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

Summertime, Summertime!

Yes, you are correct.
It has been awhile since my last post. Well, this summer has been a BUSY one in the Glacier Brewing brewhouse.
Allow me to bring you up to speed: We hired a new Production Assistant and have been training him on our procedures and processes, we hired a new distributor in Kalispell (Flathead Beverage) and released six-pack bottles to them, I formulated and am aging in used-whiskey barrels two nano-brews to be released later this year, and we're trying to stay up with our pre-summer demand as well! Whew! No mean feat for a two-man production team.
We've been brewing like mad, bottling like mad, and kegging like mad. All winter, I was maneuvering around pallet-stacks (sometimes three high) of 1/2 barrel kegs waiting to be filled and sent into the market. Now, as I survey our production area this morning, I long for those wonderful stacks of portable beer storage; we have but a handful of empty 1/2 barrel kegs now! They are all out! This is a great situation to be in for the business but it is a bit worrisome for the head brewer. "Where am I gonna put all this beer we have in tanks?"
Well, I have a few more 1/2 barrels coming in from a closed brewery in Virgina but it's not nearly enough. Kegs aside, our six-pack market has exploded, as we knew it would once we released our bottles to a distributor. Flathead Beverage out of Kalispell has been selling our Golden Grizzly Ale, Slurry Bomber Stout, Glacier Select Oktoberfest, Flathead Cherry Ale, and our Glacier Root Beer in six-packs like they're survival packs on Y2K!!! Keeping up with their orders has been a real challenge for me. Not only making the beers but finding the time and resources to put it into bottles. I'm working on upgrading our humble four-head Meheen bottler. It does a great job but we just need something with a larger through-put.
So, this summer has been a great market-growth for good ole' GBC. I have a feeling that the growth isn't over yet. We still have some strong pockets in western Montana we're gonna get our beers and sodas into. Thanks for all the support you've given us and forgive me if I look a little haggard!
Until next time,
Your humble brewer

Where Do You End?

Weird question, I know......Where Do You End?

Okay, here's the backstory......
I completed our local Relay For Life this morning. If you don't know what that is, the Relay For Life is a nation-wide program to raise funds to discover a cure for cancer. This culminates in a 24-hour, walk-a-thon event! Our Relay For Life was held at the Polson High School Sports Complex. First off, this is one of the most amazing high school football fields in the ENTIRE country!!! The field itself is kept in great condition, the track is wide and wonderfully.......reboundy (if that's even a word). But the view, OH MAN! The view is unparallelled! Remarkable views of Flathead Lake, the Missions, Polson. WOW!

Also, I'd like to extend a huge KUDOS to our new Production Assistant, Will. He jumped in and helped us serve several hundred Glacier Brewing Root Beer floats! THANKS WILL!

But I digress. The Glacier Brewing Team finished the Relay at around 7:00am this morning (Happy Father's Day!). At this point, I had been walking almost a solid 24 hours. I had walked off the track only for bathroom breaks, food snacks, and to help pour the Root Beer floats. After all was said and done, I had walked 22 miles. I collected a colored paper clip for each lap walked (seems like a bit of an uneven trade!). During the depth of the night/early am, there were only a handful of us walkers still on the track. We formed a loose fraternity/sorority of die-hards, all with our own reasons and motivations.
My own were several-fold. First, my business partner, Bob, is a cancer survivor and he had done the "round-the-clock" walk several years before. I wanted to do the same to honor his fight. Second, technically we had to keep a team member on the track at all times. Third, I wanted to see if I could. Yea, I really wanted to know how long I could go, where did I end? It struck me early on in this walk that very rarely are we given the chance to learn where our limits are. At least in a positive way. This was that chance for me. I walked and walked and walked. It got dark and darker and rained and rained and windy. At one point, something kinda neat happened: on each successive lap, the sky got lighter and lighter! Dawn was coming! The end was getting closer! The cloudy, rain-soaked morning arrived! I thought it ended at 6:00am but then thought "Oh, it ends at 6:30. Okay, I can do one more half-hour".

It didn't end until a little after 7:00am! Elegant torture.

I finished it.
88 paper clips later.
22 miles later.
I finished it.

I think, I feel I could have gone a little more. Nor sure, but I think so.
I have a real good idea of where I end. I know what that feels like. At least, what it starts to feel like. I know how that looks. It's good to know where your edges are.

I'm grateful.

Until next time,
Your humble brewer.

Slippin' into summer!

I know, I know. I've been "neglecting" my Brewer's Blog lately. Before you pass too harsh of judgement on me, hear my excuse.......I've been busy. NO REALLY!!
In case you haven't heard, my intrepid Assistant Brewer, Jim, has left good ole' GBC so he can fully devote himself to his own business, ImageQuest. So I guess you can say I'm a victim of Jim's success; his business has grown to such an extent that he no longer can work at the brewery. I am sad to see Jim go as he is not just a solid, responsible worker, he was fun to work with.

So, I've been picking up my jobs and the jobs Jim would do, keeping me crazy-busy! But fear not, beer lovers! We have a gentleman arriving this coming week to step into the Production Assistant position. When you stop into the brewery to satisfy your craving for your favorite Glacier Beer, pop your head into the brewhouse and say "Hello" to the newest member of the Glacier Brewing family.
This coming Friday night, June 5, is "Ask The New Guy 20 Questions" night.


.......by the way, does anyone know of a place in Polson he can rent?