Beer Valley

Wednesday, September 02, 2009

By JH Weekly Staff

Jackson Hole, Wyo.-You spent the day climbing/hiking/biking/fishing/skiing/snowboarding, and the sweat on your chest hasn’t even dried when you turn to your friends and say, “Wanna grab a beer?”

Any self-respecting mountain townie knows that beer is as much a part of the culture as the wilderness and the activities – not just any beer, of course, but hometown microbrews. Just about every mountain town I’ve been to has one.
Jackson Hole has three. Soon it will have four.

Though I’m not allowed to have beer because of an allergy-like disease, I occasionally sneak a pint, lament all that I’m missing out on and suffer the following day. I’d say everyone needs at least one vice, but I’ve got several.

Gluten-free beer, which I can have, has evolved from a pacifying stand-in to pretty darn good, but it’s no comparison to a microbrew stout off the tap.

So for those of you who “get it,” and for those of you who want to know more, enjoy this JH Weekly rundown of local breweries.  – MI

The Godfather of Wyoming Microbrew
(And yes, Charlie Otto did in fact pioneer the glass beer growler.)

Wyoming’s brewpubs – from the local institution that is Snake River (“The Brewpub”) to Pinedale’s Wind River Brewing, to whatever other brewpubs exist out there in the state’s hinterlands – can thank one man whose brewing legacy runs so deep he even helped persuade the Wyoming legislature to legalize brewpubs in the first place: Charlie Otto.

Well, they can thank his brother, Ernie, too. But when Otto Brothers Brewing began its humble operations in Wilson, in 1988, it was a testament to Charlie Otto’s love of home brewing. And it was Wyoming’s first microbrewery.

In the mid 1980s, Otto began making beer in his then-home, the small cabin that now houses Chippy’s Kitchen. Friends began stopping in for a pint and often gave Otto feedback, which helped him hone his recipes.

Though microbrews – or craft beer, because many small breweries now make more than what is officially (less than 16,000 barrels) micro – are prevalent today, at that time there was little available locally apart from domestic beers by Anheiser-Busch and Coors.

“All you could get in Wilson back then was Anchor Steam and Bass Ale,” Otto said during a recent interview.

The first beer he developed, Teton Ale, remains a top seller for Grand Teton Brewing, which Otto Brothers morphed into around 2001, when his brother sold his share in the company.

But back around 1990, Otto still couldn’t sell his beer on the premises. He found an ally in former legislator Clarene Law, a Jackson businesswoman who championed the promoting of small business in the state house. By ‘92 the Wyoming Legislature passed a law allowing brewpubs, where a small brewery could sell beer on site.

Otto Brothers became a community hub. Some Wilson residents regularly brought pots of Indian food, Otto remembered. Friends and regulars would ski or bike from atop Teton Pass, and come down to the brewpub for the hearty grub and pulled draughts of equally hearty beers like Moose Juice Stout and Teton Pale Ale.

Due to the fact that Otto Brothers began as a keg-only operation, Otto had an idea to make his beers portable. People had fetched beer from the saloons as far back as the early part of the century. But the idea of bringing home beer in a metal pail that were the original growlers, had long since fallen out of fashion.

So in 1989, in Wilson, Wyoming, Otto silkscreened his brand onto glass jugs, and the growler, as modern beer-drinking denizens of the Mountain West and elsewhere know it, was born.

“The first growler refill station was right here in Jackson,” Otto said, located at a Broadway store that’s no longer there.

Today there are as many as 1,400 craft beer breweries in the United States, and the majority of them sell or will at least refill a growler. (The origins of the name are debated, but the most accepted theory says it was inspired by the “growling” sound made as carbonation escaped through a lid on the old metal pails.)

Otto has largely bowed out of Grand Teton Brewing, which opened its large Victor, Idaho, facility in 1998. He estimated the company he started has served the equivalent of 1.5 million pints of beer, which can be found in 17 states across the West, dwarfing Jackson’s Snake River.

