Craig Zoltowski in The Cellar

Over the past month, The Cellar, a beer and winemaking supply shop in Oshkosh, has been undergoing an expansion. Behind that expansion is one of the shop’s new owners. His name is Craig Zoltowski.

Craig Zoltowski at work in The Cellar

The Cellar opened in Fond du Lac in 2009 and moved to Oshkosh in 2016. Zoltowski and co-owner Jeff Duhacek purchased the business at 465 N. Washburn St. from Dave Koepke this past May. They've been operating the store since the beginning of June.

It's the first time either Zoltowski or Duhacek have run a homebrew shop, but they come to the business with bona fides, especially on the science side of brewing. Duhacek is a Ph.D. chemist. Zoltowski has a master’s degree in chemical engineering and an MBA. He's also a professional brewer.

Zoltowski is co-owner of Emprize Brew Mill, a brewpub that opened a year ago in Menasha. And with that, his path changed. "I've been in corporate America pretty much my entire career,” Zoltowski says. "I decided to get out and do this, do something I'm really passionate about."

His enthusiasm shows when he talks about his plans for the store. "We want to optimize this place," Zoltowski says. "We’re really trying to add a huge capability here that will help the homebrewers and small breweries and winemakers in this area. We’re adding more of just about everything.”

Inside The Cellar.

"We've added a lot of equipment," Zoltowski says. "We tripled out Blichmann inventory. We've added CO2 and nitrogen tanks. We have more corny kegs and fermenters and now we have sanke kegs and keg washers. We've also added more kits for wine and beer, and we've added a lot more honey for people who make mead. We're carrying a wider variety of yeast and hops. We're also starting to bring in more locally grown hops from Wisconsin and Michigan. We’ve probably added five times the amount of grain and new varieties of it. We also have a new, three-roller malt mill coming that we can really dial in, so we can offer different grain crushes for people who want that."

Zoltowski says his top priority now is a web-based ordering system. If it works as planned it will make the shop's inventory accessible online and allow people to place orders for pickup.

"We want to arrange it so we have people’s orders ready when they come in," he says. "What I'm thinking is, if you get an order in by 5 p.m. I can have it ready for pick-up by 10 a.m. the next morning. We're about to start beta-testing that and I'm hoping that in a month or so it will be ready. We want to make shopping here more convenient."

As part of that effort, the store is now open on Sundays. "That way if you are brewing on the weekend and run out of something you can come in and still finish your batch," Zoltowski says. "We're just trying to find ways to differentiate ourselves and provide a service. And we have the experience where we can answer questions and help people through their issues."

The educational component is something Zoltowski is also looking to expand. "Tim Pfeister is going to continue teaching classes here," he says. "Our goal is to eventually do a class every month. We’d like to be able to build it into something like a curriculum.”

Zoltowski says it's the community aspect of the shop that has been the most rewarding part of it for him so far.

"I enjoy the customer side of it,” Zoltowski says. "It's been fun. I'm an engineer, I like problem-solving and I really like teaching people. We’re trying to connect to the brewing community, both homebrewing as well as the nano and microbrewers and make it more like a co-op effort. We want to be a part of that community. There’s something powerful about that.”