From Foraged Ingredients to World-Class Beers: Inside Forager Brewery

Forager Brewery Co-Owner Annie Henderson never in a million years thought she’d own a brewery. She wasn’t a homebrewer with a garage full of carboys and pots, hoping to one day move her operation to a brick-and-mortar location. She wasn’t someone who got a Mr. Beer kit for her birthday one year and got hooked. Instead, her path to co-owning Forager Brewery began most unexpectedly—through a fundraiser. And she certainly never expected that little brewery to become one of the top-rated ones not only in Minnesota, but also in the entire country.

In the early 2000s, Henderson was already immersed in the hospitality industry, with a passion for food, art, and music. In college, she worked at a craft beer bar called Whistlebinkies in Rochester, MN. The bar has over 200 beers, a rare sight in 2001.

“I got to know that there were other beers out there other than Michelob Ultras and Bud Light,” Henderson laughs.

While hosting a local political fundraiser in Rochester, MN, she searched for local beer to serve—only to realize there weren’t many options. Friends who owned a Belgian beer bar told Henderson about their bartender, who made his own beer and wanted to open a brewery.

“I invited him to the party,” says Henderson. “He brought his own beer, and everyone was so impressed.”

A week later, Henderson met up with Austin Jevne to pay for the kegs of beer. On the spot, Henderson told him, “I think we should open a brewery.”

That offhand comment spiraled into what would become Forager Brewery—a community hub built in a repurposed grocery store, filled with salvaged furniture, foraged ingredients, live music, and, of course, award-winning beer.

Ten years later, Forager isn’t just a brewery. It’s a gathering place, a creative space, and a nationally recognized name in craft beer—all rooted in a simple vision: Create something fresh, local, and welcoming for Rochester.

Foraging for Food and Furniture and Fermentation

Photography courtesy of Forager Brewery

Henderson and Jevne, who are now engaged and have kids together, opened Forager Brewery in September 2015.

Henderson says from that first fundraising event, “it just spiraled.” She saw an opportunity not only to craft exceptional beer for the city of Rochester but also to establish a hub for local musicians and artists.

That’s sort of the guiding light at Forager, which set up shop in a gutted grocery store about a mile west of downtown.

Henderson and Jevne spent eight months renovating, taking things from around Rochester to cobble together the taproom.

Antiques and old barns, “anything we could get our hands on that was foraged and almost free,” Henderson says, they added to the space.

“When we leased it, it was blue and white checkered [tiles],” Henderson says with a look that said those needed to go.

The duo added anything to the space to make it feel like it had a personality and a rich history.

“We didn’t want to own a brewery that felt like you were drinking in a pool shed,” she says with a little grin.

Instead, the couple wanted Forager to be a place of community, where anyone could come together to eat, drink, listen to cool music, and see some great art. All framed around what Henderson calls “table-fresh scratch-made food.”

If you had to list an order of operations in Forager’s vision: food, music, then art.

“And then our beers started becoming a thing,” says Henderson.

Wildin’ Out for Wild Beers

Photography courtesy of Forager Brewery

Jevne loves wild beers, especially making them. When Forager first opened, Forager’s former head brewer* wanted to focus on that style. With everything he and Henderson foraged for the taproom, plus a focus on foraging ingredients for the menu, Forager felt like the perfect name.

Henderson says they still source ingredients from outside for their menu. “Saturday, we were foraging mushrooms,” she tells me, explaining they live on a little wooded acreage. Although the brewpub has 175 seats, it’s impossible to forage everything. Forager collaborates closely with local farmers, showcasing foraged ingredients in seasonal dishes.

“The name has definitely stuck,” says Henderson, “and it’s something we live by.”

Beerwise, Forager made a name for itself with its wild and barrel-aged beers.

Henderson considers Nillerzzzzz (“with five z’s,” she assures me) the beer that originally put Forager on the map.

“It’s one of our highest-rated beers,” she says, “and it wins best beer in Minnesota every year.”

Released in 2018, Nillerzzzz is a 14% ABV imperial stout aged in rye and bourbon barrels and aged on vanilla beans from five different growing regions.

The original release had hundreds of people sleeping outside, camping, and doing bottle shares just to buy one bottle of beer.

