Local breweries

Mission Valley breweries offer perfect stop for tourists, brewery enthusiasts

A year after travelers were greeted by signs at state lines requiring quarantine, mandates limiting gathering, Centers for Disease Control rules about distancing and an all-out shut down of some businesses due the COVID-19 pandemic, the freedom of the open road seems all the more alluring this summer.

This year, in addition to the wide-open spaces that abound in Mission Valley, travelers will also be relieved to see that at the end of those roadways are experiences that 2020 left behind: the opportunity to gather, to dine, drink and dance indoors with friends, and to have face-toface interaction with others in a way that solo, distanced activities can’t compare.

As Jessica Hartung, of Missoula, makes her summer plans, she doesn’t just have a road map in her glovebox. She’s got a 2019 map of the state’s breweries too, beckoning with potential adventures.

The California transplant says she picked up the map, now complete with notes about what she enjoyed about the places she visited because she loved IPAs and wanted to try different ones.

“It gives me an excuse to explore Montana, being I am not from here,” Hartung said. “I try and go to three to four new cities that have breweries a year so I can visit new Montana places, so there’s another excuse.”

Hartung is happy to check new breweries off her list. So far, she’s been to 17 with 10 of them outside of Missoula County. Glacier Brewing in Polson has been checked off her list.

“I like it,” she said of the local hot spot. “It was a good vibe; the new owners had just taken over.”

Hartung has not visited the Ronan Cooperative Brewery, which opened in September 2020, amid the pandemic, as the state’s first cooperative brewery, but she said that it is on her list, now that she knows about it.

Brewery tourists like Hartung are quite common, according to Ryan Newhouse, author of Montana Beer: A Guide to Breweries in Big Sky Country. Newhouse, also of Missoula, wrote the first and only guidebook to the state’s breweries in 2013. The book was great as a guidebook, Newhouse said. “But it didn’t really give the brewery fan something to do.”

A year later, Newhouse decided to launch the Montana Brewery Passport as part of a crowdfunded Kickstarter project. “It really took off,” Newhouse said. “All the breweries were supportive.”

The passport is modeled after that National Parks Passport, which issues visitors a stamp in a passport-type booklet for every park they visit. In Newhouse’s version, he included breweries around the state in the passport, and a place where visitors could list their favorite brews and experiences. Visitors can rank the breweries on a five-star scale.

In addition to the passport’s popularity, Newhouse had to contend with another unforeseen twist in the

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“I was not prepared for the boom of successful breweries coming online,” Newhouse said.

The original passport had around three-dozen breweries. The 10th edition, set to be released this summer, will have 92 – even after the pandemic forced several to close around the state. Every cranny of the state is covered, with stamps available for breweries in Wolf Point and Sydney.

“It would take many thousands of miles to complete the journey,” Newhouse said. “It usually takes several years to collect all the stamps.”

The passport is an affordable $10 and available at most breweries around the state, including Glacier Brewing in Polson. Newhouse hopes that the Ronan Cooperative Brewery will sell the passports as well. The new brewery will be included in the passport for the first time this year.

For Newhouse, the passport is about connecting people who love breweries with the local community and local economy.

“Start local and just have fun challenging yourself,” Newhouse said. “Don’t make it about the breweries. Make it about that local area. The goal is about the experience.”

Over the years, more than dozens of people have completed the passport. He’s offered to let them ship it to him so that he could stamp it with a special mark, declaring it complete, but most of the time, people don’t want to part with the document that contains so many memories within. “It becomes almost an heirloom to them,” Newhouse said.

Travelers wanting to add Mission Valley breweries to

NOW LOCATED OPEN IN RONA NEXT TO TRUE VALUE & ROOTZ SALON NOW OPEN I LOCATED NEXT TO TRUE VAL N N UE & RO ROOTZ NA SALON their passport can visit the Ronan Cooperative Brewery RONAN COOPERATIVE BREWERY N at 23 4th Ave. SW, which is the side door of 400 W. Main St., or Glacier Brewery located at 10th and Main in NOW OPEN IN RONAN Polson. Story by M.S. Sacry for the Valley

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