What’s brewing in downtown Appleton?

Appleton will see a new brewery downtown this summer as Vault 202 Brewery and Taproom prepares to open its doors, welcoming the public into a new space which both suits the needs of the business while incorporating elements original to the historic bank.

“Vault 202 is an old bank in downtown Appleton and the space just really appealed to us a lot,” said Operations Manager Scott Krebsbach. “It’s a wide open space, so we were able to put the brewery in there and design the bar and restaurant exactly how we wanted it to look. But the bank still has some of the old character like some terrazzo floors and some really unique tiling on the walls that kind of harkens back to when the building was first put up… And then the vault space in the basement is absolutely beautiful and we’re going to end up turning it into a little lounge space.”

Even before the exact location had been picked, Krebsbach said it was easy to pick Appleton as the location to open a new brewery.

“My business partners and I picked Appleton because they’re from there originally and just love the area,” he said. “And it seems like Appleton is one of the faster growing beer destination places in Wisconsin… For some reason or another, Appleton seems to be a place where places are opening up and successful and even expanding a little bit, so we’re really excited to be in the Appleton community.”

With anticipation building for opening day, Krebsbach said he’s looking forward to “construction being over with” and to seeing the hard work he and his partners have put into Vault 202 pay off.

“We spent a lot of time picking the right location and getting all the details worked out and planning and designing, so it seemed like it took forever to get going,” he said. “Once we actually started going… it’s really been flying. Our goal is to be open by the end of July, but it’s a really tight timeline so we’re keeping our fingers crossed that everything was planned well ahead of time and it’ll all fall into place — that’s the goal.”

With 12 tap lines planned and a tight timeline, Krebsbach said Vault 202 will get a little help from other breweries in the community to make sure there’s plenty of beer for patrons to enjoy while things get up and running.

“Once we get in there to start brewing, it’s about a month before we’ll have our first four beers available,” he said. “I think that’s the best case scenario is, on the day we open, four of the 12 tap lines would be our beer. But we’re going to go around to a couple other breweries and already have some plans in the works to do collaborations… So we come up with a recipe together with a local brewery and then we’ll spend the day there actually brewing it at their location and once the beer is done, they’ll package it and we’ll buy a bunch of it and put it on tap at our place. So we could have four of our own beers exclusively, four collaborations with other local breweries and then to fill the tap lines we’ll certainly be buying stuff from other breweries in the area to support the local brewing community.”

And once Vault 202’s brewing operation is in full swing, Krebsbach said to expect a little bit of everything.

“I’ve been in the business for a really long time and there’s certainly a lot of different styles of beer that I like,” he said. “We can pretty much make almost anything we want to. I’d like to focus a little bit more on lighter fares like lagers just because that’s something that I’m passionate about. I also like a good hoppy beer every once in a while, so it’ll be pretty diverse. We’ll probably start out with four or five flagship beers that will be on all the time — a lighter beer, a pale ale, some sort of amber-style beer and then a darker porter or stout, and then the rest of them will probably change on a monthly basis… I think we’ll be all over the map. I also have a little bit of a background in Belgian beers, too, and the other person on my brew team has some Belgian beer brewing experience also, so we might sneak a couple of those in every once in a while. We really want to see what the community likes… We’ll try a bunch of stuff and just see what the area is clamoring for and fill the need.”

Stay up to date on Vault 202 Brewery and Taproom on their website (vault202brewery.com), Facebook page (Vault 202 Brewery and Taproom) and Instagram page (@vault202brewery).