New Alton Germania Location Set to Open Soon

ALTON - Germania Brew Haus hopes to open its new location by mid-November.

The new building, located next to McDonald's in downtown Alton, will have a drive-thru and walk-up window with seating outside and on the roof. Co-owner Carolyn Brynildsen explained that the ownership team is currently busy working on “administrative things,” including certificates of occupancy and health department permits, but they were excited to see the three shipping containers placed at the new site on Thursday, Oct. 23, 2025.

“It’s not very glamorous or exciting, but obviously, it was really exciting on Thursday last week when they placed the structures and they went together perfectly,” Brynildsen said. “There’s been hours and hours of working towards this. We’re really excited to see it actually coming to fruition.”

Brynildsen explained that Germania Brew Haus originally opened in Alton as a craft beer taproom. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, they focused on their coffee business and began operating a drive-thru in front of the building on East Broadway.

In 2024, the City of Alton required Germania to shut down the drive-thru, as the drive-thru was meant to be a temporary measure allowed during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the same year, Starbucks opened in Alton. Brynildsen and her family realized they needed to adjust or risk losing the Alton location.

“Those two factors really hurt our traffic counts at that store specifically,” she said. “The Godfrey and East Alton and Jerseyville locations all have drive-thrus. So we could really tell that that was a really make-or-break point for whether a store could sustain itself. Unfortunately, we had to make the hard decision, and at the end of 2024 was when we were crunching numbers and saying, ‘This isn’t something that we can sustain no matter how much we love it.’ So we started looking at other options.”

They ultimately decided to build their own building at 211 Ridge Street. Stutz Excavating has prepared the site while TARDIS Structures from Hamel built the three shipping containers. Brynildsen noted that Germania’s ownership team was eager to collaborate with local companies to complete this construction.

Brynildsen and her husband, Jared, are both military members. Jared serves in the Army while Brynildsen was in the Air Force and currently serves as a reservist. They decided to pay homage to their military roots when designing the new Germania building.

“We both lived in shipping containers when deployed,” Brynildsen explained. “We always like going to the funky new businesses in towns like Austin or Seattle where they’ve really equipped [shipping containers] to look really cool and tailor-made to whatever they end up being. We kind of had an affinity for that type of structure already, so we found a couple of vendors that specialized in that.”

The new building will not have indoor seating but will have a covered patio and roof seating in addition to a walk-up window and drive-thru. Brynildsen looks forward to getting the building up and running as soon as possible.

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