Make Wine Make Beer moves to new location

Swirling a not-quite quarter-full wine glass in one hand and propping himself up against a counter lined with 30 empty bottles in the other, Bob Crawford took in small wafts of his K & L Selection Merlot.

“It’s really green wine,” he said, while alternating between sips and swirls. As this six-gallon batch of red marked Crawford’s and a friend’s sixth successful bottling at Make Wine Make Beer in Coeur d’Alene, he added: “We just kind of fell into this mainly because it’s fun. … The problem with it is that you’re supposed to let it sit, because if it tastes good at bottling, man, letting it sit is a tough thing to do.”

From the selection of the fruits’ locale to the fermenting on-site, the bottling stage brings about the last step for customers such as Crawford at the new Fourth Street shop, co-owned by Aaron and Levi Knight, who are also uncle and nephew, respectively. Having grown from a hobby that started in his basement to a former location in Hayden, the home-brewing business Aaron Knight started in 2000 hopes to benefit from a recent change of venues.

“I used to make it at home in the basement. It was a nice hobby, it just got out of hand,” the co-owner and founder of the three-employee store said. With their new place now set-up and ready for business, he added, “I thought it was time for a little better location.”

Shedding the perception that making a homemade batch of beer or wine is a messy or time-consuming task, the Knights offer all the essential ingredients to craft anyone’s ideal brew at their store. Though they don’t sell alcohol, as Aaron Knight pointed out, Make Wine Make Beer’s relaxed atmosphere provides “an opportunity, number one, to craft their own wine or beer,” he added. “Plus it saves money if you do it yourself, and it’s quite easy; as long as you follow some simple rules in the process, it’s pretty hard to fail.”

Inside their shop, customers can choose from a selection of boxes full of the essential ingredients. From red or white wine kits that contain juice and yeast and ferment in either four or six weeks, to liquid beer kits ranging from a Munich Dark Lager to India Pale Ale, the packages are a great place to start for beginners, Aaron Knight said. There is also a full selection of grains, hops and yeast for customers who want to experiment in the fine art of beer brewing; personalized labels that cost about $10; and an assortment of supplies and accessories that includes essential oil extractors and water purifiers.

From start to finish, a complete brewing kit ranges from $60 to $180, with beer batches making about 60 12-ounce bottles, and six-gallons of wine resulting in about 30 bottles.

“A lot of it’s the same equipment, so the transition (from beer to wine making) is easy,” he said, adding that it also saves money if customers recycle their empty bottles.

Blenders can take home their creations if they have the equipment, or rent the gear from the shop while it ferments in a storage room. There, where rows of large jugs bubbled out small spats of carbon dioxide emissions as the yeast fed on sugar, customers are encouraged to stop by and check up on their creations. “Basically, at the end of the process they set up an appointment to bottle. They are very much involved in the process,” Aaron Knight said. “Our customers are pretty fun customers. It’s not a stressful business for them.”

Once the filtering and bottling are finished, which can all be done at the store’s sanitary station, the owners have just one piece of hard-to-follow advice: patience is key; the longer a bottle sits, the better it will taste.

For a collection of local beer enthusiasts, Make Wine Make Beer’s expansion into its new, larger location was a welcome move. The Fourth Street store also serves as the area’s beer club headquarters, where their monthly meetings quickly turn from business to beer tasting, said Darin Hayes, a 12-year beer-making veteran and president and founder of the 15-member group, known as the Yeast Monkeys.

Having a store in town “is essential to having a good club and the availability of home brewing. … It’s really just a great club to share ideas and share recipes about brewing. Everyone there shares one thing: that’s an appreciation of good beer,” Hayes said. “We, just by what we do, try to support the store by making more beer. It’s definitely a good relationship.”