The Wizarding World of Wondrous Brewing

On a perfectly crisp-like-a-lager spring afternoon, I ambled up to a grizzled, grey-bearded man, a stalwart behind the bar at Wondrous Brewing in the East Bay. I asked for Wondrous Founder, Wynn Wisenhunt.

“I think he’s in back,” said Brad Griebenow, Wondrous’ four-year bartender, pointing me to a door I’d never seen before.

Stepping inside, the teal floors led me like a yellow brick road to the Wizard on Wondrous.

A man in a black Harley-Davidson t-shirt popped up from behind gleaming steel tanks. His brown curls flowed out from under a navy Schenker hat. Colorful tattoos scaled both his arms, constantly moving up, down, and around while we talked.

“I have ADHD,” Wisenhunt admitted to me, hurriedly stepping away to turn a dial and mess with a valve.

At Wondrous, Wisenhunt’s crazy pinballing mind seems like a boon, churning out hit after spontaneous hit that constantly caught our attention. You’ll find his beers highlighted on some of our top lists from “The Top 12 Beers We Drank in February 2024,” to “The 29 Most Iconic Beers to Drink in Summer,” to “The Top 31 Oktoberfests.”

Wondrous first came onto our radar four years ago when we named them one of the “12 Best New Breweries of 2021.”

For S&Gs, here’s what we wrote:

When we first heard the name “Wondrous Brewing Company,” we wondered how it hadn’t been taken. It’s such a good name for a brewery that we’re surprised someone didn’t pick it up years ago.

On a past visit, Hop Culture Managing Editor Grace Weitz was impressed that Wisenhunt devoted a majority of the taps to lagers. On draft: a Czech-style pilsner, a couple of dark lagers, a German-style bock, a helles, and a pilsner. Plus, a bevy of IPAs, too. But it was a porter that ended up grabbing Weitz’s attention, landing on one of the twelve best beers we drank last month.

Since moving to Northern California on March 1st, 2020 (so yes, literally two days before the entire city shutdown), Wondrous has become one of my absolute favorite breweries in the Bay Area.

But despite visiting numerous times and chatting with Wondrous Co-Founder Wynn Wishenhunt over email, I had yet to meet the man behind the curtain.

Stepping inside the aquamarine brewery, that was all about to change.

Bleeding East Bay IPA All Day

Photography courtesy of Magic Muncie, Social Media Manager, Hop Culture

Wisenhunt grew up in the East Bay.

Around 2005, his mom worked as a bartender at the now-closed Concord location of E.J. Phair, a well-known local watering hole.

While some teenagers spent their weekends playing soccer and going to the movies, Wisenhunt rode bikes, skateboarded, and hung out at a brewpub.

“I was Becky’s son,” he laughs. “Everyone was so cool in the industry—drinking beer and smoking weed. I connected with these people a lot.”

Pretty soon, Wisenhunt’s older friends introduced him to three little letters: I-P-A.

“We were drinking Eye of the Hawk and Red Tail Ale,” says Wisenhunt. “A bunch of old-school beers.”

Wisenhunt got his first job bussing tables at E.J. Phair, and he brewed his first beer as a teenager, a Dortmund export lager.

Afterwards, he rushed home to try and draw out on graph paper everything he’d seen, asking himself “What the f**k just happened?”

“I thought it was the coolest thing ever,” he gushes.

When other high schoolers graduated and went off to college, Wisenhunt applied to the Siebel Institute.

“I graduated from a continuation school of rejects,” Wisenhunt jokes, admitting he rarely went to school and couldn’t imagine living behind a desk.

Wisenhunt may not have paid attention in biology or chemistry, but he had something else—real-life experience.

“I was one of the youngest in my class,” he shares, “but I was probably one of the top three experienced beer people.”

At Siebel, Wisenhunt shared a classroom with homebrewers and biochemists who had never brewed. They knew plenty about the science behind beer, but much less about the commercial practicality.

“I knew how to use valves,” laughs Wisenhunt. “[They knew] what was going in and out of the cell wall and the mitochondria.”

After studying in Chicago and Munich, Wisenhunt graduated in 2014, stoked and ready to go.

He quickly built up a pedigree, bouncing from Lagunitas to Bartlett Hall (where he won his first awards) to his favorite brewery of all time and dream job, Sante Adairius.

But eventually, another dream came calling.

