Grizzly Growler

The Missoula Winter BrewFest returns for its second year on Saturday, Feb. 11, from 2 to 8 p.m., this time at the old Safeway building on West Broadway next to St. Patrick Hospital. Cost is $10 for a 7-ounce glass and two tokens, and $1 per token thereafter. The Missoula Downtown Association expects more than [...]

Kettlehouse Brewing Co. on the Northside of Missoula has swapped smaller tanks for some bigger ones. Kettle replaced a conditioning tank and a fermentation tank, which each held 40 barrels, with tanks that can hold up to 90 barrels. Owner Tim O’Leary told the Missoulian: “This is primarily to give us some relief at high-production [...]

I grew up outside of Chicago and even after living in Montana for more than 15 years I’m still a White Sox fan. So when I saw that Frank Thomas has his own craft beer I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to post something about it. Unfortunately, after seeing some reviews for Big Hurt Beer, [...]

Popped open a bottle of Dogfish Head’s Pangaea the other day, which I bought last March in Arizona. The idea behind it was to make a beer that contains ingredients from every continent: crystallized ginger from Australia, water from Antarctica, basmati rice from Asia, muscavado sugar from Africa, European yeast and North American maize. Here’s [...]

Missoula’s Draught Works is gearing up to host the first official Frosters Anonymous party on Friday, Jan. 27., in an effort to bring a little warmth to our neck of the woods. So what is Frosters Anonymous?  Well … it’s “a new thing where you pretend to act like the weather is nice (and) take a [...]

The 18th annual Micro Brew Review and Cool Dog Ball heads to the Helena Civic Center Ballroom on Friday, Jan. 27, as part of a fundraiser for the Race to the Sky sled dog race. Seventeen breweries will be on hand, including Blackfoot River Brewing, Lewis & Clark Brewery, Big Sky, Bayern, Bitter Root Brewing, Harvest Moon, [...]

Big Sky Brewing Co. has a far out take on one of their staples. Cleverly called Space Goat, the beer is a variation of Scape Goat brewed with galaxy hops. That may sound familiar from another excellent beer that Flathead Lake Brewing Co. put out over the summer, Galaxy Pale Ale. Galaxy hops are an [...]

Finally got the chance to head over to the Bitterroot Valley’s newest brewery, Higherground Brewing Co., over the weekend. The brewery, located in Hamilton at 518 N. First St., opened about a month ago and has a bit of different feel. It seems more like a cafe with a brewery inside, with checkerboard floors and wooden [...]

We here in Montana are lucky. Not only are new breweries opening up all around us, such as Higherground Brewing, Bowser Brewing, Draught Works and 406 Brewing Co., but existing breweries are expanding just as rapidly. Lewis and Clark Brewing in Helena is one of those places. The brewery last year moved into a new [...]

I’ve been looking forward to what would have been the 2011 version of All Souls Ale from Big Sky Brewing – especially after having a few glasses of the first batch over the past few weeks – and it looks like I’ll have to wait a bit longer. A friend told me Big Sky ran [...]