Day in the Life with Carol McLeod

A mix of cardiovascular and strength-training exercises get the blood flowing for Carol McLeod as she tackles a one-hour workout at the Glenstone Avenue location of Orangetheory Fitness. Several times a week, McLeod visits one of the two Queen City exercise studios prior to a 10 a.m. start to her workday at Hold Fast Brewing, a family-run microbrewery she owns with her sister, Susan McLeod.

“We don’t just drink beer here all day,” Carol McLeod says with a laugh, as she walks into the brewery, which will celebrate five years in downtown Springfield later this year.

It’s the lone completely female-owned brewery in Springfield – a fact McLeod says she’s particularly proud to boast about. The 235 N. Kimbrough Ave. venture also has a distinguishing location, housed in a two-story former fire station built in 1956.

McLeod says her fitness regimen started around 18 months ago with a plan to get herself in shape as she hit a landmark age.

“I had a life goal of running a half-marathon when I turned 50. And that was last January,” she says, noting she completed it last year in San Diego with Susan and other family members participating. In November, she completed her second half-marathon, a Bass Pro Shops event.

“It’s kind of fun,” she says.

In preparation for a vendor visit from one of Hold Fast’s distributors, Breakthru Beverage Missouri, McLeod has dozens of papers spread out across the bar. They’re most – if not all – of the roughly 75 beer recipes for the brewery. After a brief search, she successfully finds a specific grain contained in one of the recipes that can be added to her order from Breakthru.

Now, it’s on to an even more important matter: Feeding the brewery’s resident cats. The cats are owned by the McLeods but they keep the four felines at Hold Fast, where they have free rein of much of the building’s north side that is out of view of brewery customers. The quartet – Tony, Garfield, Dolce and Puma – are two sets of siblings that the McLeods initially started fostering for animal rescue nonprofit Watching Over Whiskers but ended up adopting themselves.

“When I give a tour in the back, it’s like, ‘You’re not allergic to cats, are you?’” she says.

For what she dubs as the “second workout” of the morning, McLeod loads several 55-pound bags of malt onto a pallet for transporting across the brewery to be opened and dumped into a grain mill. It’s part of preparation work in advance of brewing activity over the next several days for both her and her sister.

“Susan tells me what she wants to brew, and then I make sure that I have malts, hops and yeast in for her so she can just come right on in,” she says, noting her sister fits in part-time brewery work in addition to her full-time job with the Springfield-Greene County Park Board. “Usually, I get it all milled for her.”

Amid her milling work, Tim Freeman and Leland Ekstam with Breakthru Beverage come by and McLeod places an order, which includes canned hard seltzers and wine. She’s expecting a big weekend, as 4/20 – an unofficial holiday of marijuana – falls on a Saturday. The brewery is marking the occasion with a couple of new small-batch beer releases and an adult “Liquid Marijuana” slushie. McLeod stresses all the food and drink specials from that day are nonmedicated and meant to be fun.

“I have to place almost all my orders just so by the end of the week that most of them come in,” she says. “What I ordered today will be in tomorrow.”

For much of the morning, McLeod is on her own, as an employee who was supposed to clean kegs that day is out sick. That means it’s up to her to take on the task. She takes the kegs, two at a time, to hook up to the automated washer, which removes beer residue, bacteria and other contaminants, before they are put back into use. It’s a process undertaken roughly every two weeks at the brewery.

“I don’t usually do them, but I need the kegs for all the beers. We have every tank full, but one,” she says. “I’ll (wash) 20 of them today. So, it’s go, go, go.”

Working through lunch, McLeod connects with her trio of brewery managers – Marketing Coordinator Kaitlan Foland, Operations Coordinator Cynthia Lee and Event Coordinator Sarah Tweedle. They pour a pint before sitting down for a 1 p.m. meeting. Much of the discussion centers on what McLeod affectionately calls “Chaos Week,” the first full week in May, which staff expects will be a big draw for customers to visit downtown. The week includes Artsfest, the annual center city festival on May 4, Cinco de Mayo on May 5 and is preceded by a May 2 visit from Cousins Maine Lobster, a food truck that is scheduled to hit several Springfield-area breweries that week.

“We’re the first stop. So that will be a huge deal,” McLeod says to the management team. “Everybody should expect to wait. We are not taking reservations. We are not taking parking reservations. It’s first come, first served.”

McLeod says she plans to buy a lot of lobster rolls, perhaps only half-jokingly adding she expects to spend around $150 on herself alone.

Scheduling entertainment and food trucks for the next several weeks also is discussed, with McLeod noting openings for mobile eateries are particularly sparse as there’s lots of competition.

“Anybody new that reaches out, I need to know. Give them my card,” she says. “They need to tell me that they work in the winter, that they’re available Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sundays. That may start to eliminate people and then we can start researching them.”

When the meeting ends, McLeod and Tweedle make a beeline to the back office to determine the musical genres for the monthly Music Bingo event, set for the next night. Hair metal is one of those selected with McLeod’s face lighting up when they glance at the screen and see Warrant’s “Cherry Pie” as one of the selections.

“I want to sing that one!” she says.

Soon after at 3 p.m., the garage doors are raised to welcome brewery customers. McLeod wraps up her keg cleaning duties and makes the rounds to visit with patrons at the bar, tables and outdoor benches. It’s a personal touch she says is important to help people – particularly newcomers – feel welcome. She also does a quick check-in with operators of the food truck for the day, El Sabor de Mexico Taqueria LLC, to make sure they have everything they need.

Satisfied she’s completed all the prep work for the next day’s brewing schedule, McLeod leaves Hold Fast in the hands of her employees and is ready to head home around 5:30 p.m. The stop there is brief as she’ll take her stepdaughter Riley to a music recital before calling it a day.