OMNI Brewing opens Sunday in Maple Grove
Craft beer is one of the fastest growing industries in the food and beverage world. It's also very popular in Minnesota.
In January, there were 74 craft breweries across the state. Today there are at least 90. Now, you can add one more to the list as OMNI Brewing Co. will open Sunday in Maple Grove.
OMNI has a taproom and will start out selling ale beers. Customers will also be able to get growlers on Sunday.
We're exciting to be opening in Maple Grove, said head brewer and co-founder Zach Ward. Now people in the northwest metro won't have to travel to northeast Minneapolis for craft beer.
Craft beer has been a big boost to the economy. Last year the craft beer industry had a $1.3 billion impact in Minnesota.
I think for a while people kind of thought the idea of beer being an industry or business was cute, and now seeing the numbers, seeing the data, people are starting to recognize craft beer is a very real industry, said Growler Magazine editor-in-chief Joseph Alton.
Alton also says he wouldn't be surprised to see more brew pubs popping up.
Sonya Goins, reporting
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Channel 12 is on Comcast cable in the northwest suburbs of Minneapolis and includes the cities Brooklyn Center, Brooklyn Park, Crystal, Golden Valley, Maple Grove, New Hope, Osseo, Plymouth and Robbinsdale.
Maple Grove taproom on track for Labor Day opening
OMNI Brewing Co. in Maple Grove is on a fast track to being complete and open for business by Labor Day. In just a few weeks, their Kickstarter fundraising campaign raised $25,000. They hope to raise another $15,000.
We don't know most of the names on Kickstarter, so these are not just our friends backing us, this is the city of Maple Grove and Brooklyn Park, said co-owner Steve Hayes.
Speaking of money, OMNI will save a lot of cash on its electric bill. Eighty-six solar panels on the roof help power the building.
It's going to generate 20,000 kilowatt hours per year, co-owner Zack Ward says. This to our knowledge is the biggest one, and this to our knowledge, is definitely one of the few in the state.
OMNI says they hope the taproom becomes a destination for people in the northwest suburbs.
Maple Grove recently approved the sale of growlers on Sunday. The folks at OMNI say that will help business. The company is also talking with city officials about getting approval for a food truck.
Sonya Goins, reporting
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Channel 12 is on Comcast cable in the northwest suburbs of Minneapolis and includes the cities Brooklyn Center, Brooklyn Park, Crystal, Golden Valley, Maple Grove, New Hope, Osseo, Plymouth and Robbinsdale.
Tap Talk: Omni Brewing
It's a battle between the borders this weekend as the Gophers take on the Badgers. One new Minnesota brewery is showing that the two aren't always at odds as alum from both schools came together to create OMNI, Kim Johnson and Kylie Bearse report (3:17). WCCO Mid-Morning – Nov. 27, 2015
Large food-packing event underway at Calvary Lutheran Church
A huge volunteer event is underway all week in Golden Valley. Dozens of volunteers will pack hundreds of thousands of meals for one of the poorest countries in the western hemisphere.
They got started this past weekend at Calvary Lutheran Church in Golden Valley. Inside, there's an assembly line that's a well-oiled machine. Volunteers hope to pack 750,000 meals this week for the nonprofit, Feed My Starving Children. Most of that food is headed to Haiti which has suffered through a major earthquake and a hurricane in the last six years.
Hurricane Matthew devastated a lot of the crops there, so now they've asked for about 15 million more meals than we were already going to send there, said Feed My Starving Children supervisor Manny Kuphal. This will help keep chipping away at that number.
Since volunteers started this annual event nine years ago at Calvary Lutheran, it's added up to six million meals, a number that helps make a difference.
There's hungry people all over the world, Haiti, Asia, even here in America, said volunteer Craig Recknagel. It goes everywhere. It doesn't have to be someplace far away, it can be someplace very close, too.
Manny Kuphal recently helped distribute the food in person. He says it's one thing to see it going in a plastic bag. It's another to see the impact it can bring to lines of hungry people.
The people, when we showed up with the boxes, they were thrilled. They were lined up, they were singing songs, Kuphal said. But on the other side, too when we didn't have as much as they had hoped, to have to say 'this is all I have right now,' it was hard.
So now, its pedal to the medal on this assembly line through next Saturday, and there's plenty of room for more help.
There's a lot of big problems in the world, and I think hunger seems insurmountable, Kuphal said. But when you see people like this who every year are coming and they're doing what they can to put a dent in it, in the last ten years the number of starving children is actually going down.
If you are interested in helping at Calvary Lutheran this week, you can call them to volunteer for a two-hour shift or to make a donation for the food. That number is (763) 231–2988.
Mike Johnson, reporting
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CCX Media is on Comcast cable in the northwest suburbs of Minneapolis and includes the cities Brooklyn Center, Brooklyn Park, Crystal, Golden Valley, Maple Grove, New Hope, Osseo, Plymouth and Robbinsdale.