Leaving a Dream to Start a Dream

Photography courtesy of Magic Muncie, Social Media Manager, Hop Culture

As a teen, Wisenhunt would wander around his neighborhood in the East Bay, looking for buildings he thought would make cool breweries.

When an investment opportunity came up to open his own place, he wasn’t sure if he should.

After all, he was brewing at the Capitola-based Sante Adairius, his favorite brewery of all time. He’d reached the pinnacle of his career. And he loved it there.

“But obviously, as a brewer, your dream is to open up your own thing one day,” says Wisenhunt, who says he couldn’t pass up the chance to start his own spot.

“Oh, man, this is happening,” he remembers thinking. “If I don’t do this right now, I’ll probably regret it.”

Sticking with his roots, Wisenhunt knew he wanted to open a brewery in the East Bay.

But Emeryville surprised him.

The conversation lulls as Wisenhunt steps away to tend to the current batch of Creek Park, a West Coast IPA with Nelson, Citra, and Centennial, he’s brewing. In the quiet, Wisenhunt starts humming to himself, interjecting phrases like “sweet” and “perfect” as he weighs out his yeast to pitch.

He seems uncomfortable with the silence, filling it by telling us the history of this Oakland neighborhood and the old bolt factory building we’re in currently.

Nicknamed Rotten City, Emeryville in the 1930s had the most brothels, casinos, and speakeasies per capita. Not to mention the slaughterhouses and butcheries.

During construction, which Wisenhunt thought would be a “chill little build out,” he says they found pig bones and more. “Oh, s**t, that’s a full-on tooth,” he recalls.

For two years, Wisenhunt took the building through a complete tear-down. “We ripped the whole building apart—the sidewalk, front beer garden, street—all of it we tore up!” he shook his head, remembering.

It turned out for the best, considering that in March 2020, a pandemic shut down everything anyway.

Over two years after signing the original lease, Wondrous opened in May 2021.

At the time, Wondrous was the first brewery to open in Emeryville in almost twenty-five years.

With a roster of hoppy West Coast IPAs and European-style lagers, Wondrous truly reflected Wisenhunt’s journey.

The Wizard of Wondrous

Photography courtesy of Magic Muncie, Social Media Manager, Hop Culture

“Who are we?” Wisenhunt repeats my question as he uncharacteristically stops talking for a second. “I’d say we do a lot of light German- and European-style lagers and West Coast-style hoppy beer.”

Brewing at Wondrous isn’t an exercise in structure and rigidity. Perhaps what makes this brewery flow so freely is its freedom.

Admitting he doesn’t love computers, Wisenhunt runs Wondrous brew schedule from his head. “There’s never been a spreadsheet here,” he says, noting he doesn’t have a set brew schedule. “I just brew how I feel or based on what hops we have.”

Sometimes, Wisenhunt won’t even know exactly what he’s making until he’s literally boiling wort in the kettle. “I’m like, all right, what hops do we have in here?” he laughs.

For instance, a recent addition called Everdeane, a hoppy red lager named after Cameron Diaz’s red-haired character in the epic movie Gangs of New York. With an opening in the schedule, Wisenhunt didn’t know what to brew. So he asked his wife. “You know what sounds hella good?” she told him. “An old-school hoppy red.”

So Wisenhunt brewed one.

Or Hot Bocks, a West Coast-style pale bock Wisenhunt brewed after bullshitting around about 420 beers with Wondrous’ bartenders, Brian and Brad.

That’s just how it goes at Wondrous.

Preferring to call the brewhouse more like an art studio, Wisenhunt says it may sound crazy, but that’s just his “creative, locked-in mind” at work.

Somehow, it works. It reminds me of going to a play and hearing the orchestra warm up before the show starts. What sounds like a jumble of discordant notes somehow all comes together when the person at the front raises their baton.

“I’m the conductor throwing my arms around like crazy,” Wisenhunt says. “But being a brewer, that’s my life.”

Consider Wondrous all the sides of Wisenhunt—a clash of his childhood in the East Bay and a transformative time in Munich. All with a splash of spontaneity.

“I would definitely choose the more lager life,” he admits, “But I also grew up drinking hoppy beers.”

You’ll see both split almost fifty-fifty at any given time on Wondrous’ taplist. But while Wisenhunt constantly switches up those sixteen taps, one thing you know will always be on the draft board—Wondrous Hell.