“I couldn’t believe people would do that,” says Henderson of the moment. “Why are people sleeping in our parking lot?”

With each subsequent bottle drop, Henderson said they’d put up a piece of paper where people could write where they traveled from. “It was twenty-plus states and ten countries,” says Henderson. “That’s when I realized our beer program is way bigger than us.”

Another beer that Henderson loves represents the brewery’s wild side. Dollar Menu Pie is a wild beer with local cherries that, according to the brewery owner, “tastes exactly like the cherry pie at McDonald’s in the cardboard!”

“It was just so nostalgic,” says Henderson, admitting she hadn’t enjoyed a McD’s cherry pie in about thirty-five years, but after drinking Forager’s wild version, she went straight back to her childhood.

Henderson laughs because, while people have traveled far and wide just to try Forager’s beers, ninety-five percent of the population at home in Rochester, according to her, think that Forager is just an excellent restaurant that makes its own beer. “Whereas the rest of the world is like, they’re a world-class brewery, and they have really good food.”

*Editor’s Note: Currently, Henderson and Jevne operate two different entities. The former owns Forager, and the latter, a completely separate distribution company called Humble Forager. Thanks to some convoluted Minnesota laws, Jevne had to legally step away from his role as head brewer at Forager to become the owner of Humble Forager. After Forager realized they had product worth distributing to other states and countries, they were required to split up ownership and start a legally separate entity.

Fresh, Local, and Foraged: The Heart of Forager’s Menu

With fourteen beers on tap, Forager makes way more than just wild and barrel-aged beer. They’re the beers that helped people discover Forager, but they also craft a range of great sessionable beers that serve a purpose for the everyday drinker.

Six of those taps, Henderson says, have sessionable beers that are super food-friendly, while four to five always have on some type of IPA, which Henderson says they sell through the fastest. And, of course, there will always be at least one wild beer, whether that’s a saison or something from a really robust sour beer program.

“We’ve had a house culture at Forager for a very long time,” explains Henderson, who says people thought sour beer would ruin the brewery. “Turns out, that’s definitely not the case.”

Foodwise, Forager prides itself on one word: fresh. Sourcing as many products as they can locally, Forager works with, for example, a farm called Cannon Valley Ranch, where they source one hundred percent of this “super high-quality beef,” says Henderson, for dishes like a beef stroganoff and four different burgers. “I’ve been to their farm. I know all of their practices. We appreciate that partnership so much.”

Henderson loves the bowl section of Forager’s menu, which features a lot of pickled and foraged ingredients.

For instance, a Bimbimbop bowl that’s “totally not Minnesota,” says Henderson, who was inspired by a version she had at the Duluth Grill after a trip to the Boundary Waters. “But it’s unique, a little different than what you’d expect, but approachable.”

The Future for Forager

Photography courtesy of Forager Brewery

Forager recently celebrated its tenth anniversary.

The brewery owner, who never expected to own a brewery, calls the last ten years “such an adventure.”

While the beer has undoubtedly been a big part of Forager’s success, Henderson sees the people as the real beating heart of the brewery.

Musicians like Dessa, POS, and Caroline Smith, along with hundreds of local artists, have played in Forager’s space, which features live music six nights a week. “We’ve had all these amazing people play here, and they’re like, this place is so cool; the people that work here are so chill, and it’s such a good vibe,” says Henderson.

They’ve hosted New Year’s Eve parties, summer parties, and too many community events to count.

“It’s fun to be on the sideline and see that impact,” shares Henderson. “It just feels like everyone in town knows that anyone is welcome here.”

Walk in on a Friday night, and the place is probably packed. Usually, there’s a wait for a table, but Henderson encourages patrons to go to the bar to grab a beer while they wait.

She says three-quarters of the bar will be regulars, so you will recognize many friendly faces.

“It definitely has a little bit of that ‘Cheers’ feeling,” she says.

As we’re wrapping up our conversation, one of Henderson’s kids comes into the frame.

I joke and ask, “What is his favorite beer?”

The answer is, of course, a moot point, but Henderson shares that there is actually a beer named after him, Silas.

That’s Forager for you.

Where everybody knows your name and your kids’ names and where beers that are the highest-rated in the country sit next to beers rated highest in the hearts of the community.