56 Brewing: the progressive strikes night in Northeast Minneapolis

56 Brewing sits on Columbia Street in Northeast Minneapolis with twelve pinball machines and a taproom that was not designed around them. Fifteen tournaments have been held there since June 2024. They average 30.1 players.

That ratio is the whole character of the place. Thirty people, twelve games, and a format built to survive exactly that problem.

Progressive strikes, mostly

Twelve of the fifteen events have been group knockouts, and most of them run progressive: you start with a smaller number of strikes and the count climbs as the field thins, or it starts high enough to keep a big field moving. The names tell you the shape of it. There is a 9-strike from June 2025, a 10-strike Super Series leg from September 2025, and a run of events simply called 56 Brewing Monthly Progressive Strikes.

Saturday at 1pm is the usual slot, with four events on Sunday at noon. Three different directors have run them: Louis Acre-Kendall has seven, Aileen Beno-Lietz five, and Elizabeth Boelke three. That is unusual. Most venues in the record have one person doing all of it.

The biggest nights:

Fifty-one players on twelve machines is the sort of thing that only works if the director has done it before. The Pokémon launch party in July 2026 was a match play qualifier into a 16-player group elimination final that Darryl Anderson won, which is the only time the venue has broken from the strikes template for a big night.

The most recent event, a Sunday Funday in August 2026, was a quieter 14.

The twelve machines

Pokémon is the newest, a Pro from 2026. Around it: a Chicago Gaming Pulp Fiction, James Bond 007, Godzilla, Deadpool, Iron Maiden in Premium trim, the Stern Pirates of the Caribbean from 2006, Demolition Man, Judge Dredd, Terminator 2, Cyclone and Swords of Fury.

The two Williams games from 1988 are the ones that have decided the most matches. Cyclone leads the venue with 71 tournament games, and Swords of Fury has 53. Under those, Iron Maiden has 69, Godzilla 68, Demolition Man 60, and Pulp Fiction and Judge Dredd 56 apiece.

A few machines in the history have since left the floor. The Jersey Jack Pirates of the Caribbean took 54 games here, Oktoberfest 43, The Mandalorian 36. If you are reading old results and wondering where those went, the venue page shows the current bank, synced from Pinball Map, and the machine list under it is the historical record.

Who wins

Louis Acre-Kendall has five titles from nine starts, which is both the best record at the venue and slightly awkward given he directs half the events. John Schollmeyer has two from eight. After that it is one apiece for Darryl Anderson, Alex Huth, Joey Wirth, Nathan Reardon, Daniel Hammond, Jeff Tomlinson, Luke Nahorniak and Eric Fryc.

Ten different winners in fifteen events is a good sign for a room. Strikes formats are volatile by nature, the fields are deep, and a bad ball on Cyclone can end anybody's afternoon.

Darryl Anderson has played all fifteen. Paul Tvedt, Rob Koppelman and Chad Lietz have eleven each, Aileen Beno-Lietz and Dana Platt-Nelson ten. It is largely the same crowd that fills Broken Clock a mile away, which makes sense: Anderson Amusement operates both banks, and the two monthlies rarely collide on the calendar.

Worth knowing before you go

Twelve machines means you will play most of them in a single tournament, so there is no hiding. Get there early enough to put a game on Cyclone and Judge Dredd if you have not seen them lately.

Your profile's All machines tab, from the players directory, gives you a pairwise score for every game you have played in a tracked event. With a bank this small it is quick to check all twelve. The scouting report will narrow it to picks and bans against the specific people in your group, and the arena report has the full machine-by-machine leaderboard for the venue.

Next date goes up on the 56 Brewing page as soon as it is posted.

More from the blog: where to play competitive pinball in Minnesota rounds up the other rooms, and what a machine page tells you is the two-minute read before your group gets called.

Featured photo from the 56 Brewing listing on Pinball Map, which is also the source of the current machine lineup on this site.