And while he may have pioneered craft beer brewing in the state, earning the nickname “The Godfather of Wyoming Microbrewing,” Otto said he is most proud of his environmental legacy.

“For me, the biggest impact on my life is the invention of the growler,” he said. “Almost every brewer in the country uses them. When I think of the pile of glass I saved with invention – that’s huge.”
– Ben Cannon

Garage Brewery
Owner wants a community hub
Just a man looking for an affordable place to live in the greater Jackson Hole area, Rich Harmon bought a house in Victor in 1993, “the cheapest fixer-upper I could find,” he said.

At the time he didn’t have any ideas about opening a business in the location. Further from his mind was the realization that he would eventually gut the whole thing, add three times the space and turn the location into a brewpub.
Walking through the space with Harmon, one will almost certainly hear him say, “This used to be my bedroom.”

The story of Ric Harmon is a modern tale of Jackson Hole roots. He moved to the valley as a ski bum after college on the East Coast, and never went back. He didn’t know what he was going to do with himself, so he worked in restaurants and bars, the last of which was the Silver Dollar. There, he met some folks who knew some folks, and before he knew it, he was working for Charlie Otto at the region’s first microbrewery.

He followed Otto over the Pass when the latter moved the brewery to Victor, Idaho and renamed it Grand Teton Brewing Company. Otto brought in a professional brewer by the name of John Kimmick, who went on to open Alchemist Brewery in
Waterbury, VT, but before he left, he taught Harmon everything he knew.

Eventually, Harmon bought a house just on the edge of town, practically the last building before Jackson. He only started homebrewing because he so enjoyed his work at GTBC.

Then, the ideas came – new brews, different ingredients, a place for Victor people to hang out with their kids, horseshoe pits in the yard. He took a three-week course at the Siebel Institute of technology ??? oldest brewing school in the U.S., and
suddenly, he had a business plan. 
“I had no more excuses, then,” he said.

Harmon opened Wildfire Brewing and Pizza in his garage – brewing equipment on one side, pizza ovens on the other. He and two employees sold kegs to local bars and restaurants, growlers to locals. They delivered pizza to pizza-deficient Teton Valley. For five years, they operated this way, until Harmon had built enough capital to open the brewpub of his dreams.

He went to the town council, and they told him that his was just the kind of business they had been waiting for. Funny, he said, because when he approached them for a license five years earlier just for the brewery, they told him the last thing they wanted in town was a bar.
“I guess I proved myself,” Harmon said.

Today, Wildlife has about 14 regular clients for its kegs and eight taps in the brewpub, one of which pours Harmon’s flagship brew, Mighty Bison Brown Ale. The other standard is Point It Pale Ale. The rest of the taps, he fills with whimsy – that is, he experiments according to his moods or ingredients he has worked with. Sometimes, he take something else that has been done, and reconfigures it – in music, it would be called a variation.

The pub’s mug club, he said, is so popular that folks are on verge of rioting. The walls are adorned with local art  – commission free, he added – and he works with other local breweries to host events whereby people on both sides of the pass can “tap the Tetons.”

The brewing equipment and the pizza ovens, however, are still in the garage.
– Matthew Irwin

New guy on the scene
Restaurant owner will brew in the back.

During the mid-to-late ‘90s, a certain white house named after its street, had an
enigmatic charm driven by late-night parties and Jeremy Tofte’s homemade beer.

The madness of the Simpson House parties remain private remembrances for
many “skids,” many of them no longer living in Jackson, but for Tofte, the house was the first incarnation of a brewpub he’s always wanted to open.

He and his housemates kept the brew on ice at all times, with an open invitation to friends to stop by anytime for a beer and conversation.

Tofte has since tried to build a brewpub in Jackson, consistently running against administrative and economic walls, including a recent lockdown on loans at area banks.

