Bitter Root Brewing: Maker of the Last Best Brew

By Bill Schneider, 6-10-08

	Caption: Above: Nicol and Tim Bozik, the daughter-father team owning and running Bitter Root Brewing. Photo courtesy of Bitter Root Brewing. Below: They offer live music too. Photo by Bill Schneider.

If you live in or travel to Montana, the Last Best Place, you need to sample the Last Best Brew, right? But you won't find it just anywhere.

To find the Last Best Brew, you have to travel to western Montana and find a pub and eatery specializing in real good beer and therefore serving Montana microbrews. Or better yet, go to the source, over to downtown Hamilton, at Bitter Root Brewing, where they make it and serve it every day of the week.

But what exactly is the Last Best Brew? For Bitter Root Brewing co-owner Tim Bozik, it's a lot more than his innovative marketing slogan. It's the beers he makes, all of them.

What makes Bitter Root Brewing different than its 25 fellow breweries in Montana? When you drive up and see the big sign that says, "Live Music," even I could figure it out. Bitter Root Brewing is more than a microbrewery making 1,350 barrels of beer per year. Unlike any of the dozen or so Montana breweries I've visited so far out on the Beer Trail, Bitter Root has a full restaurant on premises, called the Brewer's Grill, where you can enjoy a great meal with your Last Best Brew.

Interestingly, because so few breweries serve food, many taproom customers believe there's a law preventing it, but there's no such restriction. Most breweries like to concentrate on making and selling beer, and more than one has already told me, "We don't know much about running a restaurant?"

Bitter Root Brewing Address: 101 Marcus Street, Hamilton, MT 59840 Email: Phone: 406-363-7468 Web site: www.bitterrootbrewing.com Map: Click here. Taproom Hours: 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., Monday through Saturday, 2 to 6 p.m. on Sunday. Author's Favorite Beer Name: Sawtooth Ale

That makes Tim Bozik and his daughter, Nicol, co-owners of Bitter Root Brewing, different that their brethren. They know how to make beer and run a restaurant, all spiced with good tunes on Thursday and Saturday nights.

Using some converted diary farming equipment, Bitter Root Brewing started up in 1998, occupying a tiny building behind their current prime location they moved into four years ago. Now, "after ten years of beer," as Tim Bozik describes it, the brewery has a modern, 6,000-square-foot, highly visible location a half-block off U.S. Highway 93 smack in the middle of downtown Hamilton.

In the past, Bozik explains, they used to have pig roasts that turned into rather large, tailgate-style parties. That experience told them people liked food with their beer. Who would have guessed that, huh? Soon after that revelation, we had the Brewer's Grill and a large beer garden out back.

And we're not talking corn dogs and cheeseburgers with greasy fries, but gourmet pizza and daily specials like trout tacos with huckleberry sauce that make you want to come back for more. And bring the family, like many people already do.

That evening, in fact, I came back to the Brewer's Grill with my friends and family. While enjoying my halibut and IPA, I was reminded of the famous Dave Barry quote I saw on Bitter Root Brewing website: "Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza."

Bitter Root also bottles beer, but only in 20-ounce bottles, another move that sets them apart from other brewers. All others who bottle use 12-ounce bottles with six-packs selling for about $7.99. Bitter Root's 20-ouncers sell for about $2.50 individually in retail stores and around $5 in restaurants and taverns.

Another difference is the names, or I should say, lack thereof. "We decided not to get into the name game," Bozik says. Consequently, the last-best-brews are named things like "stout" and "amber." He does, however, have a favorite. "Our flagship beer is our IPA."

(I suspect there is one more difference. I believe this is the only father-daughter team owning and running a brewery in Montana. If I'm wrong about that, I'm sure I'll hear about it.)

Bozik admits times were tough in the early years, but he has good growth in recent years. Right now, he's fairly happy with the status quo and is mainly interested in serving his current accounts instead of finding more.

In addition to the 1999 law allowing breweries to sell beer in taprooms and the decision to open the Brewer's Grill, Bozik likes to credit the new malting facility in Great Falls, Montana, for the success of microbrewing in Montana, in general and his business in particular. "This is the most modern malting facility in the world, "he says, "and we lobbied hard for it."

Bozik gets all of his malt from the Great Falls plant, International Malting, and rolled off a list of other Montana brewers who also support the plant.

That support goes with the "local dynamic" pervasive throughout the microbrewing industry, a focused support for local suppliers that has turned taprooms into European-style neighborhood pubs with loyal customers bonded to them.

This reminds me of Miller and Anheiser-Busch still insisting microbreweries and all their great-tasting brews aren't a threat to their numbers. And if you believe that….

Editor's note: This profile is part of a Bill's year-long tour of Montana's best breweries. Below is a map of the breweries Bill has toured so far. Click on a dot on the map and you'll find information about the brewery and a link to Bill's profile on that brewery. You can also find all of his postings at www.newwest.net/microbrew.


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