Closing the Circle..

Please indulge me a little.


Starting on this VERY strange and dynamic journey of opening and running a microbrewery in northwestern Montana, I was idealistic and more than a little naive. In the original daydream, the Glacier Brewing Company existed in West Glacier, Montana. This is the "west entrance" to Glacier National Park (nevermind the Camas entrance!). It has wonderful summer traffic but extremely sparce cold-month traffic. Primarily because of this, we (my wife, her brother, and myself) decided we would be more successful to open our brewery elsewhere. We did. In Polson.
Aside from our physical location, I've always wanted to see our products for sale in the stores of Glacier National Park. The thought was this "If we could get our beer in bottles (no small task, ask any brewer!) AND get it for sale in a store in a National Park, well, now that would be something to hang one's hat on!"

Well, this last weekend, I was fortunate enough, with my family, to spend some great time in the Northfork. On our way home, we swung through West Glacier and Apgar where we witnessed our little brewery's products for sale at not only the West Glacier Merc and Eddie's Gifts, but on the menu in Eddie's Cafe!
As my family and myself finished our lunch, we looked across the room and saw another family's table with one of OUR BOTTLES ON IT!!!!!
Let me tell you that for entrepreneurs, to have our "daydreamed" products for sale alongside other Montana breweries and industry giants was a very cool thing indeed!
This is what was in my original daydream, lo those many years ago, traversing the eternal straight-a-way highways of western Wyoming: To plunge, headstrong and full-force, into the northwestern Montana life and culture and start and run a brewery and bring our products to market!
We have been seeing our beers and root beer popping up in more and more bars, restaurants, and stores than ever before! We've been pushing and pushing for this for a long time now as this is not something that can happen quickly or all at once. It takes time and persistence and energy.

It seems our beers and root beer are being demanded in more places by a wider audience than ever before! I'd like to deeply and humbly thank all of the businesses that have chosen to provide our products to the public. Your support has provided our families with deeply appreciated support! Again, THANK YOU!!!


We are striving hard and happily to keep this pace going....

I feel fortunate.
I feel lucky.
(Some days, I feel a little self-imposed curse!)

I can say without conceit and for all who started this brewery, after these years of extreme hard work and personal sacrifices.....we love this!

"Life is a spectacle. A sheer festival of light!"

until next time,
your humble brewer

Forgive the Winter

inevitable
sullen and thick
the flathead winter sky imposes and dominates
flowing and filling from sky edge to mountain ridge
impenetrable as wet wool

but the hope
to see the blue
tries to live

just a glimpse

yet unrelenting and uncompromising
the montana winter denies

snow falls
and unsure salvation follows
a softer world is laid down

brilliant white and blue
crisp and renewed
hearts swell and minds lift
artificial boundaries dissolve

reprieve is granted
forgiveness is given

A break in the clouds.....

(CLICK ON THE PICTURE TO FULLY ENJOY THE GRAY!)

Here it is.......

Most didn't believe it would come this time but here it is.

The sky returned.
The clouds broke.
The sun is BACK!

To truly understand this, ya' really gotta experience a tough Polson winter and THIS was a "Tough Polson Winter"!!!
The picture at the top of this post is the view from Polson of Flathead Lake in the LOCK of this winter! Just wanted to let ya' know that we're not making this stuff up!
The gray; unyielding gray, permeated almost everything this winter. We did not get a whole lot of snow. But we did get cold, REAL cold. "Write Home" kinda' cold. It was best to find a warm, peaceful, happy place (like our tasting room) to weather the weather.
But, nevermind......the clouds broke!

Well, during the gray days I tried not to fall into the winter rhythm of cleaning guns and building dead-fall traps (don't ask!). Instead I strove to keep the beer flowing and specifically tried to keep unique brews on tap on the One Barrel Batch tap.
Hope I didn't fail you.
Currently, we have a barrel-aged Scottish ale pouring. It lived in the barrel for about four months! Wonderful collaboration between the smoked-malt and the oak wood of the barrel mark this unique beer! This one is a celebration beer: celebrating the return of the sun! If you're a pagan, like myself, living in northwest Montana, this means quite a lot!

We have some other fun beers on deck for the One Barrel Batch Tap. Not gonna tell you what they are now, that'd ruin all my fun! But keep a eye on our Facebook page as that's where I announce what is going on tap next.

