USA, IA: Toppling Goliath opening second location in Des Moines' Drake neighborhood

Iowa's largest and most famous brewery, Decorah-based Toppling Goliath, will be opening a second location in Des Moines' Drake neighborhood, co-founder Clark Lewey says, The Des Moines Register reported on August 17.

Lewey said the brewery will be part of a 110,000-square-foot, five-story development planned on Carpenter Avenue between 24th and 25th streets north of University Avenue. It's set to open sometime in 2025.

Announced in October 2021 by Merge Urban Development Group of Cedar Falls, the project will house the brewery on the ground floor and have housing units and offices on the upper floors.

At 13,000 square feet, the brewery will be comparable in size to Big Grove Brewing's expansive Des Moines taproom that opened a year ago in the former Crescent Chevrolet building in the Sherman Hill neighborhood. Lewey said the space, like Big Grove's, will include patios.

The Merge development is a neighbor to the newly renovated and reopened Varsity Cinema and is directly adjacent to the Drake University campus. The university has been investing in redevelopment of the Dogtown business district along University Avenue and sold Merge the land the development will occupy.

"We’re thrilled to welcome Toppling Goliath to a property previously owned by the University and incredibly proud to be part of the diverse and historic Drake neighborhood," Drake spokesperson Ryan Arnold said.

Lewey, who founded Toppling Goliath with wife Barbara in 2009, first told the Des Moines Register in 2021 he was looking for a Des Moines location.

In an interview with the Register on Thursday, he described the planned Des Moines taproom as being similar to the original in Decorah — a family friendly operation with a full food menu, open daily but not late (it closes at 9 p.m.).

“We’ve taken our time doing this and we’ve put together a pretty good plan,” Lewey said. “We’re going to have a great time brewing down there because we’re going to have beers we’ve never brewed before. We’ll continue to do our primary production at the mothership in Decorah.”

He said Toppling Goliath plans to use Des Moines as an incubator for new projects “to push the envelope in some directions we haven’t done before.” Beers created in Des Moines could end up in Decorah as well, or could become part of the regular lineup.

Managers and servers from Decorah will come to Des Moines to train the 40 to 60 new staff, he said.

Toppling Goliath's beers are distributed in 30 states, according to the brewery's website, and their quality is widely recognized. Beer Advocate, a leading beer-rating website, has long listed Toppling Goliath's Kentucky Brunch Brand Stout as No. 1 on its list of the world's top 250 beers, and its Vanilla Bean Assassin holds the No. 2 spot. At No. 8 in the top 10 is the brewery's Mornin' Delight.

Esquire magazine in a 2015 article about rare and expensive beers listed Kentucky Brunch Brand Stout No. 1 among the "10 Great Beers You Will Never Taste," and noted it is so popular that in 2014, Toppling Goliath issued a news release warning that someone had been trading forgeries of it.

In addition to Solon's Big Grove, Toppling Goliath will join three other breweries based elsewhere in Iowa that have opened taprooms in the Des Moines metro: Knoxville's Peace Tree and Cedar Falls' SingleSpeed in Des Moines and Coralville's Backpocket in Johnston.

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