Hard Right
LOCAL BREWERY SEGUES INTO SELTZERS
BY PEG GILL · PHOTO BY L.G. PATTERSON
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hawn Oberle, head brewer at Broadway Brewery, hardly made a beeline for brewing. "I was a business marketing major at Mizzou and had been more on the business operations side for a few years," he explains. "I was
finishing up a job around 2014, and had kind of a blank slate to figure out what I wanted to do. “I was always tinkering with stuff at home as a kid in the kitchen with my mom. So that kind of culinary side mixed with the creative side kind of led me into brewing.” Oberle had already done some home brewing in college and a little post-college. "Nothing that was super spectacular by any means," he says. "I made some really bad home brews with my old roommates."
SEIZING A HOPPORTUNITY He reached out to the former head brewer at Broadway and then apprenticed under him, working his way up to assistant. He then
THE SEGUE INTO SELTZERS “The seltzer was a big project for both of us. It’s a subset of
quickly moved up to head brewer after his mentor left for another
Broadway Brewery but we leaned into it in a way try to separate it
brewery, essentially throwing him into the deep end of the vat.
as kind of a new company in and of itself," he explains.
Oberle faced a massive learning curve, and a minute timeframe.
They wanted the new seltzers to reflect on the state of
With 12 years of brewing under its belt, Broadway was well-
Missouri in both name and branding, to be clearly from the
established. Oberle was brand new and making beers with
Show-Me state, christening the line "Clear State." They also
expected taste profiles that people had been drinking for years.
wanted the logo, label and packaging to be really colorful and
"Being able to produce something consistently and jumping into
lively. Katz designed the logo.
learning was certainly its own challenge," he says. He still finds ways of using his marketing background, working
Oberle says, "For me personally, as a producer and brewer and a tinkerer in a lot of things, it’s another area I can explore and learn
closely with Harry Katz, director of marketing. "I work closely
about. Seltzer is kind of a blank slate — you can mess around with
with Harry. We do a lot of co-branding to promote beer recipes.”
different flavors and flavor profiles. It’s really kind of endless.”
44 INSIDE COLUMBIA SEPTEMBER 2021
