USA, WY: Cowboy State Brewing getting ready to open in Casper
A new brewery in a small town south of Casper is about to supply craft beer to thirsty University of Wyoming sports fans in Laramie, the Oil City reported on December 20.
Cowboy State Brewing partners Jason and Anna Knopp and Bill and Roxie Hensley formed the brewery earlier this year and have been on a sleepless quest to get it started.
“This equipment was in Casper, just hanging out, so we bought it off them,” said Jason Knopp. “Them” are the owners of Fat Canvas Brewing, which made a valiant effort to establish a brewery in Casper before running out of funding.
The Hensleys own the building, formally the Four Aces, in central Glenrock. Knopp, with experience in engineering and construction, went about drastically remodeling the former dining room space by cutting out the top floor and making a sunken brewing room. Large, expensive equipment was then carefully lowered into the space and eventually assembled.
Along with the Fat Canvas brew kettles, Knopp and Hensley purchased more supporting equipment for a 10-barrel system. They also have a 20-barrel fermenter to make double batches, which gives them the ability to produce 60 kegs of beer a week.
“We have a golden ale, a brown ale and a pale ale,” said Knopp. The recipes came from Fat Canvas, who have been instrumental in helping Cowboy State Brewing get off the ground.
The partners made small batches of recipe variations and served them to tourists during the Eclipse Festival last summer. The most popular variants won out. The partners plan on hiring a full-time brewer in the near future to expand the portfolio, said Knopp.
They will produce an official local beer served at games. “That’s not a bad start, huh,” said Knopp. “That’s what had us jumping into this, we weren’t into brewing but it was an opportunity.”
The University of Wyoming put out a request for proposals for beer and wine concessions last year. “We responded to it and we were selected,” said partner Bill Hensley, who runs the popular Roxie’s on Grand restaurant and bar with his wife Roxie in Laramie.
After failing to find a Wyoming brewery to contract a private label arrangement, the partners decided to dive head first into brewing beer themselves to supply UW concessions.
The partners worked at a breakneck speed to get their brewery ready by fall. “The whole driver was football season, we wanted to be ready for football season,” said Hensley. “Everyone told us we’d never get our federal permitting done in time.”
“As it turns out that was the easiest part of the whole thing,” said Hensley, who attributes some of the difficulties with state permitting to Wyoming’s inexperience with craft brewery upstarts. The final permits are expected to finalized this week, according to Knopp, which will allow CSB to start brewing immediately.
Cowboy State Brewing’s private label gold and brown ales will be served alongside Coors products and established Wyoming crafts by Snake River and Blacktooth. Knopp says other profiles will be swapped in for special events as their brewing expands.
“We will have beer ready before conference starts for basketball,” said Hensley.
Hensley has been a craft beer fan for years, starting while living in Portland as craft beer started to take off. He recalls trying to introduce crafts in his retail establishments in Glenrock years later. “It just never did take off,” said Hensley. “But in the last few years there’s been a real dramatic increase in interest.”
“I think there may be kind of a gap between the beer snobs and craft enthusiasts, and everyday people. That’s kind of who we’re shooting for,” said Hensley.
“We want to be the gateway for craft beer,” Hensley explains. “If you get a guy who’s been drinking Coors Lite all his life and you give him a sour, he’s gonna think you’re trying to poison him! You’ve got to bring him along gradually.”
Hensley said they will go down craft beer road, particularly with IPAs. He hopes to have a canning line running within six months, and a tap room at the brewery is also in the planning stages.
Hensley admits that the craft scene could be a little “cultish,” which he hopes to avoid.
“We want to break free from that and make it available to everyone,” said Hensley. “You’re talking about a product that is fresh and has quality ingredients, and I don’t know why that wouldn’t appeal to everyone.”
22 December, 2017