As some of you may have heard, our assistant brewer, Will, left for home at the beginning of this winter. He was to return when the weather warmed and the production picked back up. Well, he has been offered a brewing position at another brewery. Actually, at two different breweries! I've yet to hear which one he picked but this is a testament to the skill, dedication, and work ethic of young Will. We wish him truly good luck, safe brews, and happy yeast. I hope he finds his way back here someday as I enjoyed brewing with him.
In other brewery news, Chad has moved into the Tasting Room Manager position due to his attention to detail, friendliness, and general moxie! He will be taking on all the duties to keep your tasting room visit enjoyable and comfortable. If you have any suggestions for him, please let him know!I'll close this post by letting everyone know that the barleywine has been moved out of the fermentor (after almost two months!) and is now resting quietly in the bright beer tank. It will stay in there for probably at least another three months or so. We'll see.

Oh yeah, I'm toying with the idea of making a Maibock now for service in May. Let me know what you think of that.

Until next time,
I remain
Your Humble Brewer

Into the Gray Days......

Winter in Polson, Montana.....

"These are some bleak days!"
I heard this as I was walking to work one morning. I stopped, looked around, and saw....
nobody.

"hmmm, must be my diet" I thought.

Whatever the origin of this statement, the sentiment rang true with me.
Bleak days indeed.

For those who have never had the singularly unique experience of a winter in Polson, Montana allow me to serve you up a helping:
1. Cold, wet cold.
2. Occasional snow storm (wet or dry snow).
3. VERY cold temperature (5, -3, -32 degrees F) for several days (weeks) at a time.
4. Sudden, overnight melt so the next day EVERYTHING is wet, soggy, muddy and still frozen and very, very slippery!
5. COMPLETE and total overcast. The sky meets the ground, the ground meets the sky!!! Everything is monochromatic.
(every now and then though, the sky opens and slaps you across the face with its beauty!!!)
6. Back to number 1.

So this is the circle of life (strife?) up here in the glory of the Mission Valley!
Well, while a lot of the locals take this opportunity to clean their guns and practice their knots, I have taken this time to concoct a new (yes, BRAND NEW!!!) beer recipe for you, my loyal readers.

This beer recipe just happens to be a barley wine.
Please note: that's "w-i-n-e" not "w-h-i-n-e".
Seems necessary these days to point that out.
Anyway, this beer is a grain hog!
I mean, it puts out only half the volume of a normal batch but requires much more than the normal amount of ingredients!
It's designed to produce 5.5 barrels (that's 170.5 gallons to you and me, Timmie!!!) of 10% barley wine!!!!

(You may now fire off your guns.....I'll wait.......................)

I packed over 600 pounds of highly-modified two-row barley, munich malt, crystal malts, and a secret malt into our beloved mash tun, added the hot liquor and stirred! Then I carefully, slowly drained the glorious malt sugars out of the grain.

(LEGAL NOTICE: all water used in a brewhouse is referred to as "liquor". It is just water, but that's what it is called. Whadda' gonna do?!?)

This brew maxed out my hand-refractometer! (don't get excited....that's just a gadget I use to measure the sugar content of the wort and thereby, indirectly measure the alcohol potential.....pervert!)

Anyway it always strikes me as wonderfully unique whenever I brew a new beer, one that I have not done before, at least on a certain brewing system. Every brewhouse is different and reacts in a different way to recipes and procedures. It is actually pretty neat.
As I write this, the barley wine is chugging away in the fermenter; yeast consuming malt sugars, burping out carbon dioxide, excreting alcohol (I mean, why else ferment? HELLO!?!), and budding off other yeasty friends. This is where the alchemy takes place, in the fermentation vessel. Simple sugars converted to alcohol, gas, and a hell-of-a-lot of yeast!
Just cool.

Well, this beer should be ready in about.....oh.....maybe four months. AT THE SOONEST!!!
There are a lot of people who are of the mindset that any barley wine worth it's grain should not be served less than ONE YEAR after production.
Lucky for you, I'm not one of those nutjobs!

(I'll probably squirrel away a keg or two in my back yard!)

I'll keep ya' posted on this beers maturation but until then.....

I remain

Your Humble Brewer

Late Fall 09

"Welcome to Montana"
I can still remember the first time someone said that to me. Me; still in college, full of knowledge and clueless, driving to Flathead Lake in late summer in a driving rainstorm that seemed to come out of nowhere. I stopped to gas up somewhere along I-90 and made a comment to the cashier about rain-soaked highways and apparently-insane/suicidal drivers (Montana was experimenting with no daytime speed limit back then). The comment I got back did little to sooth my jangled nerves, "Welcome to Montana".

