E-Malt.com News article: USA, CO: Rally King Brewing to open by late spring in Fort Collins

Friends Matt Kriewall and Jason Connor are getting serious about brewing beer together, The Coloradoan reported on February 23.

The chiropractor and software engineer have invested $250,000 into construction of a new craft brewery that will open by late spring at 1624 S. Lemay Ave., in Fort Collins.

Rally King Brewing is named for the dedicated craft beer drinkers, like themselves, that Kriewall and Connor hope to attract to their new establishment. It also is a play on their own, mid-career life stages.

"To rally is to come back from, to start over, to do again," Kriewall said. "That's sort of what we're doing."

Kriewall and Connor met in the Fort Collins homebrew club The Liquid Poets Society. Even now as the two move from hobbyists to professional brewers, they are measured, keeping their day jobs with the hope to one day turn beer into a full-time living.

As a hobby it started five years ago for Kriewall, when he received a home brew kit as a gift from some clients. After clumsily working his way through a first recipe, he said, "I liked the process so much, I brewed six more batches before tasting the first one."

His enthusiasm for brewing has since led him to win more than 100 medals for his homebrew creations. He won the homebrew competition in 2013 and 2014 at Taste of Fort Collins, for an American Amber and IPA, respectively.

Kriewall tends toward those American styles, while Connor, a 17-year homebrewer, certified beer judge and president of The Liquid Poets, favors German varieties.

The partners will start by offering a few of each, along with some English ales, when they open Rally King by late May or early June. They will let customer preference guide their beer selection moving forward.

By fall, Kriewall and Connor said they will debut Rally King's first Belgian sour. The style is one they both can agree on and is currently the fastest growing beer category in the country.

Most Rally King beers will be sessionable, meaning lower alcohol content, so patrons can sit and drink them for a while.

Upon opening Rally King, Kriewall and Connor will be competing with 15 other craft brewers in town. But they aren't worried about distinguishing themselves as another neighborhood craft brewery.

"We're really just going to make good beer that we like to drink and that we hope other people will too," Kriewall said.

"No gimmicks," Connor added.

They say Rally King is ideally situated in the middle of residential neighborhoods and along the Spring Creek bike trail.

The tap room will seat around 50 people inside, with room for more on the front patio. Kriewall and Connor say they will initially focus their sales in the tap room and then begin bottling beer after about a year for distribution.

In the meantime, Kriewall said he can't wait to move Rally King's untouched seven-barrel brew house from his garage, where it is for now blocking his old homebrew kit, rendering both systems temporarily unusable.

The partners couldn't say if they would still brew for themselves after opening Rally King.

But, "I'm not going to call this a hobby by any means," Kriewall said of the new business.

Fort Collins 16th craft brewery will open by late May or early June at 1624 S. Lemay Ave.


25 February, 2015