Willcott's hobby prompts renovation of building for microbrewery

Sean Willcott’s fascination with brewing his own beer began nearly a decade ago when the Holton man received a Mr. Beer home-brewing kit for a Christmas present.

“I brewed a Canadian pilsner,” Willcott said. “It was horrible.”

But that experience inspired Willcott to try again, and over time, he says his homemade brews have gotten better. He’s currently in­volved in renovation work on a building right next door to the old Rainbow Hall on Fourth Street just west of Holton’s Town Square with the goal of opening his own “mi­crobrewery” here before the end of 2016.

His plan is to join the “explo­sion” of small-scale breweries in the northeastern Kansas area that produce different kinds of beers, such as Kansas City’s Boulevard Brewing Company, Lawrence’s Free State Brewery or Manhattan’s Tallgrass Brewing Company.

“Here in the last five years or so, you’ve really seen an explosion of craft breweries here in the Mid­west,” Willcott said. “But we’re about five to 10 years behind the east and west coasts — maybe 15 years. You go to San Diego, or North Carolina or New York — those areas have been in craft beer since the ‘80s.”

Still, Willcott said his plan is to “have fun” with his microbrewery mission, which grew from that first batch of Canadian pilsner into a hobby that has seen him brewing several different types of beer, “all the way from a blonde ale right up to a barrel-aged stout.”

“At the time I got started, the only thing I drank, beer-wise, would have either been free beer or Bud Light,” he said. “So it was kind of a new step for me. I was really intrigued by the idea of making your own beer.”

That intrigue grew when he re­ceived the tools to brew five-gallon batches of beer.

“I got hooked,” he said. “I en­joyed making it. I was constantly modifying my homebrew system to make beer, and I would modify it again to make it a little bit easier.”

Willcott said he has brewed ales more than any other kind of beer, mainly because of “the ease of not having to lager it,” he said, refer­ring to the process of maturing the brew in cold-storage and with bot­tom-fermenting yeast. Most mass-produced American beers, such as Budweiser or Coors, are classified as pale lagers.

There are several different kinds of ale, and in recent years, the India Pale Ale, or IPA, has become one of Willcott’s favorite brews, as it has with craft brew aficionados across the country. He also brews a wheat beer that his wife, Jennifer, “really, really likes.”

His dream of opening a micro­brewery in Holton moved closer to reality this past March, when the Holton City Commission approved a recommendation to update the city’s zoning regulations to allow microbreweries in the city.

“That was a must,” he said of the commission’s action in March. “Without that, this would have been all for naught.”

Some clean-up work on the building had been taking place for the past year, but the majority of construction and renovation work began on Oct. 1, when Willcott took over the building next door to Rainbow Hall from Ed and Kathy McKenzie of Holton.

Willcott noted that he hasn’t put together a brew in “about six months,” because he’s been busy renovating the building in accor­dance with his microbrewery plans. Eventually, he intends to put a three-story, vertical brewing system in the building with fermentation tanks also in the building’s base­ment.

“Structurally, we’re there,” Will­cott said of renovation work on the building, reportedly built in the 1920s for military use but later oc­cupied by an auto garage. He added that the building has not been in active use since the late 1980s or early 1990s, and its most recent tenants, he and daughter Natalie joked, were “pigeons.”

With the placement of a new roof on the building, the next step is remodeling the inside to have a second floor, along with updated electrical and plumbing work. The front of the building will be up­dated with new masonry work this coming spring, Willcott said.

“We’ll have new garage doors and a whole new façade,” he added, “but I’m planning to keep the original brick.”

Once the brewery is open, Will­cott plans to brew and market five beers, plus a sixth that will vary from season to season. He doesn’t plan to open a “taproom,” where customers can come in and sample his brews on-site, mainly because of state and local laws that pres­ently prevent him from doing so.

Willcott does, however, plan to sell his craft beer creations at area liquor stores and restaurants through distributors, also in accor­dance with Kansas laws, although he says he’d like to have a store­front operation at some point in the future. He also expressed hope that one day, local laws will change to enable him to open a taproom.

For now, though, Willcott’s plan is “just having fun.”

“If we can keep the doors open and enjoy doing what we do, then that’s what we want to do,” he said. “I have a day job, so it’s not like I need another one!”