Gazing out the window of the New Axiom Brewing Co.'s taproom, it's easy to forget that you're a 5-minute drive from downtown Lee's Summit. The taproom, located at 949 NE Columbus St., overlooks a pond, giving craft beer aficionados a view of trees and water to gaze on as they sample the brewery's offerings.
After six months of work, partners Sean Householder, Devin Glaser, Joe Migletz and Mac Lamken celebrated with a grand opening of New Axiom on Saturday. Householder, Glaser and Lamken are all brewers. Migletz runs the taproom.
According to Lamken, the four owners knew that this was the location for their taproom as soon as they saw the view. The outdoor patio has space for 68 people, rivaling the size of the taproom which holds 99.
"Just looking out the windows at the time, it was we have to make this work," Lamken told the Kansas City Business Journal. "At night you hear the birds, the crickets, the frogs. You don't hear the highway; you don't hear city stuff going on. Yesterday, we had foxes out here running around; we have deer out every day."
Check out the inside and outside of New Axiom in the attached photo gallery.
New Axiom's owners wanted to create the atmosphere of a local community taproom.
"If you want to come in here and play board games, if you want to come in here work on your laptop, if you want to come in here and watch the Royals game or Sporting KC game, we want to accommodate it," Lamken said. "We're dog friendly, we're kid friendly."
New Axiom is starting with 11 beers ranging from IPAs to sours. The brewery's initial offerings are West Coast- and New England-style IPAs, a German-style wheat, a Kolsch-style ale, a Braggot-style ale, a saison, a sour, a Mexican lager, a stout, a pale ale and a rye spiced ale.
"We didn't want to pigeonhole ourselves or niche ourselves in any way," Lamken said. "Sour to stout, hazy to traditional, wilds to traditional. Everything we can possibly do, we want to do."
"It's slowly starting to kick in that we're open, we're a real business," he continued. "We're done building, we're now brewing."
Now that the taproom is up and running, the focus is shifting to future goals. The first of which is approval for a winery license that's expected to come any day, according to Lamken. This will enable New Axiom to add meads and ciders by Adam Walter, to their offerings. Walter is an employee who could soon become the brewery's fifth partner.
"He's going to be able to crank those out," Lamken said. "We're going to have five or six of those on tap at a time. Adam does come really crazy and cool meads, so we're very excited to have him as part of our team."
New Axiom is open Wednesday to Friday from 4 to 10 p.m., Saturday from noon to 10 p.m., and Sunday from noon to 8 p.m.