The idea for Glacier Ginger Brew, a small ginger beer producer in Whitefish, Montana, was born over drinks after a day of skiing.
Good friends Lesley Thompson and Jen Cronin were closing out the last day of ski season two winters ago with Moscow Mules. “We were talking about how ginger beer could be so much better if you really could taste the ginger,” Cronin recalls.
The two started experimenting making their own. Cronin remembers bringing a keg of one of their early batches to a friend’s birthday party, only to have it explode in the car. “We didn’t have a clue,” she admits.
It took a lot of trial and error to arrive at their current hit recipe. “We really loved the spice of the ginger, but we didn’t know that the carbonation would increase that intensity,” Cronin says. “So the first batch we made, one person took a sip and took a sip and opened their mouth to let it pour out because it was so fiery.” They also left the ginger peel on at first, but it added an unpleasant bitterness.
Still, they weren’t deterred. For an entire summer, they hand-peeled pound upon pound of ginger and juiced all of their lemons with a small Bed Bath and Beyond lemon juicer. “It was slow-going. We worked our fannies off,” Cronin says.
Their non-alcoholic, organic ginger beer company launched in April of last year, and it’s been a hit locally. They are serving at their counter inside downtown Whitefish’s Stumptown Marketplace, a collection of artisan food producers and other vendors housed in one large, open space. There, Glacier Ginger Brew serves the ginger beer along with organic juices and smoothies as well as fills of 16-ounce bottles, 32-ounce flip top bottles, growlers and 64-ounce mini-kegs.
And the ginger beer is available on tap at a myriad of local restaurants and bars, including Tupelo Grille, Crush Lounge and Truby’s in Whitefish, the Belton Chalet in West Glacier and the Glacier Distilling Co. in Coram.
They’re also selling it at the summer farmers markets in Whitefish and Columbia Falls, and at a handful of places in Missoula as well. “We didn’t expect it to be such a hit,” Cronin says. Luckily, they’ve graduated to a commercial potato peeler.
Glacier Ginger Brew uses organic Peruvian ginger (which the pair found to be the spiciest), organic sugar, organic Madagascar vanilla and lemon. Along with the original ginger beer, they’ve created combinations like Flathead cherry and lime, strawberry rhubarb, habanero, huckleberry, ginger peach, orange, blackberry, raspberry and more. “We’ll use whatever we can get our hands on,” Cronin says.
Apart from combining the ginger beer with vodka for a Moscow Mule, Cronin recommends mixing it with tequila, her personal favorite combination.
