News | New West Network

MICROBREW MONTANA

Glacier Brewing: A Taste of the Wild West

By Bill Schneider, 5-12-08

	Dave Ayers, the family friendly brewer, not the bouncer. Below, the first restroom. Photos by Bill Schneider.

When you drive up the main street of Polson to Glacier Brewing, you get a little flashback to the Wild West. Swinging saloon doors always do that.

The weathered BREWERY sign above the swinging doors helps, too. Later, I found it came from the historic H.S. Gilbert Brewery in Virginia City, which was Montana's first-ever brewery--and where the Virginia City Players still act out a comedy called The Brewery Follies. (The webiste touts the follies as all "satire, nonsense, foolishness and absurdity," so that sounds like something that fits into the Montana Microbrew series, don't you think?)

Dave Ayers, along with his wife, Christine, and brother-in-law, Bob Hardy, and their first and only employee, Jim Myers, operate Glacier Brewing. After a shift as head brewer at the now-closed H.C. Berger Brewery in Fort Collins, Colorado, Ayers and partners started Glacier Brewing in 2003.

Typical among the microbreweries in Montana, a few friends or family members have joined together to contribute to the state's small-business-rich economy. They not only work hard it but also have fun doing it. Asked about the taproom hours, Ayers answers, "ten to eight, eight days a week."

Glacier Brewing Address: 6 Tenth Avenue East, Polson, MT 59860 Email: Phone: 406-883-2595 Web site: www.glacierbrewing.com/ Map: Click here. Taproom Hours: 10 am to 8 pm, every day during the summer and 2 to 8 pm in winter. Author's Favorite Beer Name: Slurry Bomber Stout.

During my nickel tour, he showed me his office, a tiny windowless cubbyhole, which served as the tasting room for the first four years, complete with the also-tiny, unisex "used beer department."

Last May, Glacier retired the cozy little tasting room and added on one of the largest taprooms of any brewery in Montana. "We thought there was a real need for a family friendly place in Polson," explains Ayers, referring to the far-too-common conversion of local family restaurants to casinos, which usually allow smoking and can't allow anybody under 18 per Montana's Indoor Clean Air Act.

"We are family friendly and encourage people to bring their kids," he emphasizes. "We also encourage people to bring their own food, and they come in and order a beer or a soda and a few minutes later the pizza is delivered."

In addition to their six regular beers and an occasional seasonal brew, Glacier brews two of its own non-alcoholic drinks for kids and adults who prefer them--Glacier Brewing Root Beer and Cherry Cream Soda. And they're on tap, just like the real beer.

Unlike the cramped tasting rooms found in mot breweries, Glacier's large taproom with adjoining beer garden can accommodate a lot of people, so local residents have started using it for meetings and birthday parties--also encouraged, of course. "We've even been called the unofficial chamber of commerce for Polson," Ayers says in jest.

Ayers and his partners have used the heritage theme of the 1800s as much as possible. Hence the saloon motif. They named their beers after western Montana features like Slurry Bomber Stout, Golden Grizzly Ale and White Wolf Wheat, but unlike some breweries, Ayers doesn't consider any of them signature beers. "We like all of our beers," he says.

Glacier depends almost entirely on the Polson and Missoula markets, selling mostly kegs but bottling some beer in short-necked "heritage" bottles instead of the long necks used by most microbreweries--and in environmentally friendly six-packs, of course. In addition to filling your growler, you can buy six-packs in the taproom, even mixing it up to get one of each beer.

Western memorabilia adores the walls of the new taproom, and "everything we have up there has a story to go with it," Ayers says.

Asked to tell me a few, he pointed to the handcrafted blanket blessed by a tribal elder from the Flathead Indian Reservation, which surrounds Polson, when they opened the new taproom...or their first Glacier Brewery sign made out of piece of wood his father found down in Utah's Monument Valley when he stopped for some roadside relief...and of course, the chastity belt. ""A guy brought it down and said he just had it laying around and asked if we wanted to hang it up," Ayers recalls. "A few weeks later, he came in and told us his wife was pregnant."

There's a lot more items with stories, so be sure to ask Dave or Jim for a few good ones when you go there to enjoy some mighty fine microbrew.

Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.