E-Malt.com News article: USA, CO: City Star Brewing opens in Berthoud

City Star Brewing in Berthoud, CO, has joined the 140 or so other producers of hand-crafted beer around Colorado, Dailycamera.com reports.

Berthoud-based City Star is very small, owners Whitney Taylor and John Way say. In fact, they prefer the term "nanobrewery" over "microbrewery."

City Star, which opened on April, 28, has a spacious front room as part of its 2,000 square feet, and offer five year-round beers, including Cowboy's Double Golden, 6 Shooter IPA and Bandit Brown.

"They're all recipes that we've been doing over the years, just finding out what we liked and didn't like," said Way, who handles the brewing side of the operations. Taylor will handle the financials and be in charge of the front of the house.

City Star's opening came after a year of hard work by the couple and Taylor's parents, Rudi and Dan Taylor. About a year ago Taylor's folks bought 321 Main St., which had been Dean's Furniture for the past several decades.

According to Mark French, president of the Berthoud Historical Society, the site was originally home to one of the oldest businesses in Berthoud: the City Star Barn, which was one of two livery stables in town. The original barn was torn down and the current building built in 1913. It was once again a stable but later was converted by the owner, a man named Jeffers, into an auto dealership.

"It's got a lot of history and it's got a great name for that reason," French said.

After Taylor's parents bought the building, Dan Taylor, Way and some others set about rehabbing it, and the result is an attractive mix of old and new. Most of the exterior faade is new except for the brick, which had been painted white when it was a furniture store. That brick has been stripped, as has the brick on the walls inside City Star, restoring its old-timey look.

Old materials were reused when possible, Way said. The frames holding his whiteboard menus were old frames from windows that had been boarded up long ago. The wood supporting the bar had been flooring that was torn up when the new concrete floor was put in.

Taylor, like her parents, has run her own import business, but this is Way's first business as a co-owner. He did work for a time at Oskar Blues' Longmont facility, he said, and he picked up some tips on things such as cleaning techniques.

But he had been getting restless at that job when Taylor's parents bought their building and offered to lease the other half of it out to the young couple to open City Star.

Things just kind of came together, Whitney Taylor said, and Berthoud seemed like the perfect place for it.

"If you look at a map of all the breweries in Colorado, there is kind of this space here," she said.

Starting last weekend, that space has been filled.


02 May, 2012