USA, CO: Berthoud Brewing Co. opens brewpub in Loveland

Another local craft brewery has broken away from the "just beer, no food" mold with the opening of a brewpub in west Loveland, the Loveland Reporter-Herald reported on February 17.

5030 Local, a collaboration of Berthoud Brewing Co. and Frederick-based Peel Handcrafted Pizza, started serving food and beer Jan. 5 in the former Fountains of Loveland building at 1480 Cascade Ave. just off West Eisenhower Boulevard.

So far, the beer being poured there is brewed at Berthoud Brewing's original location, 450 Eighth St. in Berthoud. But that will change in the next few weeks.

Jesse Sommers, co-owner of Berthoud Brewing and a partner in 5030 Local, said the new brewing facility that's almost complete on the ground floor of the Cascade Avenue site has a much larger capacity than the brewery in Berthoud and will take over the heavy lifting for the company.

The other major part of the 5030 Local grand plan — the full-service Peel Handcrafted Pizza restaurant and bar upstairs — is set to open March 1, he said.

It all started last year when Sommers and his father, Mark Sommers, who took over Berthoud Brewing in 2016, were talking about the need to expand.

Someone alerted Jesse Sommers to The Fountains facility, which was on the market.

"I went back and told my dad, 'I have an idea,'" he said.

Mark Sommers ended up buying the building and has been renovating it ever since.

The building, which previously served as an event venue with a restaurant, covers about 12,000 square feet, Jesse Sommers said. The taproom and limited restaurant downstairs has an occupancy of 280 people, and the restaurant upstairs will seat 200, he said.

By comparison, the Berthoud taproom holds 30, he said.

Why so big?

"Why not?" Sommers said. "It seemed like the best thing."

The Sommerses divided the downstairs ballroom in two — half for the brewery and half for the taproom, performance stage and kitchen.

Gone are the beige walls with white chair rail and blue-with-gold carpet, replaced by a decor that Sommers jokingly described as "redneck gothic" in reference to the rustic farmhouse look combined with the ornate chandeliers left over from The Fountains.

The Sommerses moved to Colorado in 2007 from rural Missouri, where Mark Sommers had a commercial woodshop. After a stop in Evergreen, they relocated to Berthoud in 2008, and father and son launched Circle Goods Reclaimed Lumber in 2013, where they use reclaimed wood from barns, boxcars and semi trailers to build furniture, mantels, barn doors, cabinets and bar tops for homes and businesses.

They brought their rural tastes and reclaimed-wood skills to the Loveland project. For example, the wall separating the taproom from the brewery looks like the outside of a barn or shed. They made most of the furniture upstairs and down and installed the frame of an old boxcar over the taproom bar.

The farm look continues outside: A large metal grain bin built by Iowa-based Sukup Manufacturing houses the brewery's six 60-barrel fermenters.

The new 360-barrel fermentation capacity compares with the existing 23 ½ -barrel capacity in Berthoud. The new facility has a 30-barrel brewing system; the old one is 3 barrels. The new brewery will get a 12-ounce canning line by June or July; the old facility doesn't can its beer.

Sommers said the new system, under the direction of head brewer and co-owner Kelly Lynch, will handle the majority of production for the two taprooms and the other restaurants that Berthoud Brewing serves, and the smaller system will be used for research and development and pilot batches.

Another of Sommers' loves is live music, and he and his father are building a stage for that purpose. He's planning to host bands on Fridays and Saturdays, singer/songwriters on Sundays and solo and duo acts on Thursdays, he said.

Sommers said Berthoud Brewing and City Star Brewing in Berthoud have seen a lot of good musicians on their stages, and he's planning to do more in Loveland.

"Without the breweries being here, we'd miss out on a lot of great shows" by musicians and comedians, he said. "There's always stuff to find in the breweries.

"Our goal is to elevate the craft" — beer, food and music, he said. All three will be locally sourced, he said, although the music venue also will draw regional and national acts.

When Berthoud Brewing's owners were looking for a restaurant partner to make the large new venue work, they naturally teamed up with Peel Handcrafted Pizza, whose owners, the Hepp family, they know from Berthoud, he said.

Both kitchens, upstairs and down, have wood-fired pizza ovens, and the Peel Pizza restaurant will feature "primitive open-fire cooking" in the oven and charcoal grill — "glorified primitive," Sommers clarified.

5030 Local is a brewpub, which means it's a restaurant with a brewery on-site.

That model is relatively new in Loveland, not counting Rock Bottom Restaurant & Brewery, a chain brewpub that opened in Centerra in 2007, three years before the launch of the first locally owned craft brewery, Grimm Brothers Brewhouse.

The story always has been that the homebrewers who decide to go out on a limb and scale up their beer-making to a commercial level aren't really interested in making food — they love making beer.

It wasn't until AKA Kitchen and its Rock Coast Brewery opened last summer that Loveland had another restaurant with an in-house brewery. The owners of Tilted Barrel Brew Pub, which opened last May, are brewing their own beer but haven't yet brought that operation on-site.

Kurt Biegel, who opened Big Thompson Brewing Co. at 114 E. 15th St. in 2015, said he and his wife, Barbara, weren't prepared to open a restaurant when they were planning their brewery.

"We definitely had no background in running a restaurant of any type," he said. "We felt that taking on the whole food side of the business would be really complicated.

"We would have considered it if we had an investor who had run a restaurant, to partner with," he added.

So to help the visitors to their taproom stave off hunger, they sell prepackaged snacks and occasionally bring in catered food or schedule a food truck.

"We did food trucks for a bit, but that's a little bit difficult to schedule and maintain," he said.

Now, though, the Biegels are working on a plan to add limited food service to their business — possibly paninis, bratwurst, burritos and other offerings that wouldn't require a full kitchen and the extra health department licensing it would entail.

While raising their operating costs, selling food would increase revenue, too, Biegel said, and encourage customers to stay longer.

"It would give them an option to get a little bit of food, maybe stay a little bit longer, have an extra beer or two, bring an extra friend or two," he said.

5030 Local's Sommers agrees that combining the beer and the food, not to mention live music, makes a brewpub more of a destination.

"Breweries are good. Breweries with food are better," he said.

"We see more couples at the brewpub versus at the brewery," he said. "The dynamic changes a little bit.

"I think if it's done right, it can be more profitable," he said. "I think it's going to be more of a trend."

The brewpub is open 2-9 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday. 5030 Local will be open seven days a week shortly after the restaurant opens, Sommers said.

17 February, 2019