Muddy Creek Brewery: Hot Break!

Alright, I'll keep my end of the deal up. No punches pulled. I'll just go on telling you how it is. You guys and gals want to know what it's like running a full-on commercial brewery and are willing to invest your time reading these threads, I suppose the least I can do is not blow smoke up your ass.

First off - It's hard work. And it takes a toll on you. My best friend (a partner) and I are really struggling right now. He feels as though he's working too hard and I'm not working hard enough. That's ironic as last summer things were switched around just the other way. However he's up in the taproom and manning the handles with his wife and he spends a ton of time up there. I had to spend long hours down in the basement getting the brewery ready for production last summer. It is what it is.

There's other stuff going on as well and in time we'll work it out but right now there's friction. There are about 1,000,000 decisions to be made every week and we only fully agree on about 1/3 of them. There are three partners and we all have wives to talk with and work through the details on things. It's a family owned business and while there's something to "Too many cooks in a kitchen", soup is better when everybody adds something to it.

So, we sort through the decisions. Sometimes we miss our company meetings (Which is a TERRIBLE idea, by the way.) and sometimes we don't necessarily agree fully on the course of action, but we always do what the majority feels is best for the company.

So, when you're running a brewery, what are the two or three things that matter most?

1) Obviously, the quality of your product. If your beer is crap, you're screwed. End of story. You may get by for awhile on ****ty beer, but ultimately you will fail. So you MUST have decent beer if not GOOD or GREAT beer.

2) Secondly, the quality of the atmosphere. You need an environment that invites people in and makes them want to return. What is it about YOUR brewery that makes them prefer it to the various taverns or OTHER breweries in town. If your beer is merely equivalent or only slightly better than other places in town, you have to have something else to draw people in. That needs to be an inviting atmosphere.

3) Finally you need Marketing. Good marketing can help make up for a weakness in atmosphere and for awhile it can even make up for a failure in your product. However ultimately marketing can't overcome crappy beer. However with good beer and a decent atmosphere, marketing becomes the very thing that can take you over the top and make you the coolest kid in town. However, like the pretty girl who tires quickly, marketing is a fickle thing. You have to feed it and stick with it or she'll leave you for the next big thing the first chance it she gets.

I've already admitted I don't have a tremendous brewing pedigree. I've brewed on my own for 11 or 12 years. I've made my mistakes and learned along the way and essentially come up with my own rig and recipes that are pretty good. In no way do I consider myself a master. In fact I refuse to refer to myself as a "Brewmaster" or feel comfortable when other people call me that. I do read voraciously and attempt to apply techniques and skills as I can.

All that said, I have not been lucky. I have not been fortunate. Our success has been too consistent to be merely lucky. We have been following a regimented pattern of rigorous cleaning and sanitizing and careful brewing processes that have consistently produced good beer. I'm not trying to pat myself on the back. I merely point out that we've been careful.

However with my latest round of reading I am determined to take the next step with our brewing and move us up a step in quality. We'll be paying a great deal more attention to all phases of brewing, refining all our processes once more in an attempt to produce better, cleaner beer. In September we'll be going to Denver and our goal is to get a baseline score on several of our products upon which we can build.

Thanks for being so transparent about your process. It has been really great to follow along. See you at GABF then?

I'm in. Your original thread has been my favorite thread on this site. Lots of great, honest information.

Hey Muddy..

Great other thread. I followed it the whole time. Now this is great. Love your brutal honesty.

Keep it up and the best of luck/success...

We're going Colo, but we won't have a booth this year. We're submitting Muddy Creek Chocolate Stout, Storm the Door Vanilla Porter and perhaps, Skinny Cow IPA, although I honestly don't feel it's quite good enough to submit for national competition. However, the goal really just to get a baseline score for us to build upon. Obviously we can dream, but we're realists.

We want to do some networking, get ideas on other brewing techniques and flavor profiles. Get outside the box as it were.

Montana has a VERY vibrant brewing scene, however it's always good to stretch your horizons. The more exposure we can give ourselves and GET for ourselves, the better.

We have another account opening on Thursday. We'll have 2 more products on tap at McKenzie River Pizza Co. in town. Our signature stout and our orange infused wheat ale will be going on tap in quarters. I also need to talk to another restaurant down the block tonight to see if we can get a keg on tap over there this week.

