On the night of Jan. 5, Portage Brewing Company in Walker, Minn. was busy with customers. Among them was a group of volunteer firefighters. One was celebrating a birthday, and everyone from the crew was there, even the fire marshal.
They were back the next morning, under less celebratory circumstances. The brewery was on fire and they were tasked with putting it out.
Unfortunately, that early morning fire on Jan. 6 destroyed the building — a former hospital — housing the year-and-a-half-old brewery. Around $100,000 worth of equipment was lost to the catastrophe, along with 1,500 gallons of beer that had to be dumped, said co-owner Jeff Vondenkamp.
"It was — I was a mess," said Vondenkamp, who founded Portage with his parents and two other partners.
The cause of the fire is unknown and there were no injuries.
Familiar to cabin-goers near Leech Lake, about three hours north of the Twin Cities, Portage Brewing Company was in the middle of a 50 percent production increase.
"We started very small, and were just getting ready to expand into wholesale," Vondenkamp said.
The idea for Portage sparked while Vondenkamp, a home brewer, was traveling through Southeast Asia. His father had been talking to the Realtor who sold him his cabin about a property in the area, and they began bandying about the idea to turn it into a brewery. Vondenkamp was in Nepal when he got a call from his dad about moving up to northern Minnesota and going into business together.
