Since its doors opened in 2017, Kros Strain Brewing Company has emerged as a star in Omaha’s growing craft beer landscape. Owners Bobby Kros and Scott Strain have steadily fermented Kros Strain’s brand by consistently producing a wide range of award-winning brews. Their relentless dedication to innovation has solidified Kros Strain’s position as a local Omaha favorite.
Kros Strain has racked up a massive catalogue of awards since their launch; their website lists 29 awards garnered by their various brews, as well as a nearly perfect rating (98/100) from Craft Beer and Brewing Magazine for their Fairy Nectar DDH. One honor they are particularly proud of is their medal in the Juicy/Hazy IPA category awarded at the prestigious Great American Beer Festival in a category that had 391 entries that year. And, while they have a stable of champion brews, they are far more concerned with the process than the competition. Strain explained, “Of course we like winning, but we never brew beers for competition. We kind of just pull from whatever we are working on that fits the competitions at the time.”
Then, there’s their flagship beer: Fairy Nectar. This IPA has become an Omaha modern classic, described by the editors at Craft Beer and Brewing Magazine as, “zippy and light, with a dialed-back intensity…(and) the sip is easy—moderately sweet, to pull out fruit character without weighing it down.” The way the notes of grapefruit and mango dance on top of the hops has enchanted patrons of the Omaha bar scene.
“Seeing Fairy Nectar at every bar you go to is pretty cool,” Strain explained. “We never knew that an IPA would be our flagship beer, so it’s pretty cool to have an IPA be our flagship beer and have it pretty much everywhere. That’s pretty cool to see.”
One of the most interesting things about their biggest seller is how it hasn’t stopped evolving. “Over the past seven years, that beer has changed significantly from where it started,” Strain said. “But we’ve done it very slowly, and it’s kind of just evolved with our own taste preferences, which have happened to work out with everybody else’s. I would say we are not married to anything. We have recipes, but there’s new hops, new equipment comes out, and we kind of play around with it all and see what works.”
The bravery to keep experimenting even with their successes has resulted in range as well as depth. Their repertoire is immense: currently, there are around 30 different types of beer on tap at each of their two locations, offering something for every palate. From Cornhead Lager to Swing Low—a Flanders-style sour—a patron would be hard-pressed to not find something interesting to try. Where do all these successful ales, saisons, barleywines, and pilsners come from? Kros attributes this spirit of creativity to their humble beginnings.
“I think it’s our background,” Kros explained, who has a background in mechanical engineering. He and Strain have had similar brewing temperaments from the start. “He (Strain) was a Belgian brewer, and when I started, I never brewed the same thing twice. We just get excited about something and want to try it out. We go to styles that we love, and we learn as much as we can, and we go from there.”
As for their home base, the duo loves operating in Omaha and has two taprooms, one in LaVista and one in the historic Ashton building in the Millwork Commons.
“I think (Omaha) is great, especially with our two taprooms open,” Strain said. “It’s also nice that Omaha is not so dense with breweries. We have good brewery representation here, but because of how big Omaha is, we have a little more freedom to experiment and differentiate. In larger markets, in order to stand out, you kind of have to focus on one style and master that. You’re the lager brewery or the Belgian Ale brewery. Here,we have the ability to do a wide style of beers, and put them all on tap, and play with them. So we do.”
Still, after all this success, under every glass is the heart of a humble American local business. For example, employee Nancy Smith has worked for Kros Strain for a year-and a-half, but was laid off from her full-time job last year. Strain and Kros didn’t hesitate. “They pretty much immediately made room for me to go full-time here,” Smith said. “It’s like a big family here. Everybody’s fabulous.”
For more information, visit krosstrainbrewing.com.
This article originally appeared in the May 2025 issue of Omaha Magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
