Carla Jimenez Voice Editor @CarlaJimenezSJR
If you’re a beer lover, this year is your year. Downtown Springfield is home to a new local brewery with another not far behind.
Buzz Bomb Brewing Co., opened a tap room last week at 406 E. Adams. St., while Anvil and Forge Brewing and Distilling, 619 E. Washington St., is close to starting production.
Buzz Bomb
The overarching theme of Buzz Bomb Brewing is do it yourself. Everything from the baseboards to the tables to the light fixtures were custom made, mostly by the four partners.
“Everything’s very DIY,” said Bill Larson, one of the partners.
And, of course, the beer is custom made as well.
The brewery was started by four friends, Larson, Josh Flanders, Kurt Armstrong and Benjie Gine. Larson started brewing at home 8 1/2 years ago with his friends. Then he and the rest of his partners took their beer to festivals in town. At the 2015 Oyster and Beer Festival, people told them how much they loved Buzz Bomb’s beers, and it inspired them to finally go through with opening a brewery and tap room.
“After that day, we started our business plan,” Larson said.
When they started scouting locations, they knew early on they wanted to be downtown because they wanted to be part of the area’s revitalization.
“We got involved with DSI (Downtown Springfield Inc.), the guys with Cafe Moxo — they’re definite downtown believers,” Larson said. “It is a strong sense of community with business owners.”
The decor of the Buzz Bomb tap room is inspired from the four partners’ travels to other breweries around the country. Larson joked that a lot of breweries have corrugated metal and Edison bulbs as part of the decor, so of course Buzz Bomb has those things in spades.
“I wanted to bring that here to Springfield. And I wanted everything to look custom,” he said. “The only thing here that you could find in the catalog are chairs. Down here, it’s very DIY, very representative of a high-end tap room.”
The second floor of Buzz Bomb has a more 1960s-inspired decor with leather chairs and a more sophisticated air. Larson said the second floor will be more for events.
Buzz Bomb officially opened its doors and its taps to the public Friday. They have eight beers on tap, and the tap list will change frequently to keep people interested.
Anvil and Forge
Anvil and Forge Brewing and Distillery is about a month away from from opening its doors, and it’s really close to starting to brew its beer.
The three partners are brothers: Mike, John and Adam Zerkle. John was the one who came up with the initial idea, and the two other brothers joined in from the start.
The original plan was to have a micro-distillery to make different kinds of whiskey, rum or liqueur. But since those would take at least several years to age, they thought it would be a good idea to also brew beer, which has a much quicker turnaround.
“Home brewing is where everyone started,” John said. “I started home brewing with a friend in Bloomington, Indiana, where I was going to college.”
After John moved back to Springfield, he continued home brewing and he also attended a distilling workshop.
Work on Anvil and Forge started in earnest in 2015. Its location on Washington Street used to be home to a children’s museum and has been vacant for close to 18 years.
“It’s just a unique place to be able to have this old-school art-science thing that’s mixed together here and something that’s been as old as civilization,” John said.
Just like the Buzz Bomb, it was essential for the partners at Anvil and Forge to have a location downtown.
“When we were starting this project, downtown was even more under utilized than it is now,” Mike said. “I thought downtown was struggling a little bit. And then some other people came through and really started bringing businesses downtown which brought more people. So we’re trying to further that along.”
Contact Carla Jimenez: 788-1542, carla.jimenez@sj-r.com, twitter.com/CarlaJimenezSJR.
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