Finally, he decided to work with what he already had, namely a space in the back of his restaurant, Thai Me Up. As a teenager and college student, Tofte worked as a delivery driver for his dad, the only distributor for Redhook in the Northwest, he said. While most of his friends in Jackson Hole remember Schlitz, for example, or Old Milwaukee as their first beers, Tofte drank microbrews.

On one delivery, he stopped at the Thomas Kemper Brewing Company, later bought by Pyramid Breweries, and after walking around the brewery for a while, Tofte knew that he wanted to make beer. He was 16.

At 20, while living at the Simpson House, he made his first homebrew with direction and ingredients from Snake River Brewing.

After a stint as an intern at Portland Brewing Company and a barman at Nor’Wester Brewing, Tofte moved back to Jackson and opened Thai Me Up, because investors were interested in a Thai restaurant more than his other ideas.

In 2004, he applied for a retail license to open a brewpub – the biggest the Hole
has seen, he said – but he was denied. A restaurant license, alone, he said, would
prevent him from distributing beer to restaurants and liquor stores, the only way he
could afford to run a brewpub.

Tofte left Jackson Hole to travel, but he still held a lease for the Thai Me Up space,
so he sold it to a couple that essentially ran it into the ground – thereby forfeiting the sale –and ruined its reputation, an injury he continues to battle though he has vastly improved the restaurant’s quality and scope – also adding gluten-free food and beer.

After losing a brewpub space in Southern California to another bidder, he decided to again try to open a brewpub in Jackson Hole – this time with a Small Business Association loan, funded by federal government stimulus money.

However, no local bank would broker the deal, he said, so he finally decided to
stop waiting, and found a space in the back of Thai Me Up to open a “nanobrewery.”

He ordered the equipment, and signed up for a weeklong class with the Siebel Institute of Technology in Chicago to reacquaint himself with the technical aspects of beermaking.

While he’s waiting for the equipment to arrive in October, Tofte is having the space adapted. Brewing requires the brewmeister make adjustments on a regular basis, he said. With the equipment located behind the restaurant’s kitchen, it’s located within steps of his office and kitchen, making it possible for him to brew in the
midst of his daily activities.

He’s calling the venture Thai Me Up Brewery, and the notification for his microbrewery liquor license application is posted to the front window of the restaurant.

Once up and running, he expects to make West Coast-style and Belgium beers, essentially malty and hoppy, such as pale ales. He’s also expanding the beer menu at Thai Me Up to include beers that he said no other joint in town will carry – unusual, innovative beers that will demonstrate where the industry is going, he said.

He hopes that people will drop by for beer and conversation, to share his obsessive
love for beer –possibly whomever of his old skid friends who are still around.
But at any rate, he’s a step closer to opening that brewpub.
– Matthew Irwin

Beer relations
At local breweries, you're family
Jacksonites feel a sense of ownership to the Brew Pub. It’s an ancient relationship between a watering hole and a community. But Snake River Brewing sales director Tim Harland gives us a short version:

The pub needs the community as much as the community needs the pub, said, and that means the pub has to keep giving back to the locals if they want to keep their doors open.

You could say it starts with hometown pride. People love to drink beer that was made in their own backyard, and Harland said there was a buzz over the opening of the pub 15 years ago. Within several months of opening they won a silver
medal at the Great American Brew Fest.

Since then, it’s been most important to preserve the beer’s locally-made character.
The pub has gone from making about 800 barrels per year when it opened to about 5,000 today, but Harland said that other award-winning small pubs have lost their character at reaching  100,000 barrels a year.

Instead of outstripping their pub operation with package beer sales, he said the beer and food sales have both grown steadily, a sign that a well-recognized product hasn’t outgrown the community feel.

“We’ve put all the pieces of the puzzle together to have an internationally-known but locally-made beer,” he said. Harland helped build the Brew Pub as a construction laborer and  bartended there after it opened. He then became a
brewer and eventually took over sales and marketing.

“The initial opening was modeled somewhat after pubs of the Northwest and the pubs of Ireland,” Harland said. “If you go to an Irish pub, there are families there, there are elderly people and there are young punks.”

