Big dreams for small brewery

Graham Hart has held a dream for the last several years to open his own nanobrewery. It’s a dream he’s on track to complete by the end of the year, but he’s looking for a little support from the community to make the last push to open Bonsai Brewing Project.

“Six years ago I started home brewing — I liked it and I wanted to take it further,” Hart said. “I’ve made the investment and I’m not in any debt with the business, but now we’re holding this fundraiser.”

Hart has personally funded his business to this point spending about $35,000, but in order to finish he’s looking to raise $15,000 through an online Kickstarter campaign that runs through the end of the month.

Hart sees this project as a “community brewery” that he intends to keep small by brewing just 300 to 500 barrels in his first year of operation. He has opened shop inside Mountain Mall where his custom-made barrel brewing system was recently installed.

The name of the brewery is based on the Japanese art form of bonsai that involves sculpting miniature trees.

“We’re so tiny we’re like a bonsai tree,” Hart said. “We want to try to mimic bigger, established breweries, but we still want to stay local and close to home.”

A nanobrewery is named such because it is smaller than a microbrewery. Generally, nanobrewing allows for homebrewers to expand into the commercial market allowing them to serve craft beer to the public, while doing so on a much smaller scale than a microbrewery.

Hart began with small batches of homebrew. Then he expanded to brewing for large block parties for friends and family. He created a plan to open his own nanobrewery brewery four years ago, but at the time no one else was doing it, so he shelved the concept thinking it wasn’t viable.

In 2011, he won a video contest to attend Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.’s beer camp where he spent three days learning about brewing and finally creating a beer. Then he went to work as an assistant brewer at Tamarack Brewing Company in Lakeside. It was a move that almost made him give up his dream because he enjoys working there, but it was the pull back to his hometown that led him to reconsider.

“I gained so much more experience working at Tamarack,” he said. “I learned there was a bunch about the commercial side of brewing that I didn’t know. But I wanted to be in Whitefish, where my friends and family are.”

Inside Bonsai Brewing Project’s space at the mall, old beer bottles have been lined up on shelves. Hart’s sister Katie and his girlfriend Keela Smith have taken the bottles out of storage and dusted them off placing them to surround the room.

“We think of it as lurking in the shadows of giants,” Hart said. “We’ll be serving beer in pint glasses from different breweries and I’ll be wearing T-shirts from different breweries.”

Hart has traveled around the country trying different kinds of beer and collecting those now decorative bottles. He said he favors IPAs, but can appreciate every type of beer for what it is.

“As long a people like it, it’s good beer,” he said.

Hart plans to serve five different beers at Bonsai and also experiment with the different recipes he has developed. The ales planned are Lil Blond Honey, Initiation Ale, Due North IPA, Sheriff John Brown and The Unkindness Stout.

Bonsai expects to serve beer from its taproom along with growlers to go, but will not be bottling its beer.

“Brewing is artistic,” Hart said. “I want to keep it fresh. If it starts to feel like mass production then that’s not what I want. Project is in the name because I want to test out flavors and see what people like.”

As of earlier this week, Bonsai had raised $5,000 toward its goal. Hart has until Aug. 31 at midnight to raise the total amount or nothing will be collected from donors.

For more information visit Facebook.com/bonsaibrew or Kickstarter.com and search for Bonsai Brewing Project.