Durand Brewing Company celebrates five years in business

Chris Rugowski

Contributor

January 20, 2025

DURAND – Roger Hillestad is an attorney by day and a brewery owner by night.

Hillestad said he’s been a hobby brewer since the ’80s – establishing his name and brand way before opening Durand Brewing Company (N6649 Wisconsin Highway 25) in December 2019.

Even though he opened just a few months before the COVID-19 pandemic shut the world down, Hillestad said with the local support he was able to get then has continued to grow over the last five years.

Now, he said he has his sights set on the future – which he hopes includes a winery and regional distribution.

Opening a brewery

Hillestad said when he was stationed in Germany during his time in the U.S. Army, he gained an appreciation for the taste and profile of the beer.

When he got back to the States, he said the argument was “tastes great or less filling” – neither of which he liked.

So, Hillestad said he picked up the brewing hobby and gradually got better and better at it.

“People were saying I was making good beer, and suggested I open a brewery,” he said. “That’s when the lightbulb went off.”

The lightbulb being that there are no breweries around the Durand area geographically speaking, which Hillestad said led to him considering opening one himself.

When he opened Durand Brewing Company – which is considered a microbrewery – he said he started with standard ales and such.

In addition to its brews – such as Durand Butterfly Scream (IPA), Durand Maple Ridge Porter (maple-infused porter), Durand Kayaker (malty shady) and Durand Hefeweizen (German-style wheat bier) – the brewery also has live music, usually, he said, every other week.

Celebrating five years in business

Celebrating five years in business, Hillestad said, is “gratifying” – considering it opened up just three months before the pandemic.

The first year in business, he said, brought with it all sorts of challenges.

Not being able to have tastings and only being able to sell for off-premise consumption when they hadn’t been open very long, Hillestad said, was definitely a learning curve.

“I’m really happy that the community supported us and helped us get past that initial rough year,” he said. “There were a lot of people who ordered growlers. That helped pay the bills while things were pretty lean.”

Being well-known in the community through his day job as an attorney, Hillestad said also helped get the word out about the brewery during the early days of the pandemic.

Since then, he said Durand Brewing Company has become somewhat of a “destination” – garnering visitors from all around the Midwest and the country.

Looking back, Hillestad said while the brewery is time-consuming and capital-heavy, he couldn’t be happier with his choice to open and his location.

Brewery tourism on the rise

The craft beer tourism industry, Hillestad said, is real, and the impact is certainly felt at Durand Brewing.

In the years since he’s opened, he said he has seen several people with brewery passports stop in.

One family, he said, was traveling across the state trying to hit every brewery in their book.

Hillestad said he even added a couple of campsites on the brewery’s property with electricity (for a cost) for those who want to stop on their way through town.

Durand Brewery Company, he said, is also a hosting member of Harvest Hosts – a membership program that allows self-contained RVers unlimited overnight stays at 5,300-plus campgrounds, vineyards, breweries, farms and more throughout the country.

Hillestad said the brewery gets several people who are going from the East Coast to West Coast, and vice versa, stopping at breweries along the way.

The brewery’s location, events and land further support these efforts.

“A couple of years ago, we had Badfinger play,” he said. “Last year, we had a tribute band festival with something like five bands. People have heard of our brewery and heard the beer is good, so they are always curious to stop out and enjoy some music.”

An ideal location

The brewery’s location, Hillestad said, “fell into his lap.”

He said a friend notified him that the building he’s currently in was up for sale.

When he went to look at it, Hillestad said it was an ideal location.

The previous two companies that inhabited the building, Hillestad said, had added water piping and drain piping and updated electrical to three-phrase.

Beyond the clean-up of the building, which was a major undertaking because a welding business was in the building previously, Hillestad said most everything was right in place.

The 40-foot-by-80-foot building, he said, sits on eight acres and has a couple of 14-foot-by-14-foot garage doors.

Following the various hurdles he ran into before opening up, Hillestad said “it was a real special moment when we were able to actually pass our inspections and then start brewing.”

Given that brewing can take several weeks from start to finish, Hillestad said when they first opened they put a couple of guest beers on tap just to have something, as they started developing their inventory.

These days, he said all their taps are filled with in-house recipes of beer and non-alcoholic root beer.

“We’ve stuck with the philosophy of starting small and growing smart, which has helped us,” he said.

New year, big plans

With half a decade under its belt, Hillestad said, comes a new frontier of advancements for the brewery.

For starters, he said Durand Brewing Company is moving to a five-barrel system and a new canning system.

Hillestad said this will allow them to sell more than just growlers on-site and get regional distribution.

The biggest plan in the works, however, Hillestad said, is also becoming a winery.

“I think that’ll be something that goes hand in hand with the brewery,” he said. “It uses a lot of the same processes, a lot of the same equipment. I think it just adds a little more to our reach.”

Hillestad said he considers himself somewhat a wine connoisseur and is hopeful the choices he is going with will be crowd-pleasers.

He said he plans to start with small, five- to seven-gallon batches, to get something they can drink and sell.

Hillestad said he wants to start working with local vineyards to obtain juice because some varieties are “a little more hardy and still good.”

There are a ton of different factors that go into growing a good grape, so he said he knows it’ll be an interesting foray into the market.

Hillestad said he plans to focus on local and imported grapes and experiment with strawberry, rhubarb and even dandelion.

To find more information, visit durandbrewingcompany.com.