Today we’d like to introduce you to Courtney Servaes.
Hi Courtney, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I started home brewing shortly after graduating from Baker University more than 10 years ago. I have always been someone who enjoys learning and being challenged to learn something new. I really didn’t know much about beer but I needed some sort of creative outlet and challenge. I loved the combination of creativity and science behind beer. So I very quickly began learning as much as I could. I would constantly sample new styles, trying to figure out what I liked and didn’t like. I read dozens of books and articles about craft beer. And I joined the Lawrence Brewer’s Guild in Lawrence, KS and started brewing beer.
That learning experience and creative outlet soon became a bit of an obsession and I found myself spending a lot of time brewing beer, attending home-brew festivals and entering home-brew competitions. While I was getting my MBA at Ottawa University, I decided to create a business plan and figure out if opening a brewery was something I could do. That was more than 6 years ago!
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Both of my parents are entrepreneurs so I saw first hand how hard it is to own your own business. The brewing industry is a completely different beast, though, and it has definitely not been a smooth ride. We opened in spring of 2019 and were celebrating our first anniversary with our doors closed because of Covid protocols. Fortunately, our business model included to-go offerings so we were able to continue to make it by selling a lot of to-go beer.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
First and foremost, I should say that SBC stands out because it is owned and operated by a female head brewer. When we opened in 2019, I was the first female head brewer in the state of Kansas. That was pretty exciting. Since then, there seem to be more and more women joining this industry.
We opened our original location for Servaes Brewing Company in downtown Shawnee, KS in April 2019. Our primary focus is on offering a variety of different beer styles. We have over 20 beers on tap at any given time. Those styles range from lagers and IPAs to heavily fruited sours and everything in between. We love to challenge ourselves by adding really interesting and unique things to beers. We’ve added pies, ice cream, jelly and even pizza crust to our beers. We also offer non-alcoholic house-made sodas and a variety of cocktails.
We opened our second location Servaes Brewing Company – Riverfront in my hometown of Atchison, KS in June 2024. Opening a second location allowed us to almost quadruple our brewing capacity. We just started brewing on that system last month so we are pretty excited to see how the quality and availability of our beers is impacted by the increase in size.
I think every brewery has their own identity and beer offerings. For us, variety is kind of the goal. We want to provide a variety of beers and styles that are of the highest quality. We want to have something for everyone, and we want that something to be great. We also focus heavily on the beer experience. We don’t just want people to come to our brewery. We want people to remember coming to our brewery because of the experience they had there.
We do themed events a few times a month where we do some pretty fun and unique things. For example, we just had our first annual beer and barbecue day. We put on four unique beers that were inspired by barbecue and had a barbecue food truck come out. Then we provided a dozen or so local barbecue sauces for people to sample. It was a lot of fun and something that nobody else is really doing.
Are there any apps, books, podcasts, blogs or other resources you think our readers should check out?
As I said earlier, I am someone who is constantly learning and growing. I spend a lot of time listening to books about parenting because I want to make sure that I am the best possible version of myself for my kids. That is sometimes super difficult when you own your own brewery and have three young kids. A few books I’ve read recently and loved are No Bad Parts by Richard Schwartz and Raising Mentally Strong Kids by Daniel Amen and Charles Fay.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://servaesbrewco.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/servaesbrewco/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/servaesbrewingco
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/servaesbrewco?lang=en
