8 hours Ago By Rebecca Mitchell
PRESTON, Minn. — When Preston’s first brewpub opened, it was only one hour after their inspection approval. The owners, Andy and Anita Bisek, flipped the sign to open with excitement and fear.
They also quickly began texting friends to check out the brewpub experience. They created a space where community members could relax and host events. And they knew the brewpub was a place they would want to come to in Preston — whether they owned the business or not.
ADVERTISEMENT “It was really scary but then it was super fun. It was like, ‘Oh my gosh, we're doing this. We're really doing this,’” Anita said of opening day at Trout City Brewing in 2019.
There were a series of new operators in the years following, although the Biseks continue to own the brewpub building and attached beer hall at 132 S. Saint Anthony St. The brewpub closed in fall 2024.
The building is now on the market for $249,900. Their goals in renovating and opening the brewpub were simple: make a place people and themselves would enjoy in Preston and operate the brewpub for two years. The restaurant experience was new for them both, though Anita owned a coffee shop previously.
Their lives were infused with Preston and restoration projects, including working on more than 17 historic homes. “We love old architecture. And we fell in love with the buildings.
They were in really rough shape,” Andy said of the brewpub with an apartment upstairs and beer hall. “We started renovating and we started upstairs.” Throughout the project, the Biseks tried “to keep as much character” like the bank vault door as a bathroom entrance.
The historic building in Preston’s downtown was built in 1889 and originally served as the Fillmore County Bank from 1889 to 1898. From bank to abstract office and antique store, Anita kept track of the building’s next iterations on a piece of paper. When it came time to pencil in their business, Andy and Anita knew their plan would be erased without their son Bruce who brews beer.
He created the set of beers, including his parents’ favorites of Saint Anthony Paleo and Eagle Maniac (an IPA). He traveled to Preston on the weekends while also working a full-time job. “It's the beer that never disappoints.
It's always delicious every single time,” Anita said of Pale Ale. ADVERTISEMENT The Biseks would love the next owner to brew beer and even use their recipes. Realtor Frank Lehto of Pathfinder Realty said about one-third of the potential buyers have noted their interest in brewing.
Even Lehto would add himself in the buyer mix if he were 10 years younger. He believes in finding the next owners, though. “I'm just really excited about finding someone for the place, you know.
So easy to sell when you love the place,” Lehto said. After moving from the Duluth area with his wife, Lehto dove back into the real estate world thanks to another listing and the brewpub. The writing was on the wall, after all.
The sight of Finnish writing in the beer hall offered a great welcome with his Finnish heritage. The phrases, such as just good beer, cheers and eat, drink, and have fun, are stenciled in Finnish, Czech and English. Anita and Andy said the phrases tie in their Finnish and Czech heritage.
Inside the brewpub, there was one main feature missing: the bar. They could find bars available for $30,000 to $50,000 with the caveat of needing to travel to Chicago. Until one of their online searches led them just 13 miles away to Whalan where the Aroma Pie Shoppe’s bar was for sale.
“To me, this (bar) looks like it's been here for 100 years, you know, like it was built here this way,” Lehto said. “You can’t just recreate that,” Lehto said while naming some of his favorite features in the brewpub building, including the woodwork, floors and windows. The stained glass windows, which Andy said he cleaned with toothbrushes, glow through the bar as another day closes in the bluff country city.
Lehto also owns a historic Folk Victorian home behind the brewpub. ADVERTISEMENT From removing pink carpet and finding a checkered floor to repairing water damaged ceilings, Andy said “we just start one step at a time” with each project. Turning the upstairs into an apartment, which likely housed the bank president’s office, was their first focus.
The apartment includes two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen and living room. In their living room overlooking downtown Preston, they enjoyed displaying their Christmas tree. The home and business spaces are 4,350 square feet.
Between the brewpub and beer hall, the alleyway once was open and people walked between the businesses. The closed alleyway is now the entrance, which is decked with signs on Trout City’s events and nods to fishing. The interior pieces have changed with each owner adding their “own little spin” Anita said, though she favors their chandeliers.
“It's just taking something that maybe somebody else has completely written off and said, ‘well, that's that's a tear down,’” Anita said. “I think, ‘That’s not a tear down.’ That's just, I can't wait to get in there and make it really nice.
” Their beer hall inspiration: German beer halls. As longtime “scrappers,” the wood pieces on the walls and ceiling came from the Michaels restaurant. Between several auctions occurring in the restaurant in 2015, the Biseks collected pieces for home projects and used the last of the wood in the brewpub.
“We took down all the wood on the walls, all the lattice on the ceiling, we took down all the sconces, ...
(and) a Grecian sort of a pendant light,” Anita described of the auction in the Haraka room. The room was named after the Pappas’ family birthplace in Greece. “The wood on the ceiling and on the side of the (beer) hall there is from Michael's restaurant.
I used up pretty much the whole works,” Andy added. ADVERTISEMENT Their small business plan took a turn with the COVID-19 pandemic, including serving drinks and food out a window to their patio. They said lots of customers came to Preston on the Root River State Trail and the Harmony-Preston Valley State Trail.
As a brewpub, which allows food and sells beer only at their business, Anita said a “fun challenge” was developing their menu. The menu key: serving items they like. She said she always wanted to answer a customer honestly about how she enjoyed the food on their menu.
Which is why people could find a Swedish meatball sub but not liver and onions. “We did enjoy having it,” Lehto said. “We'd come over and when they had music in the beer hall, it was just nice and it was never too loud.
It was just a really nice crowd, nice vibe. So we were really, really sad when it closed last fall.” Today’s bars in Preston include The Club - Bar and Veterans Organization and The Branding Iron.
In the mid-1800s, one of Fillmore County’s first breweries opened in Preston along the Root River. The Preston Brewery, which is on the National Register of Historic Places and is now a home, is the “oldest known surviving industrial structure in Fillmore County.” The Reads Landing Brewing Company, while still open, is also on the market.
“This is turnkey. It's like the lights were turned out and you can come back in and turn them on and start serving beer tomorrow,” Lehto said of Trout City Brewing. With the brewing industry facing closures, including about 10 closures in Minnesota in 2024, the Biseks hope to see Trout City return as a community hub.
“We did have people that would come in and they were born and raised in Preston and they had walked by this building many times and never really paid much attention to it,” Anita said. “One of the gals said when she came in here, she almost just felt like she was someplace else. That she'd been kind of transported to a cool little place in Chicago or Minneapolis or just had a cool vibe.
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