When you’re talking about the number of breweries per capita, the state of Montana ranks near the top, with more than 60 breweries serving a population of about one million people. Missoula resident Alan McCormick refers to himself as “an attorney with a beer writing problem.” A lawyer by trade, he also operates the Growler Fills website, writes prodigiously about beer for regional publications, organizes the annual Missoula Craft Beer Week and is Montana’s trusted source for beer news, information and analysis. We recently cornered McCormick for a question and answer session to tap into his thoughts about the state of beer beneath the Big Sky.
What are the latest trends on the Montana beer scene?
Breweries getting bigger. Many of Montana’s existing breweries are experiencing significant growth with more and more exporting out of state. On the beer side of things, you’re seeing more breweries developing sour beers.
What particular, unique issues shaped the craft brewing industry in Montana?
Montana is a quota state, meaning there is a limited number of licenses available to sell alcohol for on-premise consumption at bars and restaurants. Breweries gained the ability to sell pints to consumers in 1999 through a legislative compromise. Liquor license holders — bars and restaurants — agreed to the idea [of brewery taprooms] so long as the breweries’ rights were limited. In Montana, only breweries making fewer than 10,000 barrels per year can operate a taproom. They can sell a maximum of 48 ounces per person, per day, and only between the hours of 10 a.m. and 8 p.m. … That compromise helped set off the boom in brewery growth as breweries now had an important new way to reach customers. Yet the growth in breweries also meant more direct competition for the license holders, leading to increasing conflicts between the two [bar owners and brewery owners], which continues today.
What do beer drinkers in Big Sky Country crave?
Montana is no different than the rest of the beer-loving world. Variety and exploration is king and that presents both opportunities and challenges for the breweries. IPAs continue their unrelenting march of domination, but brewers are definitely looking for opportunities to remind beer drinkers of other styles.
Is there one place in Montana that is the heart of the craft beer movement?
I’ll be accused of sounding like a homer, but I’d argue it is Missoula. The city has seven breweries and satellite outposts of two others. It has Montana’s longest operating brewery [Bayern Brewing] and its largest [Big Sky Brewing]. The Garden City Brewfest is the longest running in Montana — 24 years — and gathers the largest crowd. Missoula Craft Beer Week just completed its fifth year and keeps getting bigger and better. Put succinctly, Missoula as a general culture has cared about good beer for far longer than any other part of the state.
That said, no one feels like it’s a competition. We all get to benefit from the rise of good beer in all of our cities and small towns… Montanans think of all of it as their beer. It’s not a backwoods, behind-the-times beer state. Montanans know good beer and seek it out. Fortunately for us, it is very easy to find in virtually every city and town. Along with that, we get the added benefit of Glacier and Yellowstone National Parks just around the corner.
This story originally ran in the summer 2016 issue of Sip Northwest. For more stories like, click here.
