Flathead Lake Brewing Company on cutting edge in design

There is something strangely missing at the construction site at the new Flathead Lake Brewing Company in Bigfork.

Yes, there are dozens of men in hard hats walking hurriedly throughout the site on the bluff overlooking Flathead Lake, and yes, there the sounds of hammers, saws and heavy machinery.

But you don’t see a garbage dumpster.

That’s because almost every nail, window and piece of insulation from the former North Shore Lanes bowling alley is being reused to create the new brewery. A new brick siding going up this week on the brewery is not, well new, but being repurposed from an old building in Spokane. The effort to reuse and recycle almost everything during the brewery’s construction is one reason why the brewery and restaurant won’t be open this summer.

Construction is taking much longer than anticipated due to the fact that the brewery’s owners are seeking a friend-of-the-environment certification called LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design).

“There’s been no shortage of obstacles,” Robert Millspaugh, operations supervisor, said.

The brewery is set to open in June. The adjacent restaurant will open by Labor Day.

“We didn’t take the easy route,” Tim Jacoby, head brewer, said. “It’s been time consuming and expensive.”

The new brewery and restaurant are an expansion of the current Flathead Lake Brewing Company location in Woods Bay. That location will remain open and will focus on brewing smaller-batched specialty beverages.

The new location on Holt Drive and Montana Highway 35 is about one block north of the Bigfork Water and Sewer District’s wastewater treatment facility. In an innovative move that is likely the first in the county, the Flathead Lake Brewing Company is piping the 55-degree cleaned water from the treatment plant up the hill and through the facility to use as geothermal heating and cooling.

The pump is housed at the Bigfork wastewater treatment plant, but the brewery paid for it. “They’ve been so good to work with,” Millspaugh said. “They approached this project with an open mind. They could have just said no.”

“It’s one of the more innovative aspects of the project,” Jacoby said. “It’s a huge water and energy savings for us.”

After the water is done doing its job at the brewery it will be piped back down the hill to the wastewater treatment plant. The treated water, although technically safe to drink, will only be used for heating and cooling — not making beer. Jacoby looks around at the snow-loaded Swan Mountains nearby and sees potential beer. “We’ve got the best water on the planet right here,” he said.

In Bigfork, the apparatus that hold 65,000 pounds of malted barley has recently been installed. Malted barley is a basis for beer making. Malted barley is barley that is harvested, then kept moist and allowed to sprout very briefly. It’s then dried and used in the brewing process. Bigfork’s barley will come from Great Falls, one of the largest malting facilities in the world.

The spent barley is hauled away to make pig feed. “Pigs love it,” Jacoby said.

Workers this week are touching up the cupola that adorns the top of the roof of the brewery. That’s no mere ornamentation. The structure can be removed to allow installation of additional brewing or fermenting tanks inside.

Right now there are enough tanks inside to produce about 5,000 kegs of beer annually, placing the brewery on par with the mid-sized breweries in Montana. Combined with the output from its Woods Bay brewery, Flathead Lake Brewing Company should be doing about 10,000 barrels a year, Jacoby said.

Flathead Lake Brewing Company opened in 2004 in Woods Bay. It closed briefly in 2009 during an ownership restructuring and reopened in 2010. When they got to capacity two years ago, the owners decided to drastically expand operations and its presence in Bigfork. The former North Shore Lanes bowling alley had sat vacant for several years and made the perfect location, Jacoby said. The bowling alley’s owner, an attorney in New York, had developed a plan to build condominiums, but after he died the heirs decided to unload the property, Jacoby said. “We rescued it,” he said.

The way most breweries and pubs in Montana are built, you have to physically visit them to enjoy one of their beers. Not so, here. Flathead Lake Brewing Company is installing a canning line that will allow them to take their products where the people are — at home or in the great outdoors.

“Cans can go anywhere,” Jacoby said. “We needed to take our product to where people live, and that’s not in Bigfork. They’re not necessarily going to be coming here in the winter.”

There are more than 40 breweries in Montana, and 10 more that have opened in the last two years. Flathead Lake Brewing Company will be carving out its niche in that crowded market.

One of the unique marketing aspects of Flathead Lake Brewing Company beer is that it doesn’t come from Missoula or Bozeman — two of the more popular hubs for brewing. The company’s beers also have their own unique tastes. “People are loyal to Montana beers, and there’s a lot of pride in that,” Jacoby said.

Those flavors are constantly changing and evolving. Jacoby said the beers that the company made three years ago are not what they’re making today. “We make the beers people want to drink,” he said.

Montana’s brewpub laws mandate that breweries and any adjoining restaurants must be separately owned. Although occupying the same building, each business must have separate electrical, gas and utility hookups, in addition to the burdensome reporting requirements.  

While the brewery is on track for an early-summer opening, the restaurant is likely to open in September, Jacoby said. “We’ve given up on the summer,” Jacoby said. “That was a huge let down for all of us. It will be open when it’s open.”

Millspaugh is getting on-the-job training as operations manager. He graduated from the University of Colorado/Boulder with a degree in environmental engineering and went to work at the Woods Bay location of Flathead Lake Brewing Company. “I was probably the most highly educated keg washer they had,” he said. But the company had plans to expand, so Millspaugh hung on, and now he’s plying his trade — and college degree — helping shape the new, environmentally friendly brewery. The company is seeking LEED certification, a standard that reflects an organization’s attention to sustainable design and construction.

“LEED is about bragging rights, and a challenge to promote change, and how we design and build,” Millspaugh said.

At the Bigfork brewery, there’s even going to be a plug in outside for electric vehicles.

Outside the restaurant, decks on two levels open to views of Flathead Lake. A glass window between the restaurant and the brewery will allow visitors to view the brewery operation.

The brewery and restaurant could become a social gathering hub for Bigfork. Back in the day, it was the local brewery that anchored Montana towns. “You didn’t have a town if you didn’t have a brewery,” Jacoby said.

The brewery is now on the home stretch to completion. That doesn’t mean any corners will be cut in creating this model for environmental design and construction. “That’s why this took so long,” Millspaugh said. “Every piece of material came out, got weighed and put back in, and the savings calculated. It has been a really cool challenge. Day to day it’s a thought process that has to be instilled in us.”