Dangerous Man Brewing reopens Northeast Minneapolis taproom in former HeadFlyer space

Dangerous Man Brewing opened its new Northeast Minneapolis taproom at 861 E. Hennepin Ave. at noon Saturday, a little more than a mile and a half from its original home at 1300 2nd St. NE. The move brings the brand back after it closed that first taproom in 2023 and stopped brewing last year, making this less of a nostalgia play than a real second act in a neighborhood that still remembers the name.

Owner Jeremy Kuhns has framed the return as a “homecoming,” and the company said the site in the former HeadFlyer Brewing space represented a “friendly passing of the torch” rather than a straight takeover. The room itself was set up to keep some of HeadFlyer’s character while folding in Dangerous Man touches, which matters in a market where taprooms live or die on repeat traffic and regulars who actually want to come back after the first pint.

That community connection has always been part of Dangerous Man’s pitch. The brewery opened its original taproom on January 25, 2013, then closed that Northeast location on October 21, 2023 after its lease was expiring and the building had new owners with a different vision. Before the shutdown, Dangerous Man said it logged 6,263 volunteer hours and donated 6,556 pounds of produce through its community garden, numbers that give the comeback some weight beyond the tap list.

The ownership story also changed late in the game. Kuhns became the new owner in October 2025, while founder Rob Miller stayed on as head brewer and operations lead. That arrangement suggests Dangerous Man is trying to keep the brand’s core intact while giving it a structure that can survive the current beer downturn instead of simply reliving the old one.

HeadFlyer is not vanishing from the market, either. The brewery opened in April 2017 in the Miller Textile Building and closed its Northeast taproom in April 2026, then shifted to a brewing and distribution model. That leaves the building’s beer footprint reshaped rather than erased, with one local name moving out of the taproom and another moving back in.

The timing is hard to ignore. The Brewers Association said U.S. craft brewing production declined 5.1% in 2025, and closings continued to outpace openings in its midyear report. Against that backdrop, Dangerous Man’s return is not just about a familiar logo on a fresh sign. It is a bet that Northeast Minneapolis will support a brewery’s second life if the operation fits the neighborhood as tightly as the first one did.