KettleHouse Brewing made a bold move by canning its brew, including Cold Smoke, the craft beer superstar in Missoula.
“ Brewers are creating and writing a new script every day.” taprooms full of patrons looking for another taste of an old favorite or perhaps the next big beer. “Missoula is very close to our heart when we talk about craft beer,” said Montana Brewers Association executive director Tony Herbert. “Through all these businesses you get a variety of opportunities to try these beers. The brewers are doing a great job creating a seasonal, not stagnant, market. Brewers are creating and writing a new script every day.”
M
issoula is home to the company that made Moose Drool taste so good that half the country has fallen in love with it. Big Sky Brewing is by far the largest in the state. The company pumped out 45,000 gallons of brew in 2011. Big Sky’s beers are distributed to 24 states, including Oklahoma and Alaska, making it the 38th biggest brewery
52
missoula magazine
in the nation, Herbert said. Co-founder Neal Leathers sees Big Sky as fitting perfectly into a Pacific Northwest area that is particularly charmed by craft beer, and the wide variety of flavors and options that come with it. Big Sky’s thundering bottling operation rattles next to the silver kettles that tower in the north side of its warehouse west of Missoula. That’s where Big Sky’s 10 varieties of beer are brewed and bottled. The Big Sky India Pale Ale will be canned for the first time this spring, and Leathers said an expansion for the warehouse is due soon. No other brewery in the state has the reach Big Sky enjoys – although it’s because of that reach that Big Sky can’t sell beer for fans to drink on-site in its taproom. What many brewers call a weird, arbitrary Montana law dictates that breweries producing more than 10,000