At Big Grove Brewery’s release party for Richard the Whale—an imperial stout that resurfaces every December—folks have been lined up since 5 a.m. Jarrett Walsh isn’t one of them, but he did bike here before noon, toting the last few years of Richards with him. The staff addresses him as one of their own, which demands an explanation.
It was deep winter, he tells me, and he was there at the bar, sipping, sitting, and doing some work. The men next to him asked what he liked most—and least—about what he was drinking, and he was struck by their interest in his words. Naturally, they were Big Grove’s brewers, “and it just turned into us sitting for two hours talking about beer. It was so … thoughtful.”
That’s not Walsh’s only anecdote about the Iowa brewery. Nor is he alone in his affection: Down the bar are Big Grove fans in Richard the Whale T-shirts, hats—there’s even a Richard the Whale arm tattoo on a burly, grinning redhead. Turn in any direction, it seems, and there’s a level of devotion to Big Grove that seems more akin to religion or celebrity. At the very least, many here seem at home.
And, perhaps, they are. Big Grove seems to have tapped a communal need, becoming a restaurant and social club almost as much as it is a brewery—one that’s expanded production four-fold in five years, while many others its size are flailing.
Scott Selix—co-founder of Lua Brewing Company, a former lead brewer and bar manager for Big Grove, and past president of the Iowa Brewers Guild—has an idea as to how this growth is happening. When I press him for an explanation on Big Grove’s remarkable ascent, he pulls no punches: “They have better people than other breweries do. You can quote me as saying that. The people are better.”
Looking at Big Grove’s unicorn stats—and the diehard fans in this room—I’m tempted to agree with Selix. But what does “better” mean? As much as can be explained, here’s how a little Iowa brew pub went from 3.5 barrels to 100,000, a farm-town David who’s toppling Goliath.
Big Grove once benefitted from a case of “right place, right time.” In 2008, the first iteration of the brewery wasn’t even a brewery. Red’s Ale House, a modest taproom in North Liberty—about 20 minutes from Iowa City—accidentally introduced the state to craft beer. “Wasn't really a thing back then,” says co-founder Matt Swift. “We put 18 taps on the line and the distributors were like, ‘Hey, I think your beer is going to go bad if you have 18 taps.’”
“They have better people than other breweries do. You can quote me as saying that. The people are better.”
The beer didn’t go bad. Within months, if you wanted your beer released in Iowa, you came through Red’s. The demand eventually got the team thinking of brewing, and their first plan eyed a small shed in Red’s backyard.
By 2012, the three-founder team—Faye Swift, her son Matt Swift, and Doug Goettsch—knew they’d outgrow that shed, instead opening up a food-focused brewpub in nearby Solon and adopting a new name: Big Grove. Solon, a tiny town of 3,000, is widely referred to as the Iowa Hamptons, just Farmer Brown–style. Oddly wealthy but still rural, it was an opportunity to push the envelope, slowly, with 3.5 barrels and a willingness to carry Busch Light.
“Everybody was a macro beer drinker until they were a micro beer drinker,” says Goettsch, the trio’s hospitality expert. Big Grove happily tossed out domestics to those who requested them (“Don’t care whatcha buy so long as you buy it from me!”), knowing many would eventually get curious about local beer—and they did. “Don't force anything down people's throats,” Goettsch says, softly. “Let them discover these things. Be the place they made that discovery.”
The same goes for the food, which is also Goettsch’s handiwork. Prior to Big Grove, he was working at The Culinary Institute of America in California’s Napa Valley. Goettsch recruited former Iowan Ben Smart, of Seattle’s five-diamond Herbfarm, and the two-man team quickly got to breaking rules.
Their menus left genre in the dust, with lines reading from “tater-tot casserole” to “harissa meatballs.” The middle of the menu stayed farm-town approachable; the outside sang in experiments—though it all focused on quality and complexity. Smart told Goettsch he wanted “to do everything as hard as possible,” and Goettsch responded in kind. “I said, ‘Yep, if we're going to do a cheeseburger, it's going to be the best damn cheeseburger we’ve ever had.’”
Goettsch is a core driver of Big Grove’s big-tent approach, from hawking those domestic bottles to plating up his family-recipe mac ’n’ cheese. He’s also a devout believer in being hands-on. As he puts it: “People like to see the owner. You can't pay people to run your business.”
The partially deflated air mattress in the upstairs office speaks for itself.
