Union County mourns death of Jackass Brewing co-owner Larry Winans
Larry Winans, Jackass Brewing's co-owner and a former Lewisburg dentist, died after a cardiac arrest during an Ironman swim, leaving a void at the brewery and in Union County.
Union County is mourning Larry Winans, the co-owner who helped turn Jackass Brewing into a Lewisburg-area gathering place and then carried that brand into Williamsport. Winans died June 21 at age 61 after suffering cardiac arrest during the swim portion of a local Ironman event, and the brewery said both locations would keep operating as a tribute to the business he built with Skip Kratzer.
Winans and Kratzer were best friends who decided to go into business together in East Buffalo Township, where Jackass Brewing opened its Lewisburg location in March 2020. Before he switched to brewing full time, Winans spent 25 years as a dentist in Lewisburg, a career that made him a familiar face long before the taproom became one of the area’s steady social stops. The company expanded to Williamsport in 2023, restoring a late-1800s warehouse into a 22,000-square-foot taproom, restaurant and event space.
That local footprint is part of why Winans’ death landed so hard across the Lewisburg area. Regulars knew him behind the business as much as they knew the beer, and Kratzer described him as “Captain Positivity” and the “gold standard” of a friend. His obituary identified him as “Iron Larry” and “King Larry” and said he leaves behind his wife, Xaña, his son, Ryder, his daughter, Savannah, and his sisters, Michelle Zilkowski and Cindy Munch.
The loss also reaches beyond Union County’s social scene. The Brewers of Pennsylvania said Winans served on its Board of Directors and appeared before the Pennsylvania House Finance Committee months before his death to speak on behalf of independent breweries. That made him not just a local business owner, but a visible advocate in state policy discussions affecting small brewers across Pennsylvania.
Services for Winans were scheduled for Sunday, June 28, from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. at Rooke Chapel on Bucknell University’s campus. In a county where a brewery can become part of the civic landscape as quickly as a storefront, Jackass Brewing now faces the work of continuing without one of the people who made it matter most.
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