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125 Celebrating
years
1891
2016
Volume 126, No. 26
Tuesday, September 20, 2016
NEWS
Career Fair Two days in the LSC PAGE 4
SPORTS
Football Newcomers Taking shape in offense PAGE 8
Husband and wife and co-founders of Maxline Brewing, Kevin Gearhardt and Cathy Morgan, opened the brewery this past summer. PHOTO BY MAX SUNDBERG COLLEGIAN
Family-owned Maxline Brewing hops into Midtown By Max Sundberg @jmaxsun
It was a warm Sunday morning in Midtown. A bartender, just arriving for work, locked his bike outside Maxline Brewing as leaves rustled across the parking lot. Inside, Maxline Brewing co-owners and spouses Kevin Gearhardt and Cathy Morgan were preparing for their weekly Sunday brunch, an offering of burritos and beer-mosas. Nate, the friendly bartender, began opening large garage doors to a shaded patio.
The couple opened Maxline Brewing this past summer on June 17 at 2724 McClelland Dr. in Unit 190. The couple said they felt that Midtown had been underserved when it came to neighborhood pubs. “We didn’t want to be in Old Town,” Morgan said. “There are enough breweries down there.” As a home brewer since the late 1980s, Gearhardt views the business as a culmination of his longtime hobby. He works as an electrical engineer, and as he puts it, would like to eventually “retire into” just running the brewery.
The brewery, named for its adjacency to the Max Bus corridor, was originally built in 1980 as a post office annex. Initially, it was to be named Hardihood, but a trademark dispute with an East Coast brewery forced Gearhardt to change the name before opening. “We actually like our new name better than the last one,” Gearhardt said. “It’s very ‘Fort Collins.’” The couple believes Fort Collins has plenty of room to sustain neighborhood pubs, regardless of the large number of breweries in town.
“Where you run into difficulty is if you think you can get into this business and be the next big distribution brewery,” Gearhardt said. Though you can find Maxline Brewing’s beers on tap at around ten different places in town, Gearhardt and Morgan are focusing less on mass distribution and more on developing the brewery through events, collaboration and fun. “We’ve been selling so much beer in the tasting room that it’s our first priority to satisfy our customers’ needs,” Morgan said. The brewery’s website boasts
an impressive number of events, from game nights, live music performances and art shows. In July, Maxline Brewing teamed up with Walrus Ice Cream for a beer and ice cream pairing. “We had three different ice creams that Walrus made for us, and they made it using our beer,” Gearhardt said. More recently, they collaborated with Fox and Crow, a cheese shop and bistro, for a beer and cheese pairing. “It was just lovely,” Morgan said. “We sold out that event.” see MAXLINE on page 4 >>