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Our Story
Peace Tree Brewing Company is dedicated to brewing handcrafted, full-flavored beers with a great attention to quality.
Our brewery began in 2009 in a former Nash Rambler car dealership on Main Street in Knoxville, Iowa.
Head brewmaster Joe Kesteloot came to us with years of professional and home brewing experience and brought with him a true passion and creativity for developing his own unique recipes.
We held the grand opening for our 20-Bbl brewhouse in March 2010, and within a month, were producing and bottling our brews – hand-delivering them to stores, bars and restaurants around the state.
Since that time, we’ve grown quickly, adding six more 40-Bbl fermenters to our original lineup of two 20-Bbl and two 40-Bbl tanks. We now distribute across the state of Iowa, as well as parts of Nebraska.
Today, we have 7 full time employees, who brew, package and sell our products. Our friendly taproom staff work the front lines to ensure you have a great visit.
Brewing great beer is our passion, but we are also passionate about where we have come from and where we are going.
The names of our beers often have connections to the places in our past, especially derived from memories and places in our community and our state.
The Peace Tree
Our name, Peace Tree Brewing Company, serves as a reminder of our past – where different cultures met to discuss, trade and come to agreements.
The Peace Tree is a historic grand sycamore that was located near the town of Red Rock, under what is Lake Red Rock today. Supposedly, the old sycamore -which was estimated to be the 2nd largest in North America – was a place where Native Americans met for generations, then became a meeting place for fur traders. Indian treaties were negotiated here and there is some speculation that it marks the Red Rock Line.
When Red Rock Dam was built in the late 1960s to create a reservoir for the Des Moines River, the Peace Tree – as much as 500 years old by this time – was left standing and has be seen rising out of the waters nobly for years since.
Our friend, Dr. Robert Leonard, pointed us to this Iowa Archeological research document that gives more history.
Our hope is that the beer made under the Peace Tree label will be a shared with friends and strangers alike and act as a catalyst for conversations, new friendships and important agreements – in line with the lore of the Peace Tree of Red Rock.