With any luck we'll be in 4 different places by the end of this week or early next. Ideally we can continue to expand on that. They'll pull in anywhere from $300 to $500 a month starting out. It doesn't sound like much, but with our lease agreement, that's an entire month's rent. That means we're keeping ALL the taproom income for staffing and operations. Ultimately that will mean additional equipment for the brewery within a month or two.

Over time an extra brite tank here, an extra fermentor or two there makes ALL the difference in the world. We've got to plan a really exceptional launch party for our next "New Beer" Crazy Beautiful Pale Ale. If we do it right we'll get a good week's worth of boosted business out of it before we go back into the normal rhythm of daily sales. Planning your new beer launches is critical. We've got a seasonal on tap right now, Black Ice, which is a Blackberry Pale Ale. It's been doing pretty well. Just about the time it starts tapering down is when we ought to launch Crazy Beautiful to inject a new product into the lineup.

Remember that "pretty girl", marketing? We'll have to get her working for us. We might even have a live radio broadcast and do some kind of a give-away in order to drive a huge sales weekend for us. Now that Memorial Day is over and folks are back in town we may just be able to take advantage of the good weather and do some kind of promo for "Crazy Beautiful".

Anyway, I've got to get some more accounts organized and I get to make an appearances in the taproom tonight.

Subscribed!!!:rockin:

I've been following the original thread from the start. Excellent!

Talk about the school of hard knocks! Most people have no clue as to the learning curve involved when you under take starting your own business.

Keep 'em coming Muddy, keep 'em coming.

pb --- faithful follower.

Not a brewer but as a small business owner its invaluable to really know the local people. I live in a lower middle to working class bedroom community that`s near some rich areas (where everyone commutes to so great location) and we constantly get businesses opening that would be a good fit for those richer areas but open here because the rent is much cheaper and then fail hard because they`re too upscale. For example the closest thing we have to a craft beer bar is a German-style hof. The first time I went there every last customer was drinking local light lagers. Going to go under so damn fast.

Also customets like freebies. They really really like freebies.

McKenzie River Pizza was my go to place at least once a week when I worked in Butte. That was about 8 years ago before there were many places to get a good beer

Hey are you guys making an appearance at the Helena Summer Brewers Festival on August 15th?

Subbed the last one, subbed this one. Love following you on your journey and dreaming of the day your heartaches and headaches are mine. Keep rockin' it!

You rock. I wish you continued success and I will be reading this regularly.

Thanks for the thread, and the previous one. A lot to learn and it's nice having the knowledge to help aid in the decision of whether or not it's something many of us would like to venture into.

As with any business with partners, you will have growing pains. I've been told by many I should open a brew pub with some other mutual friends of the group who brew and also want to open one. Ultimately I decided if I do open one, it will be without them. Our styles are far too different and they brew together. I fear an always 2-1 vote scenario where I am left as the 1.

Hopefully your partner and you can find some level ground. It should never be about who does more. You have different tasks and different levels of knowledge. Running the front of the house is busy work and seems like doing more, when in reality, getting product for the business while more hands off at time, is still a lot of work. Not to mention more stressful. If you screw up, he's got nothing to sell. If you make a bad batch, his interactions with customers will be unpleasant. You seem dedicated to your craft and like many of us, spend countless hours researching and learning, even when you aren't working, you are putting hours in. Don't get discourage. Just appreciate and understand each others points of view, keep doing what you are doing, and I promise, it will get easier.

Cheers, mate. Keep making the liquid gold.

MuddyCreek said:

We're going Colo, but we won't have a booth this year. We're submitting Muddy Creek Chocolate Stout, Storm the Door Vanilla Porter and perhaps, Skinny Cow IPA, although I honestly don't feel it's quite good enough to submit for national competition. However, the goal really just to get a baseline score for us to build upon. Obviously we can dream, but we're realists.

We want to do some networking, get ideas on other brewing techniques and flavor profiles. Get outside the box as it were.

Montana has a VERY vibrant brewing scene, however it's always good to stretch your horizons. The more exposure we can give ourselves and GET for ourselves, the better.

We have another account opening on Thursday. We'll have 2 more products on tap at McKenzie River Pizza Co. in town. Our signature stout and our orange infused wheat ale will be going on tap in quarters. I also need to talk to another restaurant down the block tonight to see if we can get a keg on tap over there this week.

