New craft brewery coming to St. Cloud area from crafting siblings

Crafting while drinking craft beer?

The siblings behind the newest brewery to hit the St. Cloud area thought the two hobbies worked perfectly together. And they already know crafting well, having worked in the family's Crafts Direct business, which opened in 1990, helping grow it to one of the top crafts stores in the state.

"We saw breweries out West that mixed crafts and craft beer with live entertainment and events," Scott Schlecht said. "We realized that we weren't necessarily using the space we had before to the best of our advantage."

Back Shed Brewing, which he is opening with siblings Jason and Jennifer Schlecht, is next to the Crafts Direct store in Waite Park and will be the fourth brewery in the St. Cloud area.

The Schlecht siblings plan to have live music and food trucks in a separate event space. The brewery, in the Crafts Direct former outlet store, will also include an outdoor patio, and they're working on the finishing touches now.

"We're excited to get the outdoor space completed," Schlecht said. "I think our space works really well in terms of people being able to talk and interact with one another but not be drowned out by live music at the same time."

Back Shed will have 16 beers on tap for customers and will operate out of a 10-barrel system.

"We plan on gradually growing the quantity of beer that we're brewing," Schlecht said. "Hopefully come mid- to late September we'll be producing enough beer to sell growlers to customers."

The head brewer, Chris Simonsen, has been brewing for more than 20 years and has won a variety of brewing contests.

The name stems from their brewing process, which had been going on in a back shed for almost two years.

No official opening date is scheduled yet, but Schlecht said it should be in the next week or two.

Jacques de Carbonnieres

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