USA, MI: Gluten-free Brewery Nyx is planning on a summer opening in Grand Rapids

Something new, and pretty exciting, is about to happen to the vibrant beer scene in Michigan. Brewery Nyx is planning on a summer opening in Grand Rapids, and this brewery is offering up something completely different, mlive.com reported on March 31.

Business partners Jessica Stricklen and Sebastian Van Bommel are in the process of opening Brewery Nyx, which will be the very first dedicated gluten-free brewery in Michigan. While a few other breweries have released low-gluten, or reduced-gluten beers in the past, there has not been a facility that has been completely dedicated to brewing up a variety of styles of beer that are truly gluten-free.

That’s all about to change with Brewery Nyx.

“There were very limited options for gluten-free beer here,” Stricklen said. “And I wasn’t really OK with that. So, I figured, why not? Somebody’s got to do it.”

Stricklen, who has been gluten-free for about 10 years now, is a Grand Rapids native, and by her own admission, was a big fan of beer. “Then, I couldn’t drink it anymore,” she explained. “I switched to wines, and ciders, but nothing is the same as beer, but that is all that was available here.”

Gluten-free for Brewery Nyx means beers that can go head to head with any beer out in the market.

“What we’re looking to do here is to create beers that are on par. We’re trying to compete on quality, and offer something to people who used to go to Founders, or Vivant, or wherever, and now just can’t. And for people who have never been able to, but have always come to Beer City, and were like, ‘Oh cool. I’ll just have a cider.’ Our goal is to provide that beer, and provide that level, that quality of beer.”

After moving to Oregon six years ago, Stricklen began working in the wine industry, opening up a few start-up wineries, helping private labels get up and running, and working as the CFO for Beaux Freres Vineyards. While she might not have a background in brewing, Stricklen explained “I have business experience.”

Van Bommel is the head brewer, and he comes to the table with a wealth of experience as he’s been brewing for 18 years, and professionally for five. He most recently was the head brewer at Thornapple Brewing Company. “This is really the dream come true,” Van Bommel said. “Breaking ground and building something from the ground up, and doing it really differently.”

While not gluten-free himself, Van Bommel is headed in that direction. “I can only hold my breath for so many seconds when I lean over and tie my shoes in the morning,” he joked. “So I think that to me means that I probably just need to stop eating a half loaf of bread in my beer.”

Out in Oregon, Stricklen experienced her first gluten-free beers. “There were a handful of gluten-free breweries out there,” she said. “They were dedicated gluten-free, and they tasted like real beer, which was amazing.” The offerings she had out West inspired her to take the leap after she and her family returned home to Grand Rapids last year.

The difference with Brewery Nyx is that it is truly a dedicated gluten-free brewery. A few other Michigan breweries have offered reduced-gluten beers, including Short’s Brewing, Jolly Pumpkin and The Mitten Brewing. Most of these have achieved a low gluten count by brewing a regular beer, and then adding an enzyme that essentially eats up all the gluten in the beer. You end up with a beer that still has trace amounts of gluten, which doesn’t work for people who are true celiacs.

Brewery Nyx is instead using alternative grains to create the base for their beers, so barley and wheat will never even see the inside of the brewery. “We are taking real material, raw material, like millet, like buckwheat, like corn, like rice, and we are processing it,” Van Bommel said. “And by processing it, I very specifically mean mashing it. I don’t mean adding a whole whack of chemicals.”

“We are trying to maintain their whole, original flavors,” he said of the different grain builds they’ll be using to brew the beers with. “And present them in a manner that is complimentary, and that creates a beer.”

Brewing beer with these other grains certainly isn’t cheap. Millet can cost up to four times as much as traditional malted barley. For now, the brewery is sourcing their grains from several different West coast malters that specialize in gluten-free brewing. They are hoping that some local sources will come online soon with quality products.

“Brewing a gluten-free beer is hard,” Van Bommel explained. Trying to create body and mouthfeel is difficult with these beers, as there are no complex dextrins in the base materials, like you normally find in beers made with barley and wheat. “You have to find other ways,” he said. “That’s what we are kind of working through now, figuring out how to create that same mouthfeel.” The partners were very tight lipped about their approach to this challenge. “We are very much keeping that a secret,” Van Bommel said.

Partners at Brewery Nyx, Sebastian Van Bommel and Jessica Stricklen are bringing the very first gluten-free brewery to Michigan this summer. It's located in Grand Rapids.

We stopped by the brewery, which is located in an industrial area of Grand Rapids, a few blocks from downtown. They have a little over 8,000 square feet to work with, and work on. Right now, the brewery is truly kind of a hole in the ground, with ditches snaking around the space getting ready for pipe laying, plenty of piles of dirt, and the general feeling of an excavation site.

“Its a little disconcerting,” Sticklen said. “Every once in a while when you walk in here, its kind of just become part of the scenery. But when you look at it, its kind of like oh my God, this is our space. I hope I don’t break a leg falling into a trench.”

The plan is to create a small tasting room, with a very high-end feel to it, similar to some of the wineries that Stricklen used to work at in Oregon. Think several live-edge warm wood bars, a wall adorned with white birch bark, and comfortable seating. Van Bommel will be brewing on a 10-barrel system, with some special modifications on it in order to work with gluten-free grains.

Nyx beers will be available at the brewery by the pint, and by scheduled release with self pick-up. “We are doing some distribution,” Stricklen said. “We’ll have a few SKU’s going through wholesale, but we would really like customers to come here to pick up their orders for off-site consumption.”

The goal for Brewery Nyx is to not just appeal to those drinkers who are gluten-free, but to just appeal to beer drinkers in general. “What I want people to do when they come here, the naysayers or otherwise, is for them to ask for an IPA, and if they didn’t know any better, and somebody just grabbed them a beer, they would say, huh, that’s a good beer.”

Having gotten to try one of the beers that is in development at Brewery Nix, a double IPA, I can tell you that this is some very good beer. Van Bommel described it as a West Michigan standard, brewed with Mosaic, El Dorado, Bravo, and Citra hops. The beer’s base was primarily rice, with some millet thrown in as well. It was downright delicious, and you would be hard pressed to guess that this beer was gluten-free.

The brewery plans on making a variety of beer styles from, and have a total of eight beers on tap. Two to three of these will be seasonal brews, while four or five will be standard that will always be around.

The partners are shooting for a mid-June opening date, and Stricklen would be very happy to have product in customer’s hands by the Fourth of July.

“By the times the doors open, we’ll be rocking and rolling,” Van Bommel said.

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