Red’s Ale House may not have had much competition in 2008, but by the time Big Grove came to be in 2012, breweries were popping up all across Iowa. Today, the Hawkeye State is no beer desert: 126 craft breweries currently have open doors, ranking it 15th in the nation for breweries per capita (5.4). What’s more, Iowa is no quality-beer desert, either, with Confluence, Pivo, Backpocket, Iowa Brewing Company, and SingleSpeed all calling the state home. Iowa breweries have racked up the medals, many from the same small-to-midsize towns in which Big Grove operates.
But Big Grove’s doing something every other brewery is not: growing precipitously, stratospherically. With the largest statewide presence, it’s now up to four locations—the original brewpub in Solon; the Iowa City brewery, which opened in 2017; the Des Moines taproom, which opened in 2022; and Cedar Rapids, which opened just before Christmas 2023.
It’d be tempting to think that’s the secret to Big Grove’s success—selling to yourself, that is—but the timeline doesn’t cooperate. The brewery increased output +37% from 2020 to 2021, both before the Des Moines expansion and during the pandemic. That year, it crossed over the 15,000-barrel mark to become a “regional” brewery, a category defined by the Brewers Association.
From 2021 to 2022, Big Grove did it again: a +20% jump in production, from 19,759 to 23,849 barrels. “We have never made enough beer to meet demand,” Swift says, matter-of-factly—Swift says everything matter-of-factly. “In the history of the company, we have never met demand.”
In 2023, Big Grove became Iowa’s fastest-growing and biggest craft beer brand, claiming a 10% share of the state’s craft sales. Since 2018, much of that number can be traced to Easy Eddy, Big Grove’s most popular brew by far. In 2023, it was 56% of sales, and previous years aren’t much different.
“We have never made enough beer to meet demand. In the history of the company, we have never met demand. ”
One of the first shelf-stable hazy IPAs on the market, Easy Eddy is the brainchild of Andy Joynt, Big Grove’s head brewer, whom most seem to describe with wonder and awe. (Luckily, he’s unassuming and nerdy.) Naturally, Big Grove is capitalizing on Easy Eddy’s success by expanding into a family of “Eddy” brands, like the Royal Eddy Imperial Hazy IPA and the Eddy Tropical & Juicy.
“He’s the fucking man,” Swift says to me while turning to Joynt. “You knew. How did you know?”
“... I don’t know about that,” Joynt shrugs.
During the first pandemic summer, Big Grove’s Iowa City location became a community focal point. With the parking lot transformed into a patio and drive-thru, cars lined up and down the block for cheeseburgers, fries, and to-go beers—and for lifeboats of sanity, hope, and much-needed carbs.
“We did not get the PPP loan in Q2,” says Swift, referring to the US loan program to help businesses stay afloat. “We sold too much.”
Even local folks who aren’t into Richard the Whales and Easy Eddies tend to express one sentiment: “I respect who they are to the community.” The Big Grove for Good program—which typically focuses on “trees, trails, and water”—offers grants to the three counties in which Big Grove currently operates. Brewery staffers can also be found regularly donating to local businesses and actively volunteering during storm and flood cleanup (a common occurrence in eastern Iowa).
“We want to matter to wherever we go,” says Swift. “We want to make a positive impact wherever we are.”
It’ll be interesting, then, to see how Big Grove navigates its next moves: mattering outside of Iowa. Will Big Grove become too big?
Big Grove’s new Cedar Rapids location—only a half hour from both Iowa City and Solon—adds another 21,000 square feet to the company’s growing footprint. The 15-barrel Lager house–style brewing setup features open fermentation, which comes readily showcased for the taproom’s 200-plus guests.
“We want to matter to wherever we go. We want to make a positive impact wherever we are.”
That’s not the only brick-and-mortar expansion on the books. Cementing it in the nation’s top-3% of breweries by production, a 68,000-barrel facility is mid-construction a few miles from the original location in Iowa City. All in all, Big Grove’s production numbers will increase by more than +50% in 2024.
And then there’s distribution: The team recently signed a deal with Stern Beverage, out of Illinois, to get their products up and down the Mississippi River. They’re also expanding into Omaha, Nebraska.
“Rooted in Iowa,” their logo reads—what happens when Big Grove sends those roots beyond the Hawkeye State? Swift knows it’s a risk. I ask him if he’s concerned about the “New Glarus effect,” aka Big Grove losing its appeal once it's available across state lines—once it veers into chain territory. He says, characteristically and without hesitation, “Absolutely.”
He follows it up with, “But we have the best team in the state, so we’ll see.”
Words + Photos by Jacqueline Kehoe
