Celiac-safe beer returns to St. Paul as SAW Brewing takes over Burning Brothers space

Celiac-safe beer is pouring again in St. Paul's Midway neighborhood, where SAW Brewing opened this summer in the space Burning Brothers left behind.

Kasey Pate opened the brewery with her mother. Pate spent five years brewing at Burning Brothers, the gluten-free brewery that closed last year after more than a decade in the same building.

"An opportunity was there to pick it back up," Pate said. "It's always been my dream to have my own."

The name is an acronym. It stands for "strong-ass women," Pate said.

Everything that comes into the building is certified gluten-free — the grains and every other ingredient she brings in — because the facility itself is dedicated to gluten-free brewing, Pate said. That makes the beer celiac-safe, a distinction that matters to drinkers who can't rely on beers brewed with barley and then treated to strip the gluten out.

Pate is gluten-free herself. Now she's brewing her own recipes, including an English pale ale currently on the board.

"I wanted to bring my own kind of spin on things at the start," she said.

The opening comes at an uncertain stretch for craft beer. Taprooms around the metro have closed or changed hands over the past year. Bauhaus Brew Labs announced it would shut down after more than a decade in northeast Minneapolis. HeadFlyer Brewing served its last call with Dangerous Man set to take the space. And in St. Paul, Barrel Theory Beer Company is moving into the former Lake Monster site.

Pate thinks SAW is filling a gap the rest of the market isn't.

"There's not a lot of options for people in the celiac community," she said.

She also sees the taproom as a way to hand something she cares about to the city.

"It's really just like giving back something that I put passion and love into for other people to enjoy as well, and that's something that's super special to me," Pate said.

SAW Brewing is open Thursdays through Sundays.