From MRI Tech to Main Street Brewer
Kevin Holder grew up in the Arts District neighborhood of Las Vegas — long before the stretch of South Main Street between Charleston Boulevard and the railroad tracks carried that name or attracted the wave of independent businesses that now define it. He studied kinesiology at UNLV and went to work as an MRI technician at Valley Hospital, a career path that had nothing to do with beer. But Holder had been homebrewing for years, and he started interning at local breweries between hospital shifts, learning commercial-scale production while still running MRI scans during the day. The transition from hobbyist to professional brewer was gradual, deliberate, and rooted in a neighborhood he already knew.
Hop Nuts Brewing opened in 2015 at 1120 South Main Street, becoming the first microbrewery in the Las Vegas Arts District. At the time, the corridor had galleries, a handful of restaurants, and a growing population of residents in converted lofts and new apartment buildings — but no brewery. Holder filled that gap with a small-batch brewing operation and a taproom built for the neighborhood rather than for tourists. The beer program spans IPAs, stouts, lagers, and seasonal rotations brewed on-site, with a food menu that has expanded over the years to match. Hop Nuts helped catalyze what locals now call “Brewery Row” on Main Street — a corridor that has since attracted multiple brewing operations and turned the southern stretch of Main into one of the densest craft-beer neighborhoods in the state.
Hop Nuts Brewing in the Las Vegas Valley
The South Main Street brewery corridor did not exist when Holder opened Hop Nuts in 2015. The district had bars and restaurants, but no one was brewing beer on the block. Hop Nuts was the first, and its presence helped establish the template that other breweries followed — a taproom with on-site production, a neighborhood-first orientation, and a physical footprint that contributes to the pedestrian energy of the Arts District. The 1100 block of South Main Street now sits in the middle of a stretch where residents and visitors can walk between breweries, coffee roasters, restaurants, and galleries without getting in a car. Holder built something he wanted as a local who grew up in the area, and the district grew around it.
- Owner
- Kevin Holder
- Founded
- 2015
- Address
- 1120 S Main St, Las Vegas, NV 89101
- Phone
- (702) 816-5371
- Website
- hopnutsbrewing.com