Robin Shepard
A Red Ale is expected to one of the first brews made on premises. Given the pub’s proximity to Camp Randall, it will likely become a permanent offering.
Lucky’s, a campus-area icon, recently moved to its new location at 1313 Regent St., just up the street from where it had operated since 2004 as a bar and restaurant. Owner Rod Ripley purchased the former Foreign Car Specialists building, which had been home to various auto repair businesses since the 1930s, with the intent of transforming the structure into a brewpub. Reminders of that former life are seen in the old signs that hang throughout the bar.
Lucky’s opened the bar a few weeks ago, but the new 10-barrel brew house is still being assembled, with hopes of making beer by late October.
Veteran brewer Grant Johnston is managing the brew house. Johnston has been making beer for more than 30 years, working at about a half-dozen breweries, including ZeroDegrees Brewery in England. Johnston has more than a dozen medals from the Great American Beer Festival, and more than half of those are gold. “I’m an older brewer, but not an old brewer,” jokes Johnston, who’s been working with Ripley to design and build the brewery that’s at the heart of the new Lucky’s.
Robin Shepard
Johnston has been making beer for more than 30 years.
Johnston grew up in Madison, leaving in the mid-1970s for the San Francisco Bay Area, which had just a few craft breweries at the time. He started home brewing in the early 1980s, immersing himself in the Bay Area’s home-brew culture. Soon he was offered the job as the first brewmaster for the Marin Brewing Company, just across the bay from San Francisco. Marin was one of the West Coast’s first brewpubs in the modern era of craft brewing.
He returned to Madison in 2008 and met Ripley about a year ago. It wasn’t long before the two were working together and planning their brew house.
Getting to be part of startup and equipment installation is a real advantage to successful brewing. For Johnston, Lucky’s is the third brew house that he’s help design from the early stages.
Johnston’s first brews are expected to include a wheat ale, pale ale, IPA, an Irish Stout or Porter and a Red Ale (given the proximity to Camp Randall, that one is expected to become a staple). Over time, Johnston will add in a complete range of styles from Belgians to wild rice beers. “I’ve found that it’s important to have rotating, interesting blends of flavors to make customers happy, and me too,” he says. Despite so much time brewing around the Bay Area, don’t expect Johnston to get carried away making West Coast hop monsters: “I like those styles, it’s what all the kids are doing these days, but there is more to beer than hops.”
