Wolverine State Brewing Company Michigan’s Premier Lager Brewery

The Stroh’s Beer sign that once lit up the Motor City skyline was, in its time, an iconic symbol for Detroiters. Matt Roy of Wolverine State Brewing Co. remembers that time well. Stroh’s influenced his tastes in beer and helped shape his passion to create Michigan’s premier lager brewery in Ann Arbor.

“Growing up in Detroit, everything was Stroh’s. My dad and his hockey buddies drank it. I remember the smell of it. The first couple of sips of beer I ever had, that’s the taste I remember. The tradition was Stroh’s.”

While attending the University of Michigan, he introduced his hometown lager to anyone who hadn’t heard of it before. Working as a bartender before American cra beer got its start, his taste began to expand as he tried imports like Guinness stout, Bass ale and other European beers.

He moved to New Orleans to attend law school at Tulane University and there discovered a local craft beer made by the fledgling Abita Brewing Company. On visits back to Michigan he learned that Kalamazoo Brewing Co. (now Bell’s Brewing) had recently started distributing a beer called Bell’s Amber Ale.

But Minneapolis was the place where his interest in craft brewing really took o. He moved there to work at a law firm and began exploring the many small, long-standing breweries like Steven’s Point Brewing and Grain Belt Brewing that were still making premium lagers—lagers like Stroh’s.

One evening he took a dierent route home to avoid traffic. He drove past an old store with a sign in the window that said, “Brew your own beer.”

“I drove past and started thinking about it. I turned around, went in and bought my rst home-brewing kit that day,” says Roy. “I got home and immediately started making beer. I made ales at first, but lagers were what interested me. The breweries that I liked in Minneapolis were making lagers, but 99.5 percent of the craft brewers were making ales. Most ales ferment at room temperature, but lagers must ferment at 52–58 degrees and stay at even colder temperatures for four to six weeks, so they’re more complicated to make.”

He brewed up his first batches in an unheated root cellar in his basement. Soon he purchased a second refrigerator to get the temperature just right, and before long he had outgrown his kitchen, garage and basement.

An opportunity came to move back to Michigan and he took a job as a lawyer for Daimler-Chrysler and eventually became VP and general counsel for Mercedes-Benz Financial Services. On the side, he continued making lagers—with encouragement from a friend who told him his beer was good enough to sell.

In 2006, Roy and friend Trevor rall put their heads together, made a business plan and took the plunge to start their own company. “A business plan makes you ask yourself the questions that you wouldn’t otherwise ask,” says Roy. “Like how are you going to distinguish yourselves? We decided on lager.”

To test the market they contracted with other breweries to make it and try it with their customers. eir agship product was Wolverine Premium, a traditional American-style lager. It started catching on and Roy felt condent to move forward. In 2010, they open their doors in an old appliance warehouse on Stadium Boulevard in Ann Arbor.

Although they considered plans to open a bigger facility, Roy’s business sense told him otherwise. He kept his job at Mercedes- Benz and hired his first employee, Oliver Roberts, to get things started. They purchased some used equipment and Roberts worked alongside Roy’s father, a retired engineer, to build out the brewery. Roberts brewed the beer, served customers and managed day-to-day operations, and Roy took over on evenings and weekends.

Nine years later, Wolverine State has expanded three times, adding a kitchen, event space and larger brewing facility. They feature 15 lagers on tap, including four or five flagship brews and several seasonal, specialty or experimental rotators. The customer favorite remains Wolverine Premium, followed by Gulo Gulo (the scientific name for the wolverine), which is an India Pale Lager. “When we started making Gulo we had never heard of any other IPLs out there, so we came up with the idea to produce a lager version of the India Pale style beer. It changed people’s perception of what lager was,” says Roy.

A seasonal favorite is Massacre, an imperial dark lager aged in bourbon barrels, which gets a special release each October. “It’s a bit of an event; people line up for it,” says Roy. “We hold back some cases every year, and this fall we’ll release a vertical eight-pack with one bottle from each of the last eight years. It gets mellower and smoother each year.”

Other popular brews are Barista, a coee lager, and Bourbon Barrel Chocolate Barista, aged in bourbon barrels and finished with cocoa nibs.

To complement the beer, Chef Nate Fritz smokes meat in house and serves barbecue brisket, pulled pork sandwiches and their famed pulled pork nachos. “We decided if we were going to serve food it had to pair perfectly with the beer, and be high quality so people will stick around for, it,” says Roy. “Smoked meats and lager just belong together.”

As the business grows, Roy plants to stay true to his personal mission of great products and responsible management. “Our goal is to grow slowly based on demand. Production has increased every year since we opened, but I want to be sure we stay successful and protable so we can keep doing this. We didn’t open to be a 10-year brewery, we opened to be a 100-year brewery.”

In 2015, after their third expansion, Roy left his job at Mercedes- Benz to run the business full-time. He still loves being involved in the day-to-day operations.

"There's something incredibly satisfying about working at the kettle every morning producing the product, and in the evening, looking at the tap room, seeing people enjoy it, laughing, kids running around the tables. It’s what I always felt was lacking when I was in the corporate world, and it’s what I enjoy now. For me, that’s the greatest gift. I wake up excited to get going every day.”

WOLVERINE STATE BREWING CO.
2019 W. Stadium Blvd., Ann Arbor
734-369-2990
WolverineBeer.com