A recent expansion at the Stillwater brewery means more beer for drinkers in the Twin Cities and beyond.

Dan Schwarz, 40, one of five co-owners of the 6-year-old brewery, talked with us about their past, present and future.

Lift Bridge Brewery: 1900 Tower Drive W., Stillwater; 888-430-2337; liftbridgebrewery.com

Can you tell me about your recent expansion? The longest process in making beer is fermentation, so we added more fermentation capacity. We almost doubled our capacity, which will allow us to grow quite a bit. We updated our bottling line and added a quality-control lab so we can continue to make sure the beer is top quality. I’m a big analytics guy. If you can’t measure it, you can’t control it. So this will give us more data points to control the quality and consistency of our beer.

When you were young, what did you want to be when you grew up? I never thought I’d be involved in the brewing business. I always had an interest in computers. I did that, worked in the computer and tech business, and now I’m involved in the beer business.

What was the first beer you brewed? A pale ale. I did a homebrew with Brad Glynn, one of the four other co-founders. We were brewing in a garage. All five of us live in Stillwater. We met through a neighborhood poker league. We’d always bring some homebrew to the games and started talking about how much we liked craft beer. So we started brewing together, and the conversations turned to starting our own brewery. We started it in 2008, and at that point we had brewed together for more than two years. Brad has been homebrewing since he was 18. He has a much longer history with brewing.

What’s the philosophy behind your business? When we started, it was all about bringing craft beer back to Stillwater and the St. Croix Valley. All of us moved to the area around 2001 and were somewhat surprised that there wasn’t a brewery. It seemed like a natural fit. We started looking into it and found out there had been three breweries here prior to Prohibition. Our initial goal was pretty limited in scope — we just wanted to bring beer to the St. Croix Valley and be the hometown brewery. But it has really grown. We have people around the state who enjoy our beer. Now our goal is to make beer that’s approachable for the beginner and stuff that’s a little more advanced for the beer geeks or hopheads.

What’s your favorite Lift Bridge beer? That’s a tricky question, like naming your favorite kid. If I were stuck with one for the rest of my life, I’d have to say Farm Girl. It’s super drinkable, my palate never gets sick of it, and it goes great with food.

What’s something few people know about you? While in college, I studied for a semester in Spain. I did a bunch of traveling after that semester. I spent more than six months in Europe.

What’s next? We’re planning on continuing to expand our seasonal beer lineup. Having more tank capacity will allow us to sneak in some one-offs, too. We plan to let the brew team do what it wants to do and get creative.