Pulpit Rock Brewing Co.

Pulpit Rock Brewing Company grew out of a family project conceived in Decorah in 2013 and formally established in 2014. Co-founder Pete Espinosa and three of his relatives, all Luther College alumni, developed the business before opening the brewery in the summer of 2015. The company established its brewery and taproom in a converted commercial building on College Drive in Decorah, with Robert Slack and Justin Teff serving as its original co-head brewers.

The company’s name reflects both its Iowa setting and its Scandinavian connections. Decorah has its own Pulpit Rock landmark, while the Norwegian Preikestolen, or Pulpit Rock, overlooks Lysefjorden near Stavanger, the area from which Espinosa’s maternal family originated. This connection fits a broader Norwegian-American cultural context that has long been important to Decorah.

For its first decade Pulpit Rock was principally a brewery, known for a rotating range of small-batch beers rather than a fixed flagship-focused portfolio. In August 2025 the company expanded into spirits under the Pulpit Rock Distilling name, debuting Aquavit Blend 1 at its tenth-anniversary celebration. The Decorah Area Chamber of Commerce described the aquavit as the first spirit from the new distilling operation. The company subsequently expanded the spirits range to gin, additional aquavit blends and house-produced cocktails.

Pulpit Rock Brewing Company, LLC also holds an active federal distilled-spirits permit, IA-S-20053, for its Decorah operation. Together with the brewery’s own description of its spirits as “hand distilled on-site,” this confirms that Pulpit Rock operates an actual distilling operation rather than merely marketing contract-produced spirits.