Member, Minnesota Second Avenuepaper Association (in spirit)
Vol. CXXIX — No. 35  •  Misquah, Minnesota  •  The Chain of Lakes
Tuesday, September 15, 2026  •  The Last Tuesday of Summer
The Misquah Pilot-Independent loon seal
The Voice of the Chain of Lakes

The Misquah Pilot-Independent

“Where the coffee’s hot, the lakes are cold, and all the children are above average.” — Serving the Chain since 1897.



Issue No. 37ArchiveNews

Second Avenue

A Month In, Mud Lake Starts Learning Its Saturdays

Fifty-nine Friday, a hundred and four Saturday, forty-six Sunday. The brewery marked four weeks by opening at noon and running out of stout, which is now a pattern rather than an event.

By Marvella Tollefson  •  September 15, 2026

Mud Lake Brewing taproom on a Saturday afternoon
A Saturday afternoon at Mud Lake Brewing Co., one month after opening. — Pilot-Independent photo

Mud Lake Brewing Co. passed one month Saturday and marked it by unlocking the door at noon, which is what it does on Saturdays.

The weekend ran 59 customers Friday, 104 Saturday and 46 Sunday. Saturday was the second-busiest day the brewery has had since it opened; opening day, when three hundred people stood in the street, remains first and will likely remain first for a long time.

Year Fourteen Stout sold out Saturday evening for the seventh time in four weeks. The flagship did not sell out, which Annika Holt regards as the first genuinely useful piece of information the month has produced. “For three weeks I was guessing,” she said. “Now I have four Saturdays and they look like each other. A hundred and four is a number I can order against.”

Her stated concern for October is glassware, of which the brewery has broken eleven pieces in a month, which she reports is under what she budgeted and over what she expected. Jonas Holt’s stated concern is the stout, and specifically that it has become the beer people ask whether they still have, which he says is flattering for about two weeks and is now a production problem.

“I can brew more of it,” he said. “I cannot brew more of it faster. Those are different sentences and everybody hears the first one.”

The Martinez truck was in the alley Friday and Saturday, as it has been since opening weekend. The man at the north end of the bar occupied his stool for a ninth consecutive Saturday and has now been there longer than some of the glassware.

Nobody held a ceremony. There was no cake, no ribbon and no speech, a decision the Holts made in August and have been asked about since by at least four people, two of whom seemed disappointed. “We did a thing,” Annika Holt said. “The thing was in August. This is the part where you just be open.”

The month has also settled the question of who comes in, which the Holts were guessing about in August. The Friday crowd is younger and turns over twice; the Saturday crowd arrives at four and largely stays; and Sunday, which they nearly cut before opening, has become a small steady afternoon of people who do not want a full evening and who are, by Annika Holt’s count, about sixty percent over fifty-five years old.

The taproom has also become, without anybody deciding it, the place where the Sunday crossword gets finished. Four people who did not previously know each other now do it collectively at the corner table between two and four. Nobody buys more than one beer. The Holts have no intention of discouraging it.