With any luck we'll be in 4 different places by the end of this week or early next. Ideally we can continue to expand on that. They'll pull in anywhere from $300 to $500 a month starting out. It doesn't sound like much, but with our lease agreement, that's an entire month's rent. That means we're keeping ALL the taproom income for staffing and operations. Ultimately that will mean additional equipment for the brewery within a month or two.

Over time an extra brite tank here, an extra fermentor or two there makes ALL the difference in the world. We've got to plan a really exceptional launch party for our next "New Beer" Crazy Beautiful Pale Ale. If we do it right we'll get a good week's worth of boosted business out of it before we go back into the normal rhythm of daily sales. Planning your new beer launches is critical. We've got a seasonal on tap right now, Black Ice, which is a Blackberry Pale Ale. It's been doing pretty well. Just about the time it starts tapering down is when we ought to launch Crazy Beautiful to inject a new product into the lineup.

Remember that "pretty girl", marketing? We'll have to get her working for us. We might even have a live radio broadcast and do some kind of a give-away in order to drive a huge sales weekend for us. Now that Memorial Day is over and folks are back in town we may just be able to take advantage of the good weather and do some kind of promo for "Crazy Beautiful".

Anyway, I've got to get some more accounts organized and I get to make an appearances in the taproom tonight.

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When you mention that you're not sure if your IPA is good enough for national competition, what do you think is holding it back? What are the obstacles in making that delicious IPA crisp and hoppy to compete with the best that are out there commercially. Is it an equipment limitation, ingredient availability, time, money??? I know brewing at a commercial scale is in a whole different ballpark from what homebrewers are used to so I would love your input.

If you were to re formulate your IPA, what would be the biggest challenge in producing a beer that makes you feel like it can compete with the best of em'?

desabat, in a word - uniqueness. It's a fine West Coast IPA. It's clean, crisp and certainly has an aggressive hop bite. It comes out with an impressive grapefruit tang from the cascade dry-hops we use. However I wouldn't say it's anything overwhelmingly special.

I have had a certified judge taste it and he was impressed with how well it held it's bitterness. He said that in competitions that's a factor they use in determining placement is how long the beer can hold it's edge against the others. (Ours certainly "holds a grudge" if you will.) but it doesn't particularly strike me, at the moment as being particularly world-changing and as a brewer, of course that's kind of what I'm going for. I want something that just grabs you the moment you taste it (especially for an IPA) and makes you say, WOW!

EDIT: I want to add to that. It think we need to do some more work on our liquor. Butte has some relatively hard water, but I want to do some work to learn how to improve the PH both in the mash and then help the alkalinity during the boil to bring the hops forward a bit more. I think that will really help add some zing to the IPA.

If I were to get really really picky, I would suggest that we are adding a bit too much columbus in the early stages of the boil and therefore getting a bit too much of a general "Hop bomb". While that's nice and all, I want something just a bit delicate as well. I want an early front of the tongue taste to forewarn you before you get nailed with the big hit. Think of it as the "click" of the landmine. I guess that's a bit of a grisly metaphor but there it is.

I've also been told I'm adding my dry hops a bit late. So I'm going to work on that. traditionally, for the sake of ease, cleanliness etc. we wait until we move things to cold crash to do any serious dry hopping. Then we continue dry hopping into the brite tanks. Unfortunately, I know this loses some good opportunity to impart aroma at the tail end of fermentation. So we're going to try to add the dry hops at the last 4 points or so of fermentation and then continue them through the rest of the cycle. Certainly a bit more of a pain, but hopefully worth the additional effort.

JINKS said:

Hey are you guys making an appearance at the Helena Summer Brewers Festival on August 15th?

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I expect we'll be in Helena, on way or another. I don't have that one on my calendar yet, but they're just down the road and pretty easy to get organized for quickly.

I read your other thread front to back not long ago. A close friend and avowed beer geek has been mulling a startup, and hinted at a place for me in it.

Thanks for all the information you give about the biz! It's very interesting to read. A friend and I were putting together a business plan to open a startup nano a few years back but decided to wait on it. Now I have an 11 month old and it's going to have to wait a little longer. Reading your experience makes me so happy we didn't pull the trigger! Lots to think about that we hadn't really put too much weight on. Thank you for being so honest in your experiences. I wish you continued success! Keep us posted as to how your summer goes. Cheers!

