Making Suds Sandpoint Brew Pub Has Heady Expectations

Faster than you can say “hot restaurant trend,” brew pubs are popping up across the country, especially in the West.

In the Inland Northwest, it appears the next label that beer drinkers will peel off bottles will read “Pend Oreille Brewing Co.”

Though not a single bottle of beer has been capped, founders Ken Jackson, Terry Jensen and Chris Campbell find themselves giving impromptu tours of their new state-of-the-art brew kettles and vats.

Worth more than a quarter of a million dollars, the gleaming copper workings, delivered earlier this month, have attracted a lot of attention tucked in a renovated garage behind the General Store off Cedar Street.

“People were a little shy about the concept at first,” said Campbell, who helped craft beer for a Salt Lake City brew pub before tackling this project. “But now everyone wants to help and get involved.”

The company plans to have two ales on the market by the first of the year, Jackson said.

The specialty beer market can’t get much hotter. The froth over public stock offerings by microbrewers has attracted a lot of attention for a industry that controls barely 2 percent of all the beer guzzled in the nation. That small share could rise to 6 percent in upcoming years, say Jackson and Campbell. That’s where there’s room for growth.

Brew pubs, where a microbrewery combines its production facility with a casual restaurant, are not just a place to swill haughty-sounding suds such as Hefeweizen (an unfiltered beer). They’re practically a source of civic identity for communities that have them.

The microbrew market has plenty of entrants, Jackson said. “We need to have consistent quality to stand out.”

That’s where the fancy brewing equipment comes in. Built in Budapest, Hungary, and rigorously tested in Germany, the kettles can brew up to 30 barrels at a time.

“This is the best equipment out there, period,” Jackson said. “It will make all the difference for us.”

Hops, yeast and water soon will be mashed and fermented into brews such as City Beach Blonde, Rapid Lightening Ale, Hoodoo Porter and Meadowshark Stout.

“Our friends call cows ‘meadow-sharks,”’ Campbell said. “So that’s where that one came from. We’re going to have fun with the label, put some fins on the cows and everything.”

North Idaho is no stranger to the brew pub. Tom Fisher brought T.W. Fisher’s to life in Coeur d’Alene in 1987, and now you can buy his tasty Pale Ale from Spokane to Lewiston to Sandpoint.

The Pend Oreille partners think that a brew pub adds a nice ingredient to an already unique core of downtown Sandpoint stores and restaurants.

Like other breweries, Pend Oreille will try to distribute the beer across the region and not just run a restaurant that features microbrewed beers, Jackson said. “Our primary goal here is to sell beer.”

The brew pub, slated to open around July of next year, will take up half the storefront now occupied by the General Store, Jackson said.

For Campbell, who will serve as the brewmaster, his “influences” as a beer maker include microbrews concocted by Deschutes Brewing of Bend, Ore., which distributes throughout the Northwest.

“If we could emulate just half of the success that Deschutes has had, I would be pleased,” Jackson said.

More than 900 brew pubs exist nationwide, and with about two new ones opening each week, the challenge will be to elevate Pend Oreille Brewing Co. in a somewhat saturated market, Jackson said.

“Quality will be the key for us,” he said. “We think we’ve got the right idea.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo