Occupation: Co-owners, Burning Brothers Brewing (1750 W. Thomas Ave., St. Paul)

Age: Both are 40.

Foss: Our birthdays are four days apart. But we’re already doing our midlife crisis. Some people buy a car; we buy fermenters.

What is Burning Brothers Brewing all about?

Foss: We are a dedicated gluten-free brewery, one of only a few in the U.S. I believe we are the only one in the Midwest. Right now, we have only the American Pale Ale on the market, but we intend to fully explore the world of gluten-free brewing.

Breimhorst: We’ll have more beers in the taproom when it opens. We make gluten-free beer that tastes like beer. I have celiac disease, and we want to give people who can’t have gluten as many options as possible.

Foss: We were sampling what was out there on the market after Dane got diagnosed, and most of the beers were American pilsners; they were mimicking Budweiser. There just weren’t a lot of options for craft-beer drinkers. So we started Burning Brothers, not only to serve our own need but also to serve the underserved need in the gluten-free community.

How did you meet each other?

Breimhorst: We’ve known each other since we were 19. We both grew up in Faribault, Minn.

Foss: I moved to Northfield when I was 13, then I ended up going to Mankato and moving back to Faribault, and that was when I met Dane.

How did you get started on making gluten-free beer?

Breimhorst: It was after I got diagnosed. We were looking at opening a brew-on-premises shop in Northeast Minneapolis, but my diagnosis changed everything. We said: “We both know how to brew. How hard can it be to brew a gluten-free beer?”

Foss: We got our answer. It was really hard.

Breimhorst: I used to work in fine dining, and that taught me a lot about palates and how to rip apart flavor profiles.

We use yeast differently, grain differently, hops differently. We pull out flavors so our beer tastes like we are using barley or wheat.

Foss: One of the beers Dane and I want to do — we call it our Everest — is a Belgian tripel. One of my favorite beers in the world is Tripel Karmeliet. It’s going to take us months or years to perfect.

Breimhorst: It’ll take me months. We’re also interested in sour beers, like lambic. We want to use local native fruits; I want to center on a blueberry lambic.

When will your taproom open?

Foss: (It opened April 4.) We’re looking at having a grand opening party the first week of May.

What’s different about your taproom?

Breimhorst: We are about as bare-bones as possible. We’re a production facility — we do not want to be mistaken for a bar. We’re centered completely on beer. We’d like to eventually get some art on the wall and get some acoustic music in here.

Foss: But basically we want to let people see the production side of the brewery. Most people who come to a taproom want to see the brewery and talk to the people who make the beer.

How did the name Burning Brothers come about?

Breimhorst: Thom and I used to be fire eaters at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival. Thom got really smart and stopped because it was bad for you. I did it until four years ago.

My dad’s a pastor. I used to do a fire-eating show at his church during Pentecost. Then a St. Paul pastor heard about it and asked me to do a show. I preached a sermon and blew some fireballs in the church, and it was fantastic.

What did you do before starting the brewery?

Foss: I spent 10 years working in corporate America in an operations role for an insurance company. I did everything no one else wanted to do. Prior to that, I did IT work for another 10 years. I got married, had kids, worked traditional jobs and then realized I’d like to go ahead and make beer.

Breimhorst: At one point, I was in fine dining and also doing mental health work on the side. I worked with kids who were mentally ill, developing programs for them. I was also a debt collector for a while. … But you can just say I was a fire-eater.

How do you go about developing gluten-free recipes?

Breimhorst: Throw everything in your kitchen at beer.

Foss: One of the big problems we have is that the primary ingredient we’ve been using is sorghum. It’s a grass out of Africa. There’s a lot of debate, whether the first beers, made in Egypt, would have used sorghum. They didn’t have a lot of wheat and barley in the Nile River Valley.

Breimhorst: Anyway, the problem is that diet soda aftertaste — that lingering sweetness. That’s because sweeteners are usually made out of sorghum. We’ve cut that sweet tail off the sorghum. We’ve also eliminated the green-apple taste you tend to get.

Foss: We use any grain that doesn’t have gluten, like millet and buckwheat. We even use quinoa. The problem is quinoa has become immensely popular in the past few years. We have a recipe for quinoa stout that’s fabulous, but it’s cost-prohibitive.

FYI: The Burning Brothers taproom hours will be 4 to 9 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays and noon to 5 p.m. Saturdays.