Wisenhunt Heaven, Wondrous Hell

Photography courtesy of Magic Muncie, Social Media Manager, Hop Culture

“Pretty much the best beer in the world, in my humble opinion, is Augustiner Hell,” exclaims Wisenhunt. “In Munich, it’s the people’s beer.”

Having enjoyed copious amounts of this light German lager while in the Bavarian capital for brewing school, Wisenhunt almost doesn’t know how to describe it.

“It’s juicy water,” he laughs, throwing out more descriptors. “It’s super light and refreshing, but has this velvety, almost jelly-like body where it’s not grainy, it’s not sweet, but it has this fullness to it, but it’s still dry and crisp.”

He adds, “It’s one of the wildest beers I’ve ever had.”

With the ultimate goal of making a beer like Augustiner Hell, Wisenhunt set out to create something he couldn’t find in California—his flagship helles.

For Wisenhunt, making the perfect helles became his quest for the holy grail.

While everything else changes spontaneously at Wondrous, Hell will always be present.

“It’s the rock of my brewery,” notes Wisenhunt, who you could cheekily say is always living in Hell.

Whenever a tank frees up, he fills it with Hell. Everything revolves around the flagship.

“This is where I draw the line,” says Wisenhunt, “Don’t f**k with our Hell.”

Starting with a base of German Weyermann light pilsner malt, Hell has a super simple mash schedule and a sixty-minute hop addition of Simcoe.
Initially serving Hell super traditionally and unfiltered, Wisenhunt one day thought he would just filter it to see what would happen.

After running Hell through a plate-and-frame filter for the first time, he took a sample. “Holy f**king shit,” Wisenhunt thought. “It was just so beautiful and perfect.”

After the filtration, to add some hop character back into Hell, Wisenhunt included a five-minute addition of Hallertau Mittelfrüh.

In 2024, Wondrous Hell won a medal at the Great American Beer Festival in the International Light Lager category.

The irony?

Wisenhunt had actually screwed up that batch.

When he went to order his normal L17 Harvest yeast, he accidentally asked for the L13 Harvest yeast—something that didn’t exist.

“I jumbled my words and pretty much ordered a yeast that wasn’t in existence,” laughs Wisenhunt. Instead, Wondrous house Weihenstephan W-34/70 yeast (aka L13 Global yeast) showed up instead.

On the brew day, ready to pitch, Wisenhunt realized he had the wrong yeast. But what could he do? “So we pitched W-34/70 in willy nilly,” says Wisenhunt. “And that beer took the medal.”

“It was a happy accident,” says Wisenhunt, who has continued to pitch W-34/70 into Wondrous Hell.

As heaven is to hell, Wondrous West Coast IPAs are to its lagers.

Beating Out the Best Beer in the World

Award-winning lagers aren’t the only thing Wisenhunt can make off the cuff.

“I grew up on IPAs,” Wisenhunt reminds me. “It was in my blood to brew a triple IPA.”

Triple Cuff debuted during Wondrous’ first S.F. Beer Week. Entered into a famous NorCal hoppy beer competition called Bistro Double IPA Festival, Triple Cuff won by beating a little big beer called Pliny the Younger.

The irony?

Wisenhunt almost dumped this batch of ten-pound-per-barrel Citra and Mosaic TIPA down the drain.

“That first batch of Triple Cuff that won a medal,” says Wisenhunt. “I hated it.”

Wisenhunt thought the beer was too old-school. Starting with a base of five malts, including twenty-five percent of the Simpsons’ English Golden Promise, Wisenhunt also added a bunch of C hops. He felt the triple IPA came out with this orange-y 1990s vibe.

“I freaked out,” he shares, deciding after a conversation with his bartenders to enter the beer in the competition anyway.

In 2022, Triple Cuff took gold, beating out Pliny the Younger.

“That whole day was a wild, mystical day,” remembers Wisenhunt.

Over two years later, people still come in asking for “the beer that beat Pliny,” laughs Wisenhunt.

Case in point, while I sat at the bar thirty minutes later, Wondrous first-timer Chad Deslipp shared his first Triple Cuff experience with me. “It’s definitely one of the best triple IPAs I’ve had,” he told me. “Pliny the Younger has been the flagship of triples for so long, but when I had Triple Cuff, I thought it was way better.”

He adds, “It’s way maltier, you know?”

Wisenhunt thinks the balance sets Triple Cuff apart—something the Bistro judges told him helped edge the triple IPA ahead of Younger.

Finishing at less than one degree Plato, Triple Cuff is “just bone dry,” says Wisenhunt, “but it’s still balanced and almost has this sweetness to it.”