Bobeer and 1977, What I can tell you is that everyone told US that summers will reduce your sales.

We didn't believe that. Now, with taverns, it makes sense that people would go out during the summer months and find things to do. However, a brewery atmosphere is different. There's live music, events, things for the kids to do etc. Everything about a brewery is designed to actually flourish during the summer months while a tavern actually just tries to stay afloat.

Ya...

It turns out people like to DO **** in the summer. Plan Accordingly. We've seen a good 20% drop in our base sales and attendance. We're working on making it up in distribution, but when all those folks try to tell you stuff about the industry... You should probably take out a notepad and write that stuff down. Turns out not everyone is out to get you or actually knows less than you for some crazy reason.

MuddyCreek said:

Bobeer and 1977, What I can tell you is that everyone told US that summers will reduce your sales.

We didn't believe that. Now, with taverns, it makes sense that people would go out during the summer months and find things to do. However, a brewery atmosphere is different. There's live music, events, things for the kids to do etc. Everything about a brewery is designed to actually flourish during the summer months while a tavern actually just tries to stay afloat.

Ya...

It turns out people like to DO **** in the summer. Plan Accordingly. We've seen a good 20% drop in our base sales and attendance. We're working on making it up in distribution, but when all those folks try to tell you stuff about the industry... You should probably take out a notepad and write that stuff down. Turns out not everyone is out to get you or actually knows less than you for some crazy reason.

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Crazy... I would have thought, like you, that with having events at the brewery it would pull more people out to enjoy the warmth, beer, and brewery activities. I guess people have to be in town to do that. It makes sense though... my bday is in the middle of July and no one is ever around to come out to a bqq and enjoy FREE homebrew.

MuddyCreek said:

Bobeer and 1977, What I can tell you is that everyone told US that summers will reduce your sales.

We didn't believe that. Now, with taverns, it makes sense that people would go out during the summer months and find things to do. However, a brewery atmosphere is different. There's live music, events, things for the kids to do etc. Everything about a brewery is designed to actually flourish during the summer months while a tavern actually just tries to stay afloat.

Ya...

It turns out people like to DO **** in the summer. Plan Accordingly. We've seen a good 20% drop in our base sales and attendance. We're working on making it up in distribution, but when all those folks try to tell you stuff about the industry... You should probably take out a notepad and write that stuff down. Turns out not everyone is out to get you or actually knows less than you for some crazy reason.

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In TX, if you have a bar, you had better have an outdoor space. In my pipedream crazy alternate reality, we'll have an outdoor space with A/C, 2 stages, movie nights, bands all weekend. That's if we even have a taproom. Not sure what the money guy wants to do. We could be on tap all over town pretty much immediately. As of right now, we'd be the only brewery within 30 miles.

Subbed again!

We could be on tap all over town pretty much immediately. As of right now, we'd be the only brewery within 30 miles.

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I thought that too. And believe me, all I hear is that people REALLY like our beer. But it turns out that it's REALLY REALLY hard to get your foot in the door with new accounts. Particularly if you're self-distributing. We've had to knock on doors over and over and over again. We're bugging the heck out of people to give us a shot. Once we get in, our kegs do very well, but even then we have to continue to nurse the accounts.

So don't assume that just because you're the only game in town it will come easily. There is about 14 miles of red tape that you don't even know that you don't know about yet. Start early talking to taverns and restaurants and be prepared to "grease some palms" if you know what I mean. Lots of samples to the folks who make decisions. And most importantly, make sure they believe that you can support their demand for your product. One of our accounts main reservations is that we won't be able to keep up with demand. He KNOWS our beer is good. What he's worried about is running out and not having a working handle on a Friday night. That means lost money for him and his margin is too tight to deal with that.

Ya. In the world of bars - it's about margin. They take that crap very very seriously.

Which reminds me, I need to service one of our accounts tonight. We probably need to replace a keg over at a nearby restaurant.

MuddyCreek said:

desabat, in a word - uniqueness. It's a fine West Coast IPA. It's clean, crisp and certainly has an aggressive hop bite. It comes out with an impressive grapefruit tang from the cascade dry-hops we use. However I wouldn't say it's anything overwhelmingly special.

