From home brewer to craft brewery: South Beloit brewer starts company

TRICIA GOECKS PHOTOBelvidere Daily Republican
Jim Goecks was inspired to open a commercial brewery based on the feedback from friends and fami-ly to his home brew at his annual Oktoberfest party. Pictured from left: Tim Sullivan, Brian Heil, and Jim Goecks.

An area man’s passion for beer turned a weekend hobby into one of the Stateline’s newest craft breweries. “We are the essence of the craft brew revolution,” Jim Goecks owner of Off-Kilter Brewing said. ‘We are a small company that grew from the home brewer dream of becoming something more.”
“I started like most home brewers in plastic buckets and pails and trying to understand the process of what goes into making beer and how to improve the quality of the beer,” Goecks said. The first beer he brewed was a stout he purchased from a kit and made on the kitchen stove 15 years ago. “It was something I was always curious about and how the process worked and what goes into making a good beer and what makes the different styles of beer.”
The dream of turning a hobby into a business began to ferment at parties hosted by Goecks and his wife Tricia at their South Beloit home. “We have a bar outside the house and we have two big parties each year. One is the opening of the bar in the spring and the other is Oktoberfest,” Goecks said. “The people who would come to the parties enjoyed the beer. Friends and other folks expressed an interest in having it in their restaurants. That is when I started to entertain the thought that this would be something that would be fun long term.”
“As I looked into what I had to do, it became more and more apparent that there were a lot of regulations and permits I had to get,” Goecks said. “I had to establish a fully licensed commercial brewery to do it,” He and his wife founded Off-Kilter Brewing and converted part of their property to a commercial brewing operation in January 2016.
At 800 barrels produced per year, Off-Kilter Brewing is considered to be a

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