Coming from Colorado, the land of perpetual blue skies, ski bunnies, and a sometime-nauseating level of political correctness, I expected a response more akin to sympathy for the weary traveler. What I got was an attitude closer to "THIS is Montana. It won't coddle you, it won't bend to you, it won't change for you. But, it will change you. Maybe, probably for the better. It's not for everyone. If you think it's not for you, well, you can still make it back to the border before dark!"

This was many years ago. Since then, I have traveled back and forth from Colorado to Montana to Colorado. I've lived in Montana a few times now, returning to Colorado each time. Usually for school (handy excuse to return to a "softer life"). It really was no use. Montana had her hooks in me, deep. Even when I would "move back" to Colorado, at some level in my over-educated gray matter, I knew I'd be back. I fit here.

I had always told my family that Montana is a wonderful place, mythical vistas, "charismatic mega-fauna" (bears, wolves, mountain lions!). But, I've written about this before, I also always told them that if you're moving to Montana, ya' gotta bring a job with you! In a state with less than a million full-time residents (967,440 July 2008), those who live here are here on purpose and they don't have a lot of extras jobs to go around. Well, that's what I did, brought a job with me. We (my partners and I) started the Glacier Brewing Company, oh, must be about six years ago. Not a heck of a long time, I know, but ask any small business owner and they'll tell six years feels like two decades. Ask a small business owner in northwest Montana and they'll tell you it can feel like a lifetime.

We walked into this business with VERY wide eyes and a lot of unreal expectations. We weren't really prepared for the savage seasonality that comes with owning and running a production brewery in northwestern Montana on an Indian reservation. The first few winters were exceptionally lean for us. The craft beer market is an extremely fickle one. It's also a very expensive one to compete in. While we've come to expect the seasonal slowdown, I don't think any of us running this dog and pony show have really gotten used to it. Please don't read this as complaining, these are the facts that we've come to accept. This is a fun business but some of the challenges can be daunting.

One of the pluses about the seasonal slowdown is it gives my assistant brewer, Will, and I time to play with new beer recipes on our newly minted ten-gallon pilot system. I built this thing earlier this summer/fall with the intention of experimenting with unusual beer recipes and styles. From this, we've launched a new rotating line of beers in our tasting room. We call them the One Barrel Batch beers. We're making just enough of each beer to fill one barrel (31 u.s. gallons), give or take. Sometimes, we'll have a true barrel's worth, sometimes only ten gallons. These beers go on tap in our tasting room for pint sales only. We don't fill growlers of the One Barrel Beers and we do this so we have enough for everyone to try it. Now this does not always work but that is the reason behind "pints only please."


For those of you new to our Brewer's Blog, I do try to make timely entries but, you guessed it, that doesn't always work. Please, please, please write me, call me, stop me on the street (I'm the guy walking two dogs!) and let me know what you like and what you don't like about this blog, the brewery, my beers, me, Montana, anything! I love the interaction.

We have recently launched the brewery's FaceBook page (GBC FaceBook Page) and that's where a lot of my mind-droppings have been landing. I'll make you a deal, though. You keep reading this blog and I'll keep taking pictures and writing in it. Deal?

I hope so


Until next time,
Your humble brewer

GABF 2009

GABF Denver 2009

Well, today is the Sunday after the 2009 Great American Beer Festival in Denver, Colorado. We brought four of our beers down to be judged against the best brewer's in the country. 495 breweries, over 3308 beers, and three days later we're heading north, homeward bound. Back to our little corner of Montana. Unfortunately, we did not win any medals at our first GABF appearance. Always next year. We entered our Golden Grizzly Ale (into the Kolsch category), Glacier Select Oktoberfest (into the Marzen category), our North Fork Amber Ale (into the Alt category), and our Slurry Bomber Stout (into the Foreign Stout category). I was able to sample some of the beers that won the medals in the categories we entered.

The winning beer for the Foreign Style Stout category tasted almost EXACTLY like our Slurry Bomber Stout!! I was speechless. But it all came down to that “exactly”. It was just slightly, and I mean slightly, hoppier than ours. Man oh man, you could've knocked me over with a lite beer!

