Clark Lewey is not closing the door that someday Toppling Goliath will have a presence in the Des Moines area, it just won’t happen any time soon, the owner of the Decorah-based brewing company told the Business Record this week.

“We don’t need to build another production brewery; we’ve got a $20 million production brewery in northeast Iowa that serves us well,” Lewey said. “We’ve been looking at who we are and who we are not and right now, there is nobody in [Toppling Goliath’s] ownership that’s a restaurateur so we decided” not to be part of a mixed-use project east of Drake University’s Des Moines campus.

Central Iowa craft beer enthusiasts were ecstatic two years ago when Lewey announced Toppling Goliath Brewing Co. would anchor a mixed-use project planned by Merge Urban Development at 24th Street and Carpenter Avenue. Earlier this week, the Cedar Falls-based developer told the Business Record that Toppling Goliath was no longer part of the project.

“We weren’t going to be able to get to the end of the project the way we’re used to doing things,” Lewey said. “The more the project evolved, the less the fit really felt right for us. … When you’re opening a brewery the way most breweries are opened in Iowa, you’re not really a brewery, you’re a restaurant.

“I’m not excited to be a restaurateur with a restaurant that makes a small amount of beer,” he said.

Des Moines is not lacking in good restaurants that also make craft beers, Lewey said. “The door is definitely not closed for us if the right opportunity came up or if I had a big change of heart.”

Toppling Goliath, which launched in 2009, sold nearly 36,000 barrels of craft beer in 2024, the most of any Iowa craft brewer, according to Boulder, Colo.-based Brewers Association. In 2024, Toppling Goliath’s Kentucky Brunch Brand Stout was the highest-rated beer in the U.S. in community awards from Untapped, an app that connects brewers, retailers and beer lovers.

The brewer’s most popular beers include Pseudo Sue, a pale ale, and Dorothy’s New World Lager.

Toppling Goliath’s business model is based on a three-tier system that includes the manufacturer, distributor and retailers. Opening a restaurant that made small batches of Toppling Goliath beers would disrupt that business model, Lewey said.

Instead of using a distributor to transport Toppling Goliath’s products to Des Moines, the brewer could move the beer itself, Lewey said. Restaurants that serve Toppling Goliath’s products could opt to not continue selling the beers, he said. Additionally, a restaurant operated by Toppling Goliath would be in competition with many of the brewer’s accounts, Lewey said.

“We’d lose some business over that,” he said. “Would we make it up? Most likely. Would we feel good about it? I personally would not.”

Toppling Goliath’s business model “survives with the three-tier system,” Lewey said. “We have two partners in our business: Our distributors and our sales accounts. Those are our partners.

“We count on them to get our beer to our fans, our bosses.”