distribute draft beer locally. The brothers are aiming to add a tasting room to their brewery in a few months.

"We never want to be a national brewery," Jared says. "We just want to make good, local beer for our community to enjoy."

Kaskaskia will likely start with five core styles: cream ale, wheat ale, amber ale, pale ale and stout. The relatively small brewing system will allow the Kuekers to make frequent one-off batches of experimental beers, like a lemon-lime-cherry beer that Derek modeled off of Cherry 7-Up.

"People we gave it to loved that beer," Jared says. "We still get asked about it, like, 'When can you make more of that?'"

The brewery's name comes from a river near Red Bud, which is located about 40 miles southeast of downtown St. Louis.


21 March, 2012