On Wednesday, August 26, 2026, the old boiler room of Lincoln's Grand Manse building will host a different kind of pour than the craft brews that usually flow there. From six to eight in the evening, Boiler Brewing Company's downtown taproom at 129 North 10th Street becomes the unlikely stage for Pour Your Own Epoxy, a hands-on workshop in which participants craft their own epoxy river charcuterie boards or lazy susans from premium black walnut and other fine hardwoods. For roughly two hours, attendees select their wood, choose up to two epoxy colors, and pour the resin that forms the "river" through the board's center, guided by instructors who have taught similar workshops across the region.
The workshop's organizer, Pour Your Own Epoxy, is affiliated with Midwest Woodturners, a woodworking operation. After the class, attendees' boards undergo a meticulous finishing process that typically takes about eight to ten weeks, including a week of curing, and are then shipped to the makers.
The choice of Boiler Brewing Company as a host venue is particularly fitting, because the brewery itself is a story of transformation. The Grand Manse was built in 1904 as Lincoln's Federal Courthouse and Post Office, a Beaux Arts Neoclassical structure now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 2008, the proprietor Monte Froehlich began searching for a resourceful use of the old boiler room. It wasn't until he met Matt Rennerfeldt and Jon Marco of Alpha Brewing Operations that the idea of putting a craft brewery in the space took shape. Tim Thomssen, a home brewer who won the 2015 Sam Adams LongShot Award — an honor that recognizes the top home brewers in America — later came aboard, along with taproom manager Thad Aerts.
Boiler Brewing Company opened its doors in April 2016, in a deliberately speakeasy-style space hidden at the bottom of a flight of concrete stairs along 10th Street. Custom tap handles, industrial lighting, and the Grand Manse's original 1915-era boiler doors still greet visitors. The brewery brews exclusively on site using all Alpha Brewing Operations equipment, with ten-barrel fermenters and a one-barrel pilot system, and it does not distribute its beers. Instead, it focuses on a rotating list of adventurous, experimental beers — raspberry blonde, coconut stout, saison, and double IPA — each with a strong flavor identity.
The August 26 event is one of a series of pop-up workshops that Pour Your Own Epoxy has run at breweries across the Midwest. The workshop offers individual and couples tickets, and each attendee aged 12 and older must have a ticket. After the finishing process, which typically takes about eight to ten weeks, the boards are shipped directly to the makers.
For Lincoln residents, the workshop is an opportunity to revisit a building that has become a touchstone in their downtown's renaissance. The Grand Manse has been converted into a mix of retail and urban living spaces, along with the taproom. To craft a piece of wooden art in that room — one where rivers of epoxy in colors of your choice flow through a black walnut slab — is to participate in a cycle of transformation that mirrors the building's own evolution over more than a century.
The evening's format is straightforward: you arrive, you claim your wood, you select your colors, and you pour with an expert's hand to guide you through the process. Then, weeks later, the finished piece arrives at your home, proof that making something beautiful and functional is an experience worth sharing — especially when it's paired with a cold, experimental beer in the very room that once housed the building's boilers.