Old Nation Brewing

Here’s the place where we talk about ourselves.

It’s not our favorite thing to do, but here goes:

At Old Nation, we take pride in old school brewing philosophies that may not look sexy on paper but make great beer. With the lessons those old philosophies bring comes perspective. Good brewing perspective is how we know to keep the things that work and change the things that don’t, here. That’s why, even though tastes and trends might change, we aren’t afraid to change with them.
What you can count on is that, whatever Old Nation beer you drink, it will be the best example of whatever style it is. That’s not because your buddy gave it 4.5 bottle caps on a rating app (although they may have, thanks Brian!), but because of those years learning fundamentals from the best, and years of experience in our profession exchanging what didn’t work for what did.
Who do you sit around with at work and talk about how to do things better? For Travis Fritts, that was Nate Rykse. Travis and Nate have been in breweries their entire adult lives, spending years learning from brewers better than them across the globe, as tradesman have done for ages. After being freed from the icy death grip of German education at the Technical University of Berlin in 2002, Travis found himself brewing all around his home state of Michigan in multiple disciplines. Around that same time, Nate left the sunny confines of University of California Davis (the Harvard of Food Science programs) to brew through the long nights in Alaska. So, see? Pretty much the same resume.

Their strengths lined up perfectly. Take a decade of working together, a rebellious “Fuck you,I want it the right way” attitude, sprinkle in a “little” money from Travis’ long time business partner Rick Ghersi, and Old Nation was born. To be honest, it was hard as hell to come up with the kind of scratch needed to build (yet another) brewery in 2015 that would have start up capacity rivaling the top ten breweries in Michigan at the time. This was an all or nothing plan, and Rick had the faith to pony up for it.

Those who know what goes into our beer, understand that it’s a modern-day treasure chest. One you’d almost rather collect than drink … almost. It’s the kind of magic that only happens when you honor tradition, throw the rulebook out the window, mix techniques – not just ingredients – and aren’t afraid to fail until you don’t. It’s why our overnight success was more than 15 years in the making. And why we’ll never stop experimenting just because we’ve brewed another “next big thing.”