Local Legacies; Booze and Brews

It's Thursday night, and the growler lane in the Myrtle Street Kettle House stretches to the door.

All signs point to beer — full bar stools, the sound of glasses, beer-drinkers loud in conversation leaning in just to hear the person next to them and clinking their glasses together to celebrate the end of another work day.

Kettle House's brewery taproom is one of four in Missoula. All are packed with the sound of happy ale-hounds who like their beer locally made and fresh from the brewer's taps.

Every small Montana town has a saloon or two — even Belt, a town of 633, has a micro-brewery.

Breweries are now a staple on Montana's street corners and distilleries are starting to follow suit, transitioning from the backs of liquor-loving minds to the storefront.

In 2011 businesses in Coram, Big Fork, Billings and Corvallis began distilling spirits from vodka to whiskey, and now Montanans operate 28 breweries and eight distilleries.

And their numbers continue to increase.

The United States now has 394 distilleries and 1,759 breweries, and only Vermont hosts more breweries per capita than Montana, said Tony Herbert, executive director of the Montana Brewers Association.

With two industries that rely on local grain production and a state that grows 22 percent of the barley produced in the country, it's no small wonder Montana's distilleries and breweries are successful.

As impressive as the state's alcohol industry may be, it's nowhere near pre-prohibition numbers. Back then, Montana supported 80 breweries.

Post-prohibition laws make it hard. Until 1999, breweries in the state couldn't sell beer for consumption on their premises because of a law passed in the ‘30s. Today, small breweries can only sell three pints per customer and big breweries can't sell any.

In 2009, the Montana Brewers Association was able to push through legislation for stronger beer. New laws nullified the 1933 legislation that declared any beer with more than 8.75 percent alcohol by volume a liquor. Brewers now can make beer up to 14 percent, so Montanans don't have to go to a state-run liquor store to buy those beers.

In 2005, it became legal to run a micro-distillery, but licensing hold-ups prevented the first distillery from opening until 2008. As of this legislative session, distilleries can sell 1.75 liters instead of one liter of product for off-premise consumption.

For all the hard work it takes craft-alcohol makers to even begin producing, it's a wonder they can start selling, let alone continue. But they do.

Each establishment is unique.

There's no map for starting and selling alcohol.

There's no chart for being successful.

These entrepreneurs do it the old-fashioned way, true to Montana-style ­­— with hard work, some guessing and a lot of experimentation.

The devil's drink

Hints of fennel and anise waft above an open, copper-topped pot-still.

Canning jars and plastic totes filled with herbs like angelica root, wormwood and coriander line one end of the metal shed.

Using a small kitchen scale and a hand-written recipe Julie Legate patiently weighs the remaining nine herbs that will join the others to make Ridge Distillery's absinthe.

It's distilled in a small metal shed across the garden from their house, hidden between the trees and behind two feet of snow in the hills west of Kalispell.

"We were drawn into it for the same reason most people are; we'd heard the myths," he said. "How can a beverage become so vilified that it becomes banned in countries—so the bad boy in me has to find out why."

Wormwood. The herb also known as artemisia absinthium, contains a neurotoxin called thujone. Thujone is only dangerous when taken in huge amounts, he said. And the amount found in wormwood is insignificant.

Nonetheless, absinthe was accused of having hallucinogenic drug-like properties at the turn of the century, he said. Therefore Absinthe was banned in the United States, Switzerland and France in the early 1900s.

Illegal to produce in the United States until 2007, the Legates began distilling their version of absinthe in 2009. They infuse a 90-proof pure spirit from Kentucky with an herbal concoction that took months to perfect.

Ridge is one of 12 absinthe distillers in the United States and the only one in Montana. They are small and like it that way, selling 700 proof-gallons a year and still are able to wild-harvest enough of Montana's wild wormwood to make their product.

Ironically, even though absinthe isn't absinthe without it, wormwood makes up only a small fraction of the herbs in the drink.

"Absinthe definitely has a different buzz," Jules said. "But it's not about the buzz, it's about the herb bill."

It's the anise. The fennel. The hints of coriander. They dance on the tongue waiting for the brain to catch up to their flavors. It's unlike anything you've ever tasted.

Think Big

Bottles line up like foot soldiers three feet above the warehouse floor. They clink together impatiently, the air heavy with beer that will soon fulfill their purpose in life.

At a speed of 500 bottles per minute, Big Sky Brewery's bottling line sterilizes, fills, caps, and labels before popping the bottles into six-pack carriers and cases that roll down to a waiting employee.

He stacks pallets full before shuttling them to the walk-in cooler, where cases stand in line for late-week pick-up and distribution. They could end up anywhere from California to Michigan.

"We kind of wanted to be a big regional brewery and I think most Montana breweries start out wanting to be much smaller," said Neal Leathers, co-founder and president of Big Sky. "Those first couple of years were really stressful, but once we got above water we never looked back."