Tapping his potential

ODESSA – This weekend is the big one for Tom Schafer.

In fact, it’s the big one for the whole town of Odessa, a tidy wheat-farming town that throws open its rich German-Russian heritage each September to all takers.

During the weekend’s Deutschesfest, Schafer estimates 78 kegs of his locally made beers will be drained.

His microbrews are a welcome addition to the town’s festivities. More importantly to Schafer, the quickly emptying kegs signal that his new business may be successful.

Now 54, he had never brewed beer before heeding the advice of his doctor several years ago to quit the rigors of farming and find something else to do.

He suffers from a degenerative joint disease that is exacerbated by driving a tractor. It was tough news for a farmer carrying on the work of earlier generations.

So Schafer said he began researching job opportunities and ultimately settled on starting a brewery. It’s a business that allows him to be his own boss and one he can conduct right in Odessa.

To get started he tapped his own savings and took out a loan from the local Wheatland Bank branch.

So far, things have worked out. Schafer said the brewery has turned a small profit from the start – money he has plowed right back into the business.

To get started, he bought used equipment from the former Fort Spokane Brewery. He also bought equipment from the old Pend Oreille brewery out of Sandpoint.

“Between the two of them, they had everything I needed,” Schafer said.

He was able to buy the equipment cheaply. He says the price was about 10 cents on the dollar compared to buying new. The microbrew craze, he said, began to ebb about the time he decided to open up his own brewery.

Breweries were closing everywhere and Schafer figured he could find a niche.

So far it has worked. He has modest business goals of growing the business slowly to retain quality. He’d like to double the size of his business in five to six years to about 100 kegs a month.

“What I don’t want to do is try and grow so quickly that I can’t meet my promise to service an account,” he said. “I really think the downfall of many microbreweries has been that they grew too fast and their quality suffered.”

That sounds about right to Gary Getz, who owns Great Micros Wholesale in Spokane.

He distributes about 20 different microbrews to bars in the Spokane area and said Schafer’s has done well.

“I think he’s an up-and-comer who’s making a quality product,” Getz said.

He has put Rocky Coulee kegs into bars ranging from The Elk Public House to Dave’s Bar & Grill in Spokane Valley.

The only way to drink Schafer’s beer is to find it at a bar where it’s on tap, or to visit his tasting room in Odessa.

Schafer doesn’t bottle beer, but he sells jugs called growlers that can hold about four to five pint glasses of beer, and 4½ gallon plastic mini kegs affectionately called pigs.

While boosting keg sales in Spokane represents his best opportunities for growth, Schafer said his repeat customers in Odessa and the surrounding communities have kept him afloat.

“I think that’s been the best thing about this business,” he said, “just making all these new friends and getting to know people.”