I have had a certified judge taste it and he was impressed with how well it held it's bitterness. He said that in competitions that's a factor they use in determining placement is how long the beer can hold it's edge against the others. (Ours certainly "holds a grudge" if you will.) but it doesn't particularly strike me, at the moment as being particularly world-changing and as a brewer, of course that's kind of what I'm going for. I want something that just grabs you the moment you taste it (especially for an IPA) and makes you say, WOW!

EDIT: I want to add to that. It think we need to do some more work on our liquor. Butte has some relatively hard water, but I want to do some work to learn how to improve the PH both in the mash and then help the alkalinity during the boil to bring the hops forward a bit more. I think that will really help add some zing to the IPA.

If I were to get really really picky, I would suggest that we are adding a bit too much columbus in the early stages of the boil and therefore getting a bit too much of a general "Hop bomb". While that's nice and all, I want something just a bit delicate as well. I want an early front of the tongue taste to forewarn you before you get nailed with the big hit. Think of it as the "click" of the landmine. I guess that's a bit of a grisly metaphor but there it is.

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That's a great description. I've read, though I can't recall which bittering hop it is, that takes just a little longer to reach the tongue. I've definitely had that experience in some great commercial beers.

Headed off to get some "sample growlers" ready for Makenzie River. They encouraged us to take a few extra along to let customers who hadn't gotten a chance to visit us yet try some of our other beers so we'll do that. I'm going to take the IPA, the Amber, the Blackberry Pale Ale and some Raspberry Lemonade just to completely freak them all out.

I'll post photos if we get some. I expect we will.

EDIT: Well, the night went pretty well. I didn't have time to take any photos but the owner / manager of the restaurant took a photo of us and I'll get that and put it up. We did very well. Went around to the tables and offered people samples of our other products and I expect we will get about 10 to 15 new visitors over the weekend. Hopefully we'll get a few new regulars from that crowd. 3 people offered to buy growlers on the spot, although we weren't selling growlers there. We did direct them to Muddy Creek.

The restaurant did well. Ideally there will be enough of a demand for the beer that they'll consider keeping us on tap regularly after their promotional rotation. We're having our die-hards go in and order regularly and ask for other Muddy Creek beers from Mak-River just to let them know they should carry something from us.

We'll also talk to another restaurant today about opening one or two accounts with us. They've said they want our porter and I'm going to try to convince them to carry our Blackberry Pale Ale until it runs out too. We also heard from our "Dirty Blonde" account last night. They kicked and wanted a "10 Minute" restock. However they're happy to be reloaded today. We may just send over 2 kegs for them so they have one in reserve. So, with the other out of town account, that means we could be up to 6 accounts (6 taps) by the end of the weekend. All 1/4s but not too bad. I'll take it.

I am in for this one. I know I sound like an ass but setting a brewery up and licensing is the easy part to me. Trying to get to the local taps, staying out of the red, and remain in business is the hard part. I feel for ya man. Stay positive and push forward. Happy to give you some ideas of my own and what I picked up from a successful distributor manager but I bet you have more than enough of those already.

following this one!

zwiller, I'm always happy to hear some advice. I'm not proud. ;-)

Hey, good news! The 2 quarter kegs that we took to Mackenzie River last Thursday have already kicked.

Wait for it... wait for it...

They want a regular account. Our Vanilla Porter, named Storm the Door has a new home! They'll take a 1/2 barrel.

Nice!

EDIT: Sorry, forgot for a moment which forum I was posting this on. Did NOT mean to use any patronizing terminology. I have another sports forum that I post to and they know much less about the beer industry for the most part.

HOW DARE YOU TELL US OF YOUR SUCCESS RUNNING A BREWERY! YOU EVIL PERSON!
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kidding! TELL US EVERYTHING!

but i do vote you should at least put pictures of the current state of the place

Best threads on here

I'm not sure you can't get by on just marketing Anheuser Busch does a great job with budweiser and bud light.

Almost forgot, someone asked me if I had a brewery and I do NOT. Sorry if my post appeared that way. That said, I own a small business and spent a large part of my life in bands so I know a thing or two about bar owners and that business.

I have some ideas and have a killer idea for a poster (have any of those?) but first, I assume you have the data to back this up, but being a self distributor should really boost the margin for your customers. Are your customers aware of this? Maybe do a little hand out to go along with the growler sampler?

zwiller, we have a two-page write up that we give out to all our prospective accounts that lists all our products, their ABV, their ibus and then gives a description of the style and what to expect in terms of flavor etc. The description is worded such that if the restaurant (whatever) chooses to carry a product they can pull from the sheet and put something on the beer list for the product. (examples below...)

