About the Brewery

Blackfoot River Brewing Company was founded in 1998, and began producing their line of handcrafted beers in January of 1999. The Brewery is located in the heart of historic Downtown Helena and near the headwaters of both the Big and Little Blackfoot Rivers.

The founding partners established the brewery to produce the finest, handcrafted, traditional beers to be found in Montana. All Blackfoot River beers are brewed with the highest quality traditional 2-row malts, hops, and yeasts, individually selected to produce each particular style of beer. Each of our specialty beers are carefully handcrafted 14 barrels at a time. Blackfoot River's beers are never pasteurized, normally unfiltered and are available exclusively on draught.

Blackfoot River Brewing was founded and is operated by three partners:

Brian Smith -Head Brewer and General Manager
Greg Wermers - Off-Premise Sales
Brad Simshaw - Brewer and Regulatory/Tax Manager

Fourteen barrel, three-vessel, steam-fired brewhouse
(3) Fourteen barrel fermentation vessels
(5) Fourteen barrel conditioning/bright tanks
(3) Seven barrel conditioning/bright tanks
Packaging: draft
Capacity:1,850 barrels (annual)
Back: Rebecca, Tracy, Brian, Rick, Greg
Front: Brad and Emmett

Our Beer Making Philosophy
(It's one of the many things that makes our beer different!)

At Blackfoot River Brewing, we believe in making our handcrafted beers the right way. We use only the finest traditional ingredients, specifically tailored to each style of beer. This means that we sacrifice costs and efficiency to give you the quality of beer that you deserve. Most importantly, at our brewery, the brewing of beer is much more important than the selling of beer. That's why when we make a beer, it is always made true to style, unlike other breweries which often call one of their beers one thing, when it is actually something else. We're not mentioning any names, but honestly, it happens all the time. Just not here.

Ingredients
The following sections on malt, yeasts, hops, fermentation, and packaging explain why our beers are different, unique, and traditional.

Malt
Malted barley is the heart of any good beer. Malted means that the barley has been sprouted and then dried to create the enzymes necessary to convert starch to sugar during the mashing process. Unlike most other craft brewers which use the same base malt for all or most of their beers, we tailor our base malt to each particular beer style. Have you ever seen those big bulk grain silos outside of a brewery? That's a real good sign that the same malt goes into every beer they make, regardless of type. Consequently, many of their beers taste the same. Why do other breweries use the same base malt? Because, its cheaper, its predictable and its easily mechanized.

At Blackfoot, we are currently using six different base malts to produce our line of nine different beers.

Crisp Floor-Malted Maris Otter - is one of the finest (and most expensive) pale ale malts in the World. Floor-malted means it is made by hand, not by machines. It is grown in the Kent area of England, and is one of the few Winter-grown malting barley varieties in the world. We use this malt in all of our English-style ales (excluding our two organic ales).

Scottish Golden Promise Pale Malt - is the primary malting barley grown in Scotland. It is very low in protein, producing very clear beers, even when unfiltered. We exclusively use this malt as our base in our Strong Scottish Ale.

Great Western Pale 2-Row Malt - is grown in the Northwest (primarily Montana) and is malted in Vancouver, Washington. We use this malt in the brewing of our California Common Lager, Missouri River Steamboat. This style of beer was developed in Northern California during the late 1800's, using exclusively American ingredients. We continue to brew this style today using the highest quality North Western ingredients.

Great Western Pale Ale Malt - is very similar to the GW pale 2-row malt above, but is darker in color and more highly-modified for English-style ale brewing. We use this malt as a portion of the base in our ales, blended with the majority of Crisp Maris Otter to improve lauterability in the mash/lauter tun.

Weyerman Light Wheat Malt - is a German-grown, malted white wheat made specifically for use in weizenbier. We use this malt for making our German-style hefeweizen, Woollybugger Wheat, in the traditional German proportions of 2 parts barely to 1 part wheat.

Briess Organic Pale 2-Row Malt - is the only 2-row malt produced in this country made entirely from certified organically grown barley. We use this malt as the base for both of our organic beers, Blackfoot River Gold - O.P.A., and Northfork Organic Porter.

