I recently had the opportunity to photograph the new Surly Brewery located directly on the border of Minneapolis/St. Paul for HGA Architects. This was a rare opportunity for me to combine my families prominent craft beer business with my own architectural photography business.

I began talking to Architect Steven Dwyer about the project during the spring of 2012. He was creating a proposal for the project and he wanted to use a few Darkness days images I had taken. We started talking about my experiences growing up working at my families historic liquor store and traveling to over 50 breweries with my family. He decided to included some of my experiences in the design and proposal for Surly.

I kept in touch with Steven during the construction of the project and he was kind enough to bring me in this year to create final images for HGA.

There were a couple shots that we wanted full control of so the first day on site we arrived before sunrise in a snow storm. It was quite an experience being the only people inside of the brewery while a snow storm was raging outside.

We started the morning in the kitchen then moved our set up over to the front entrance. At this time one of the head brewers Spencer was working in the fermentation room. We asked another employee to come over and stand in for us and without any direction they instantly gave each other a high five through the glass. It was a great interaction for this space and shows how awesome the employees of Surly are.

We spent two additional days over the next couple months documenting the space. It was exciting to get very intimate with this space. Seeing up close the attention to detail that the designers had taken to organize this brewery was very impressive. Surly MSP is a full-scale production brewery, it has two massive restaurants, and multiple event spaces. All of these programs come together in seamless harmony with great respect for user experience.

Make sure not to miss any opportunity to go see this brewery. There are very few like it in the nation. When you are there make sure to try Todd the Axe Man and the Brisket with Cornbread. All of the food is amazing but these are my personal favorites.

-Corey