Breweries

AJ Smith pours a Rose Trois American Sour at Draught Works Brewery. Breweries often create beers to match lifestyles, and summer presents opportunities to create beers with flavors or lower alcohol contents. Photo by Tom Bauer, MISSOULIAN

MissouLa’s BreWing inDusTry sTrong, More exPeCTeD To oPen soon

DAVID ERICKSON david.erickson@missoulian.com

Missoula’s craft beer industry is one of the most diverse and flourishing of any city in the state. With more than a dozen breweries in the county, the range of ales and lagers, porters and stouts can require expert assistance in selection.

Bayern Brewing is the oldest continuously operating brewery in the state, founded in 1987 by Jurgen Knoller. It’s located at 1507 Montana Street. Big Sky Brewing is the largest brewery in the state, pumping out well over 40,000 barrels of beer a year. That brewery is located at 5417 Trumpeter Way, near the Missoula International Airport.

Between them, a plethora of taprooms featuring live local music, community gathering spaces, food truck attractions and other specialties cater to individual tastes.

All the breweries in Missoula have tasting rooms, where customers can sample the different styles and flavors of beer. Draught Works Brewery, located at 915 Toole Avenue, specializes in putting interesting flavors into their beers, like their Blood Orange Gose and their Last Rites Mexican Chocolate Porter.

“The craft brewing industry is vitally important to the local economy in Missoula and other Montana communities, creating an economic impact of around a half billion dollars annually in Montana,” Montana Brewers Association executive director Matt Leow said. “Breweries create economic activity that benefits other businesses providing good and services for brewers. Additionally, Montana breweries create a value-added product from Montana agricultural products.”

In 2019, Nic and Theresa Pestel started Old Bull Brewing, the first and only brewery in Frenchtown. They had a goal of creating

a family friendly gathering spot for the rural community, and so far they’ve succeeded.

“The community is awesome out here,” he said. “It just keeps growing and we try to do community nights whenever we can to help out. We did one for Frenchtown High School seniors (in early December) and donated $1 from every pour that day.”

They host live music throughout the year, along with a small farmers market when produce and flowers are in season.

The brewery has proved to be a business magnet for what can be considered “downtown” Frenchtown as well. Since they’ve opened, a fitness center has opened nearby and a new barbecue restaurant is set to open early in 2022.

Even with limited capacity, he produces a plethora of flavors. His most popular beer is the Exit 89 blonde ale, named for the Interstate 90 exit to get to Frenchtown. He’s also got a vanilla coffee porter, a hazy IPA, a strawberry milkshake seltzer and a whiskey barrel-aged stout. The menu changes often, but people can buy 16-ounce cans in the taproom to take home.

The growth of Montana’s craft brewing industry has helped to spur the growth of a craft malting industry in the state as well, Leow said.

“Montana has long served as a source of malt barley for the world’s brewers, but now that we have a thriving brewing industry, there is additional opportunity for entrepreneurs to produce another value-added product, craft malt made from Montana-grown barley,” he said.

Brewing is unique in the way it straddles the hospitality industry and the manufacturing sector, Leow continued.

“The industry is a significant creator of manufacturing jobs in Montana, and in some counties, it is the only industry providing manufacturing jobs,” he said. “We’re very proud of the diverse role we play in Montana communities, taprooms serving as community meeting places, local businesses that in-turn support other local businesses and agricultural suppliers, and a leading creator of manufacturing jobs in Montana. Choosing Montana craft beer is not only the right choice for your taste buds, it’s also a great way to keep your dollars circulating in the local economy.”

That helped encourage Liz and Mark McKenzie to open Cambie Taphouse and Coffee at 945 Wyoming Street, Suite 145, in the ground floor of the Cambium Place building in Missoula.

“We loved this location because we saw opportunity,” Liz McKenzie said. “With all of this new construction coming in, there’s going to be tons of new opportunity. So seeing this community kind of flourish and seeing the potential the next couple years is why we chose to be here.”

It’s the second location of Cambie in Missoula, with the first on south Higgins Avenue near Pattee Canyon. McKenzie and her husband are the owner/operators of the new location and she can be found behind the bar most days.

“It’s awesome not only to have my beer career back, but to have it be my livelihood and I get to do it day in and day out,” she explained.

Beer is a bipartisan issue in Missoula. Two state lawmakers from Missoula on different sides of the political aisle teamed up in 2017 to raise the limit on beer that brewers could produce every year.

State Rep. Ellie Hill-Smith, D-Missoula, and former Rep. Adam Hertz, R-Missoula, worked on House Bill 541 in 2021 that raised the production cap on Montana’s microbreweries from 10,000 barrels annually to 60,000 barrels while still allowing them to sell beer in onpremise taprooms.

“Economic growth and innovation are unlimited when we allow free markets to thrive,” Hertz told the Missoulian at the time. “I’m thrilled to be a part of this bipartisan regulatory reform that will position Montana’s craft brewing industry to be a bigger player in the regional market and create hundreds of new jobs.”

“This is essentially our flagship,” says Will MacKenzie, KettleHouse’s retail sales manager. “So if you notice the decor in here, we wanted to reflect on the history of Bonner/Milltown so all of the wood is reclaimed from the river. It’s pretty cool when you think about it.” Photo by Kurt Wilson, MISSOULIAN

The pandemic was tough on the brewing industry, but Montana Brewers Association executive director Matt Leow says he expects a rebound.

“Before March 2020, Missoula’s craft brewing industry was healthy, thriving and growing,” he said. “Between 2018 and 2020, four breweries opened in Missoula and the surrounding area: GILD and Conflux in 2018, Old Bull in 2019 and Cranky Sam in 2020. Of course, the past year has been a tough one and the industry faced incredible uncertainty a year ago.”

Last spring, Montana breweries reported taproom sales were down 45% and distributed draft sales (kegs sold to bars and restaurants) were down 60%, Leow noted.

“But things are now moving in a positive direction, especially as vaccine distribution picks up and the broader hospitality industry gets back to normal,” he continued. “I do expect the growth in Missoula’s brewery scene to continue. The pandemic may have delayed things, but I’m aware of three breweries in planning for Missoula with two, Cymatic Fermentation Project (formerly Tonal) and Odd Pitch, set to open this spring or summer.”