When the pub closed for a short while last year to expand the kitchen, people felt as if they’d been locked out of home.

Part of the community effort isn’t just making people feel at home, but also selling kegs at cost for fundraising events.

“This year we’ve supported more than 150 endeavors, whether they’ve been a nonprofit fundraiser or a benefit, and the year’s not over ... Anything from habitat for humanity or Jackson Hole Music Experience to the benefit for Big Dave or a
community member that’s taken a fall or been injured or
come down with an illness.”
– Henry Sweets


Bill’s beer notes

WILDLIFE BREWING
VICTOR, IDAHO
Point It Pale Ale
Drinkability: Have another
Orange copper color with some red hints, mild carbonation and head on pour.  Mild
spicy herbal aroma with subtle caramel and malt hints. Well built with biscuit-bready flavors, mild malt and caramel, hint of grass and metal.
Rodeo Red Ale
Drinkability:Limit two
Dark red color with some brown tints, mild carbonation and head on pour.  Malty-
grainy aromas with floral hops, hint of oiliness and soap. Well built with burnt toast and grains tastes, almost smoky; sweeter malt and some bitter hops in end.
Mountain Stout
Drinkability:Three or four
Jet black and opaque in color, very mild carbonation and head on pour. Mild chocolate, coffee, burnt malt aromas with hint of oiliness, piney hops, and soap.  Very well built with chocolate, coffee, and bitter burnt malts, almost non-existent hops.

GRAND TETON BREWING
VICTOR, IDAHO
Au Naturale Organic Ale
Drinkability:Summer beer
Medium to dark yellow in color, mild carbonation and head on pour. Mild spicy hop aromas with some bready biscuit notes, hint of honey and oiliness.  Well built with mildly sweet malt and grain tastes, hints of caramel and old grass apparent.
Fest Bier Marzen Lager
Drinkability:Limit two
Dark red color with brown hints, mild carbonation and head on pour. Intense malt and sweet aromas, lots of caramel and brown sugar, hints of leather, vanilla, and red beets; hardly any hops. Very sweet malty taste with some caramel, hints of
oiliness, cherries, raisins and toffee.
Lost Continent Double IPA
Drinkability: Almost too easy
Semi-cloudy orange copper color with red hints, very mild carbonation and head on pour.  Huge pine citrus hop aromas with wort, grain, and alcoholic notes afterwards,
hints of caramel, oil, mango and tropical fruits, even peaches.  Very well built despite alcoholic content, with sweet malts and hints of citrus, mango, pineapple, and peach tastes, lingering piney hops. 

SNAKE RIVER BREWING
JACKSON, WYOMING
Snake River Pale Ale
Drinkability: Three or four
Pale golden yellow color, moderate carbonation and head on pour.  Piney citrus hops dominate aroma, some nuttiness and grassy, oily notes come through.  Very well built with mild sweet grains at first taste and then piney, spicy hops and lingering citrus. 
Snake River Lager
Drinkability: Good
Reddish orange color with some brown hints, mild carbonation and head on pour.
Caramel malty nose with nutty and hoppy aromas, hint of alcohol.  Very well built, mildly sweet grains at front with very mild hop hints. 
Snake River Zonker Stout
Drinkability:Two to three
Jet black and opaque in color, very mild carbonation and head on pour.  Burnt toast, dark chocolate and coffee aromas, hint of tar, leather, brown sugar and dark molasses. Very well built with dark bitter chocolate, burnt malts and coffee taste,
hints of oak, cloves, black tea.
– Bill Fogarty, Jr.

Image: Danny Haworth design

Reader Comments
Thank you, Charlie! And remember my friends - stay thirsty. MIMITW
From all of us here at Grand Teton Brewing Company...Cheers to you Charlie. You're the best! GTBC Crew
FOUR ??? Have I missed the news ??? Greg
Yeah, where IS this fourth micro-brewery?!!! steve
Thai Me Up Brewery, coming soon! MJI

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