Location, location, location...

Exciting things have been going on in the world of the Sister Lakes Brewing Company.  We knew you’d be interested in sharing in our excitement, so we thought we’d post it to our blog!

The first nugget of exciting news is that we have officially locked in the location that will become the Sister Lakes Brewing Company.  We have secured and will soon begin renovating the old hardware store located at 92500 County Road 690 in Sister Lakes (Dowagiac), Michigan.

We have a lot of work ahead of us in the coming days and months to transform the building from a former hardware store into a fully functioning micro-brewery.   When it’s all finished we will provide a warm and inviting atmosphere for your friends and family to gather around a pint of delicious beer.  Our goal is to provide a place for you to share your passions while we share our passion for great beer with you. 

The second nugget of excitement to share is the recent changes to the language in the Keeler Township zoning ordinance.  Over the past few months we have had the pleasure of working with the fine folks of Keeler Township to introduce new language into the township zoning ordinance that allows for breweries, micro-breweries, distilleries and wineries to operate within Keeler Township. 

This new language ensures that residents and visitors to our area don’t miss out on the beer and wine explosion that is taking over Southwest Michigan.  It also opens the door for new beginnings and endless possibilities for Keeler Township and the Sister Lakes area.  Of all the new language written into the zoning ordinance, we are most excited about, you guessed it, micro-breweries.  After all, if you are reading this blog, you know that we are opening a micro-brewery.

Our focus is on you, the community, so if you see us out there working, please stop by and tell us your story.  We would love the opportunity to tell you ours!

We would like to thank the folks at the Keeler Township for being so great to work with and we would also like to thank you for joining us in fostering community, one pint at a time.

Fostering Community, One Pint at a Time…

As you may have read in the previous post, our family has been coming to Sister Lakes since 1937 when our Great Grandfather bought a cottage on Round Lake to create a family gathering place. Over the generations as the family grew and spread out across the country, one thing has remained constant. Sister Lakes is where our family comes to gather. For us, however, family is a much broader term than just those related to us.

As a child, I always enjoyed sitting around my grandparents’ house and watching visitors come and go and hearing stories exchanged. It was understood that if the lights were on, you were always welcome. No invitation was ever required to come to the Morin home and only strangers knocked. As we got older and started inviting friends to the lake, it didn’t take long for them to feel like family as well. When our parents bought the house next door to our grandparents’ home, it was understood that friends and family always had an open invitation.

After we seriously started considering this venture, we decided we should sit down and figure out exactly WHY we wanted to do this. In addition to just wanting to share great beer, we wanted to give back to and advance the community in which we live. Our vision for our brewery is a community gathering place where all are welcome and can engage one another in sharing ideas and passions, reminiscent of old European public houses and beer halls. Throughout history, some of the greatest thinkers have come together over a beer to change the world.

As we sat talking in the bar in our parents’ house on Round Lake, we realized that what we wanted to do was open up the welcoming and inclusive environment of our home bar to the rest of the Sister Lakes community and beyond. Many friends in the Sister Lakes area stop by regularly to share stories and drink good beer. We love entertaining guests, sharing our homebrewed beer and answering questions about how it is made. If our small home bar can be such a strong catalyst for building community, we can’t wait to see what kind of community we can foster with a brewery.

Cheers, Prost, and Sláinte!