Good ideas often start over beer. Always looking to take a good thing too far, we sat down over a beer (or two) and decided that beer itself was a good idea. Of course, not just some easy-drinking, institutional prole beer, but stuff like the unique craft beers we’d had at great bars. In short, we wanted beer with flavor. Complexity. Character. Intensity. Not words found in the mass-market lexicon. So with a banjo burner, a bunch of industrial-sized kitchen pots and as many buckets as we could find, we jumped in feet first. Once a week, every week.
Greenbush Brewing Company opened in June 2011 in the tiny Southwest Michigan town of Sawyer, Michigan (pop. ~1200 at the time). We’ve expanded our Sawyer taproom three times, added the Annex & beer garden across the street, upped our production from a seven-barrel brewhouse to a 15-barrel brewhouse in February 2013 and are now producing beer for thirsty craft beer drinkers throughout the entire state of Michigan, Chicagoland and Northwest Indiana.
With beers named Anger, Closure, Mammoth and Doomslayer–none of which are under 6% ABV–we can honestly say that full-bodied, flavorful beers are our bread and butter. Lucky for visitors to Sawyer who want to fill their bellies with more than beer, or the occasional non-beer-drinking book club that stops by, the Taproom and Annex also feature insanely delicious food–with a full menu in the former and a case of specialty meats & cheeses in the latter. Because we think all people, our locals especially, should have easy access to good beer, we boast a lifetime Friends with Benefits mug club membership with 3,500+ members and counting.
