BoomTown Opens Only Commercial Brewery on the Iron Range

BoomTown Brewery in Hibbing Already Offers Several Beers

HIBBING, Minn. – For the first time in many years, beer is being brewed on Minnesota’s Iron Range.

BoomTown WoodFire opened in Eveleth back in 2015 offering what the owners call “comfort food with a twist.”

Now, there’s a new BoomTown located in Hibbing, and this one includes the only commercial brewery on the Iron Range.

“I think it’s kind of awesome to be the first brewery on the Iron Range again since prohibition, so it’s just kind of awesome,” said BoomTown owner Erik Lietz. Everybody is just really pumped about it.”

BoomTown owners Erik and Jessica Lietz are thrilled to open a craft brewery in Downtown Hibbing.

“We figured somebody was going to do it at some point and this building was so perfectly suited for it that, after we kind of got going over here, we just thought it was something we should do,” said Erik Lietz.

Located on Howard Street in the former Zimmy’s building, BoomTown is already brewing several varieties.

“We kind of want to do a little bit of everything so, right now we have our blonde, our strawberry blonde, we have an American wheat, a porter, an IPA, a pale ale,” said Jessica Lietz.

The restaurant has twenty-eight tap lines and the Lietz’s would like to fill all of them with their original brews.

“Serving everybody else’s beer at our other location, people always ask what’s local,” said Erik Lietz. “Castle Danger was real popular because it’s the most local brew that we could possibly get and that’s what everybody wants to drink. They want to drink something that’s as local as it is.”

Eventually, they’d also like to see their beer offered at other spots across the region.

“One of the main things that we want to do is to start supplying the other BoomTown with the craft beers that we’re brewing here and so far we haven’t been able to bring them over there yet just because we are going through such a tremendous amount of beer here,” said Jessica Lietz.

They say over the past two weeks, the response from iron rangers has been phenomenal, even before their brewery has had an official grand opening.

“We’ve already sold out of a couple different varieties and that’s a seven barrel system, so you’re looking at roughly about fourteen kegs gone in that short a time period off of just one variety, so yeah people are liking it,” said Erik Lietz.

Soon, BoomTown will offer a peanut butter porter and an American wheat with blood orange. They have plans to add lagers and pilsners in the future.