I had the rare opportunity to meet two of my heros: Charlie Papazian and Homer Simpson (Charlie more than Homer)! It is strongly because of this man (Charlie) that this festival exists! He is THE guru of homebrewing and therefore craftbrewing. Charlie, if I can be so honored that you are reading this: Thank You Again. Everyone should reread your books!

Kudos to Kettlehouse Brewing (bronze medal) and Montana Brewing (gold medal!). There were only about six Montana breweries at this year's festival. I was surprised by that as I expected more Montana breweries to attend. But, I'll be the first to tell you, it's a long way from Montana to Denver!

The medal ceremony notwithstanding, attending this festival was well worth the thousand-plus mile drive (one-way!). Christine and I walked out with several wonderful marketing ideas, I have a notebook full of beer ideas, and a deeper appreciation for my craft. I had attended the GABF once before but that was with another brewery; H.C. Berger Brewing in 1998.

This time, I went there with MY brewery! I can't fully describe the amount of pride I felt to see our very own beers pouring on the festival floor alongside industry titans like Ommegang, Sierra Nevada (beat us in the Kolsch division!), Pizza Port (huge medal winners!), ABInBev, Coors/Miller, and hundreds more. In the same moment, I felt deeply humbled by the scope of this event and the unique creativity shown by members of our craft brewing industry.

We even saw George Wendt!!!

We poured our Golden Grizzly Ale and our Glacier Select Oktoberfest at our booth. I'm proud to say that we emptied all the kegs we shipped down and received very positive feedback from everyone who sample them! We even got an offer to sell our beer in New York (not sure how we'd get it out there though). We also gave away hundreds of temporary GBC tattoos! That was quite surreal to see complete strangers clambering over each other to stick one of our “FILL TO HERE WITH BEER” tattoos to their foreheads! We were one of a handful of breweries offering tattoos. Fun to see the Golden Grizzly Ale tattoo on peoples arms, necks, cheeks, and, uh, “other places” along with other craft breweries. The crowds were amazing. We were standing in one of the largest rooms I've ever been in (outside of an airplane factory) and we were shoulder-to-shoulder at times! Some of the most bizarre variations of the human genome were encountered there. We saw a flock of penguins, several Oktoberfest girls, a gaggle of nuns, a cowboy riding an inflatable horse, Elvis, Hellraiser, two referees who threw their penalty flags every time someone dropped their glass, and more than a couple of, uhh, alternatively-clothed individuals! That's another funny characteristic of this fest; whenever someone dropped their sample glass (and it happened quite often), the entire crowd around that person would yell “WHHOOOOOO!!!” followed by “What an idiot!”. All in good fun.

I'm finding I'm surprisingly anxious to get back to my brewhouse and begin to further refine my recipes for next year's competition. Not sure which ones I'm going to work with but I'm pretty sure one of them will be the Slurry Bomber Stout. Can't let that one get away!

Until next time,

your humble brewer.

Fallin' into Fall

Moving into fall. Life and times in northwest Montana are definitely moving towards cooler days (and colder night), dropping leaves and playful winds.
In the brewery, Will and I are STILL moving like crazy cogs in an insane machine to meet production demands. Our Kalispell distributor, Flathead Beverage, are moving our beers like mad! They are saturating northwest Montana with Glacier Brewing six-packs and draft beers. This is almost surreal for me. My family and I lived in the Flathead Valley when we were first starting our brewery. So we became very familiar with the businesses in that area. To see our Golden Grizzly Ale on tap at Woody's at Highway 2 and 35 or available in six-packs at the Blacktail Grocery in Lakeside is a very, very funny and neat experience for me.
I took a few days to explore some other beers available in our region of the country (it's always good to see what other brewers are doing). My family and I went from Polson to Seattle to Birch Bay (Google it!). I sampled some unique, imaginative, bland, overrated, underrated, good beers. Whenever I sample other brewery's beers, I always mentally put them next to mine; how is the malt/hop balance, how does the carbonation level feel, is the advertised style there, how would I make this beer? These sort of trips are always good to re-stoke the creative fires. And, I will admit, after a manic summer in the brewhouse, I love to get the hell out of Dodge!!! Even for just a few days.
We're heading back today, I hope to encounter a few more local beers along the way. We'll see.

Our Wild Wolf Wheat is pouring at a healthy clip in the tasting room but we are almost out of it! What specialty beer would YOU like to see in the GBC Tasting Room? I have some ideas but I'd love to hear from our drinking public.

until next time,
I remain,
Your Humble Brewer