Wisenhunt continues, “No matter how many hops I throw in that beer, it’s never as bitter as I think.”

And Wisenhunt does throw a ridiculous amount of Citra and Simcoe in Triple Cuff—six pounds per barrel in the dry hop and four-ish pounds per barrel in the kettle—so around ten pounds total.

“It’s one of those beers where you have like a foot of hop sludge,” Wisenhunt chuckles.

Named after a brewer’s trick, rolling your pants up to form a single, double, or even triple cuff, to avoid getting your pants wet in the brewhouse, Triple Cuff reminds Wisenhunt of his time at Sante Adarius.

“They always had two cuffs on the pants,” he laughs, pointing to his rolled carpenter-style jeans. “I used to rock that, too.” Although he admits he never actually rocked three folds.

“I probably should,” he says. “Maybe one brew day, I will for sh**s and giggles!”

Art Studio, Coffee Shop, Taproom

Photography courtesy of Magic Muncie, Social Media Manager, Hop Culture

If Wondrous is an art studio in the back, it’s more like a neighborhood coffee shop up front.

At 4 pm on a Friday, all the seats at the bar were full.

In one corner, a man had his laptop open, headphones jammed in his ears, and fingers twirling over the keys.

As I pull up a chair, the couple next to me stops me for a second to ask a question.

“I have to ask, are you a fan of lagers?” says Santa Rosa resident Stacy Willow as she points to my royal blue crewneck, which has lager stamped across it four times. Willow and her partner Deslipp had come down for the weekend to go to a comedy show. They wanted to stop by Wondrous first because one of their favorite local spots back home, Rincon Valley Tap Room, always brings in Wisenhunt’s beers.

“It’s the owner’s favorite brewery,” explains Deslipp.

Willow chimes in explaining how Rincon Valley did a tap takeover of Wondrous’ beers. “He spoke so highly of this brewery that we had to come taste it!” she said.

Deslipp started with the Creek Park. “It’s got to be a favorite,” said the Walnut Creek native, who grew up near the skate park the beer is named after. While Willow sipped on the Reefer Blues, a West Coast IPA with Columbus Cryo, Nectaron, HBC 586, and Motueka.

“We’re the antithesis of a big corporation,” says Wisenhunt, who, along with his wife and two bartenders up front, are the only full-time employees at Wondrous. “We’re cruising; we’re small; and we’re just hanging out.”

When I asked Willow what she loved so far about her first visit, she pointed out the “chill music” and art.

Deslipp added, “Everyone is so nice.”

Behind the bar, the soft-spoken Griebenow tucks his glasses on top of his head. A pony tail flowing down his navy button down, Griebenow looks like he could be just as at home with a surfboard tucked under his arm at the beach as at the taproom pouring pints of the uber popular Czech pilsner 2 Ten Euros.

During the pandemic, Griebenow lost his job as a bartender at the now-closed Oakland icon Beer Revolution. While looking for a new gig, he told me he wanted to find something with “effort and purpose and Wondrous represented that to me.”

“We have a neighborhood vibe,” he shares with me. “But people are now willing to travel for our beer.”

Those like the Santa Rosa-based Willow and Deslipp.

Griebenow, who has been at Wondrous since the beginning, believes in what Wisenhunt is doing and all the energy he’s putting into his craft. “My go-to joke when someone asks me what’s good,” he says, “I tell them it’s all good.”

The Word of Wondrous

Photography courtesy of Magic Muncie, Social Media Manager, Hop Culture

There are many moments in his life that Wisenhunt looks back on with awe.

What if his mom never worked as a bartender at E.J. Phair?

What if his older friends never introduced him to old-school craft beers?

Or what if he never snuck a Lagunitas IPA out of his mom’s fridge? (According to Wisenhunt, his mom loves all things hoppy)

“I probably wouldn’t be here,” Wisenhunt ruminates humbly.

To Wisenhunt, Wondrous is that light bulb spark of inspiration, that moment of magic.

When looking through W words in the dictionary, Wondrous stuck. “It was a cool-sounding word,” he remembers. But the definition also resonated: a feeling of being inspired.

When you peek behind that curtain at Wondrous, you’ll always find Wisenhunt, pinballing from task to task, making little moments of magic—all in pursuit of one thing.

“That feeling when you taste a beer,” says Wisenhunt, “and you’re like holy s**t”