Black Ice Pale Ale
6.7 % ABV, 25 ibus

What happens when you take a perfectly wonderful Pale Ale recipe and add a huge amount of fresh blackberries to it? Something wonderful. This is an “anti-fruit” beer. You’ll catch a minor aroma of blackberries before you taste the pale ale, and you may taste just a touch of blackberry in the finish, but the fruit is very subtle and that’s the perfect complement to the pale ale.

Muddy Creek Chocolate Stout
6.5 % ABV, 38 ibus

This chocolate stout is the cornerstone of Muddy Creek Brewery. For the best results, you should allow this beer to warm a bit before you drink it, the flavors will come out better. Then you’ll note some wonderful coffee, chocolate and toffee notes. You may also notice that the beer is smooth and silky on your tongue.

nvious23, The tide is turning but Bud and Bud Light are still the king of beers in America. True, marketing is a huge part of that success, and it's very interesting to note just how much money and really creepy thought has been put into the marketing of beers and alcohol in general in America. You'd be flat out freaked out to learn just how pervy American marketing REALLY is when it comes right down to mainstream beer commercials. (Really watch beer commercials and you'll see that virtually ALL of them are at the very core suggesting you are "free", "sexy", "better", and in general MUCH more likely to get laid if you happen to have a [bud], [coors], [michelob] etc. in your hand.

Still. People DO like those damn flavorless lagers. They like them alot. Over time, more and more people are coming over to the craft beer side of the world. Home brewing is picking up like crazy. Micro breweries are opening up like mad. (I was told by a friend of mine that he heard there was a micro opening up every 16 hours in the U.S., not sure if that's true, but WOW!)

I meant a flyer highlighting the larger margin since you self distribute. Unless everyone is picking up on that right away.

Ya. We're not "big enough" yet to be able to pass on that margin to our consumers. Unless we win some hardware at a meaningful festival or something we'd just have to eat the distributor margin ourselves. Essentially, there IS no margin difference. We just take it in the shorts when we HAVE to use a distributor right now so that the keg can be reasonably priced.

Otherwise customers are only too happy to say "Muddy WHO?"

Gotcha.

This is basically your first year right? Have you’ve done things like invite Chamber Commerce/News/Visitors Center/etc for meet and greets/Grand Opening? This should spin some other opportunities with other organizations.

Then there is the flyer idea... You up for something humorous?

Amazing thread sir!
Both of your threads have been extremely informative and helpful!
Hope you guys make it to a Canadian Beerfest soon
Cheers

We've done the chamber, had a couple news interviews - TV, Radio and Paper. We've hosted some local civic activity groups like the "Park and Ride" group and we're sponsoring our local fledgling Roller Derby team.

And yes, I'm always up for something humorous.

Well, we seem to have survived the opening of a major food-chain restaurant.

Last week was a bit of a slow week for us as Buffalo Wild Wings opened. We saw a 2k drop in our weekly revenue, but this week we bounced back so that pleased us. It certainly gave us an idea of what to expect when the next brewery opens in a few more weeks.

Fortunately, even with the revenue drop we're still profitable. However, we certainly want to keep pounding the pavement and seeking out new accounts to branch out new revenue streams. I won't lie though. It was nice to see the taproom full again after the Wild Wings opening...

[EDIT]: I was asked if we'd contacted Buffalo Wild Wings about carrying our beer. We did attempt to get ahold of them before they opened, but couldn't find anyone in charge locally or regionally. By the time we finally DID find a local contact they had already finalized their tap list and they won't put anything on their taps until they've cycled through their current contracts. IE, no local beers. So, we'll continue to send EVERYONE in Butte over their constantly asking them if they have Muddy Creek on tap EVERY SINGLE NIGHT. Cause I'm passive aggressive like that.

One of our other owners went in on the 2nd night they were open and asked what they had on tap and they said they had "Lots of local beers!" and he said, But you don't have ANY beers from Butte! And the waitress said, "Yes, but we have some from Missoula and Helena..." And my partner said, "You know there are 3 breweries right here in Butte, right? Those are 'Local' beers." She stammered something out about, "I think we only have "Montana beers on tap." I think he ended up ordering a Cold Smoke.