MARSHALL — Dustin Brau walked toward the tap room inside Brau Brothers Brewing Co. for a photo shoot.

“Want me to grab a beer?” he asked.

“I’m good at beer holding,” he said before a short laugh.

After pouring a beer from the tap room he made his way into the large brewhouse behind the glass wall. While Brau may be good at holding a beer, he is also good at making beer. He’s been brewing craft beer for more than 20 years, first in Lucan with a “small setup.” But with demand for craft beer growing, the popularity of Brau Bros. Beer grew as well. The operation was moved to Marshall at the corner of Main Street and Highway 23.

“In time we simply grew with the craft beer industry,” Brau said on his braubeer.com web page. “Soon after start up, we started filling growlers as the law allowed. We also graduated from simple gateway beers (pale ale, pilsner, strawberry wheat) to more complex and favorable ales and lagers.”

And it’s in the same room where the photos were taken that Brau continues to build on the Brau Brothers legacy on crafting different recipes into a variety of beers.

“I have four brewers, plus me in the brewhouse,” Brau said. “I don’t know if you call it a rule. Our system is that anybody can brew back there anytime they want. The ingredients are there to use. If you have a wild idea, go ahead and make it. If it’s bad, we’ll just smile and say ‘that’s OK.’ But if it’s good, then we take that recipe and we will take it to the next step and maybe develop that recipe.

“We are always — I don’t want to say throwing stuff against the wall — but sometimes we are. We are just trying different recipes and really this tap room (where beer is served to patrons) is little bit of a lab for us. We can try different beers. We get direct feedback from people sitting across the bar. Did you like it? What would you change? That sort of thing.”

Brau said his brewery is always releasing new beers, so it’s nice to offer some variety to customers. He estimates that Brau Bros. releases 10 to 20 new beers a year.

“The nice thing about the craft beer industry today, it’s a very ‘what next’ community and so we are always being either pressured or challenged to come up with some new ideas. Some new beers for an industry that never grew for 500 years. Now all of sudden, these last 10 years — a lot.”

Today, the tap room offers the well-known Old 56, but the menu is long with unusual names such as 3 Trees IPA, Buffalo Ridge Pale Lager, Bottle Rocket Heavenly Helles, Skolsch, D’s Thai, Mary Berry, Illbebock, Moojoos, Ringneck, Imperial Ringneck, Sheephead, Shucks, Red Velvet Moojoos, Hopsession, Thresher, etc.

One of the beers on the menu plays off the new traffic control changes around Marshall. It’s called the J-Turn.

“It’s a Saison. Kind of a French-style farmhouse ale,” Brau said.

He said the brewing room team has been working on offering seasonal beers. They just got done bottling their Oktoberfest beer which will come out in August.

“I know it seems odd, but that’s when breweries come out with Oktoberfest beers. So we will have Oktoberfest out and that’s a popular one and we are finding that there is a group of beer drinkers who like to drink beer seasonly. I’m one of them. So when you get into fall, you just start thinking about drinking an Oktoberfest beer,” Brau said.

“We will follow it up during the holidays with some different versions of Moojoos and those I think people look forward to and we of course look forward to making them. So that will be exciting.”

Brau Bros. markets its beer in the upper Midwest and can be found in liquor stores in southwest Minnesota such as Tall Grass Liquor in Marshall.

“Even some of these smaller town stores, retailers have been very supportive of us and have been really good in stocking the beer and selling the beer,” Brau said.