Bill's Beer Blog

Beers & Gears: BeerTown West Doesn’t Disappoint

By Bill Schneider, 5-27-10

	Kris Mabozney from Big Sky Brewing; no folks, this is not a microbrewery. Photos by Bill Schneider and Gene Colling.

When we woke up at 6 am this morning, it wasn’t raining, even though the weather forecast called for it, so we made another game-day change of plans. We’d planned a leisurely morning in Hamilton, followed by a leisurely 19-mile flat ride to the Blacksmith Brewing in Stevensville, arriving when they opened the doors at 2 pm, but with the forecast looking so grim, we decided to head for Missoula and then add the Blacksmith to our driving tour, making four brewery stops instead of three. Tough duty, but we felt up for it. 

Then, sure enough, about the time we start stretching the Lycra over our oversized cycling frames, it starts raining, pouring actually, so we waited and waited and waited. About 9:30 am, we decided to take off regardless, get wet, get cold, but about the time we got on our bikes, it stopped raining, Perfect timing, for once. 

We took the East River Highway from Hamilton. I’d ridden this road before--better scenery, lighter traffic than U.S. 93. But not today. In this case, it was perfectly bad timing. Today, most locals who knew about the heavy construction on U.S. 93 from Hamilton to Stevensville diverted over to the East Side Highway, so we had fast-moving, bumper-to-bumper traffic all the way. If you take this route, though, you should have better luck. Normally, all that traffic would stay on U.S. 93.

Blacksmith brewmaster Mike Howard (left) talks brewing with Will and Bill.

We went through Stevensville about 11 am, too soon for the Blacksmith Brewery. You don’t know how hard it was to ride by it and not stop. Worse than a pack of dogs trying to get by a fire hydrant.

The next leg of the day, from Stevensville to Lolo, was the other extreme. A new, smooth bikeway the entire way. Normally, I don’t ride bikeways, at least urban bikeways, because they’re just too dangerous, but this rural bikeway was safe and spectacular. They even put the stop signs on intersecting roads before the bikeway instead of after it so motorists are less likely to overdrive the bikeway before stopping.

And here we are finishing up a good time at Bayern Brewing.

The last eight miles from Lolo to Missoula was on U.S 93, albeit with a nice shoulder, had a lot of traffic. Not great, to say the least, but not bad either at the end of the day, which turned out to be amazingly good weather. I guess we’re all used to the weather forecast being wrong, but today, it was at least wrong in the right way.

In a recent national competition by BeerCity USA, Missoula finished fifth, ahead of Denver, Boulder, San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, Milwaukee and many more--and tops in the Rocky Mountain West by far. No surprise to us, as we followed a long day in the saddle and with visits to four breweries. We deserve some overtime pay for this, eh?

We went to the Blacksmith Brewery in Stevensville first and had a beer with brewmaster Mike Howard. Blacksmith is one of Montana’s newest breweries, only two years old, and is up to about 700 barrels per year in production, almost all of it sold right there in their amazing taproom. My favorite was the new seasonal, Black Iron IPA. 

Mike will be getting some competition soon, though, as a couple of miles away on U.S. 93 just north of Stevensville, the new Wildwood Brewery will be opening soon. More on that later--no time to stop on this trip.

Next stop, Montana’s largest brewery, Big Sky Brewing. An amazing place, to say the least. Be sure to ask for a tour when you go there. And you definitely should go there. It will knock your socks off. 

Kris Nabozney gave us our tour and showed us Big Sky’s new canning operation, one of only two like it in the western United States, the other at New Belgium Brewing in Fort Collins, Colorado. Big Sky is up to an amazing 44,000 barrels per year production, probably more than all the other Montana breweries combined. 

You can’t buy a glass of beer at Big Sky’s taproom. They have to give it to you free, which is nice for us, but terrible for them. Big Sky is a victim of its own success. For some reason, probably not a good one, the Montana Legislature banned any brewery producing more than 10,000 barrels per year from selling pints in their taproom, so Big Sky Brewing can’t take advantage of these high-margin sales just because they’re too successful at growing a small Montana business into a large one, now employing 40 people. This is something the legislature needs to change, soon. If not, breweries will simply move out of state to allow their businesses to grow.

And Big Sky is not alone. At least five other Montana breweries--Bayern, Great Northern, Madison River, Kettle House and Harvest Moon--can see that 10,000-barrel limit on the horizon. Does that mean we have to ship those jobs out of state?

I’m thinking a good lobbying strategy might be to take a tip from Wall Drug in South Dakota. You’ve all seen the signs, right? That business earned its bones by putting up billboards advertising “Free Ice Water.” Big Sky should do the same, saying “Free Beer.” That would create so much traffic congestion around the Airport Blvd. Exit in Missoula, that the legislature would simply have to step up to the bar and do the right thing.

And finally, at the end of a long night, the new and crowded taproom at Kettle House Northside.

After Big Sky, we went over to Bayern’s fairly new taproom and had a Dragon’s Breath. Bayern might be a little hard to find, but it’s worth the effort.

We finished up at the Kettle House northside (No, we didn’t have enough time and thirst to get to the Myrtle Street taproom, too), but at the new, fancy--and packed on a Thursday night--northside location, we had a Brick and Mortar Porter and a Double Haul IPA before calling it a night and heading over to my favorite Irish pub, Sean Kelly’s, for a some Bangers and Mash for dinner. 

That’s a lot of hard work for one night. but we had a plan and had to stick to it. Next time, I might spend two days in Missoula to take better advantage of the outstanding beer resources on tap there.

Tomorrow, off to Polson to visit Glacier Brewing.

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