Yeast
Most other brewers use one single yeast strain to produce their entire beer line. This practice makes yeast management much easier and cheaper, but leaves their beers tasting remarkably similar. At Blackfoot, we use three different yeast strains to produce our beer line.

Our British-Style Ales are all produced using a single strain of ale yeast. We chose one particular strain because it produces relatively clean tasting beers, is very stable, and clears well without being filtered or fined.

Our traditional hefeweizen, Woollybugger Wheat, is fermented using a real Bavarian weizenbier yeast originating from Munich. This yeast is responsible for the unique banana-clove character found in all true weizenbiers.

Our California Common Lager, Missouri River Steamboat, is made using California Common Lager yeast, the same strain used to originally make this style of beer back in the 1800's.

Hops
In each of our handcrafted beers, we use the particular variety of hops that are traditional for that beer style. We never purchase our hops based on price, but on variety and quality. Speaking of purchasing hops, we buy all of our domestic hops directly from a group of family farms (Puterbaugh Farms) in the Yakima Valley of Washington, because smaller is better!

Missouri River Steamboat gets its traditional hop character from the liberal use of domestic Northern Brewer and Cascade varieties.

Woollybugger Wheat uses German-grown Spalt Select and Hallertauer Tradition varieties.

All of our British-style ales use at least on of the following: UK Kent Goldings, British Fuggles or Challenger.

Lewis and Clark Dark (our American Brown Ale) uses Yakima Magnum, and Willamette.

Our two organic ales use cooperative-grown, certified organic Hallertauer from New Zealand. We hope to add certified organic Charvet-Cascades when they become available in 2001.

Water
A lot of breweries talk about their water. However, few (if any) breweries in the country are as close to the Continental Divide as us. We are just over 10 miles from the top of the Continental Divide, our water coming to us straight from the top via the Ten Mile Creek water system. The water is not too hard, and not too soft, allowing us to make our variety of beer styles.

Fermentation
At Blackfoot, we don't ferment all of our beers the same. We use different temperatures for different beers according to the style and tradition. Furthermore, we use two different styles of fermentation tanks. Our British-style ales are primarily fermented in a wide, shallow open fermenter, as has been the practice in British brewing tradition for hundreds of years, while our common lager and hefeweizen are fermented in a more contemporary "closed" uni-tank.

Our Strong Scottish Ale undergoes a slow, cold (55-58 F) fermentation according to Scottish tradition.

Our hefeweizen is fermented using a traditional "creeping" fermentation that starts off cold and gradually climbs to a typical ale temperature. This time-honored German process helps create the proper balance of clove-banana esters and phenolic characteristics in the beer.

Missouri River Steamboat receives an ale-lager hybrid fermentation using California Common Lager yeast at ale temperatures. This process was developed when German-born brewers were making beer in Northern California during the gold rush era. These brewers used lager yeast, but had no access to natural or artificial refrigeration.

Packaging
When we speak of packaging, we're mostly referring to filtration. Anymore, almost all breweries filter their beer. We say anymore, because not until recently was this a normal part of the brewing process. Modern brewers filter their beer primarily for appearance and shelf-life. Filtration also allows a beer to be produced more quickly because it does not have to take the time to condition and naturally clear. A side effect of filtration is the removal of complex sugars, which reduces the beer's body and mouth-feel. Also, hop flavors and aroma are reduced by filtration. At Blackfoot, we believe in leaving what belongs in beer in the beer. We don't filter, and we don't even own a filter. Our beer making process includes a 2-4 week cold conditioning rest, which allows our beer to naturally clear and mature. Consequently, our beer is not as crystal clear as most on the market, but it is pretty darn clear and packed with flavor to boot!

You will also notice that you cannot find our beer in bottles. This is because we believe most beers are better on draft. Bottled (and canned!) beers often sit in warehouses and grocery store shelves for weeks, even months at a time. Definitely, not the freshest alternative! Furthermore, when you purchase a 6-pack of beer, you are most often paying more for the packaging than you are for the beer. Packaging that is expensive and is often just thrown away. So, our advice is to drink fresh draft beer and reduce wasteful packaging!