E-Malt.com News article: USA, MO: Banter Brewing Co. expected to open in Springfield this summer

After Mother's Brewing opened in 2011, Springfield's mania for craft breweries exploded.

Most of the resulting locally-owned breweries with tasting rooms concentrated in downtown, Commercial Street, Rountree and Galloway.

But this summer, a new brewery is expected to open up at 330 West Plainview Road, in a growing part of town roughly a mile south of the Library Center, but just east of South Campbell Avenue, the Springfield News-Leader reported on June 12.

Architect Brian Harbison and IT professional Jon Weddle said their venture, Banter Brewing Co., will seat roughly 42 people at a storefront near established neighborhood hangouts like the Zeus Room Barbershop and Marco's Pizza.

They said they think they can be open sometime in mid-August, as they work through the permitting process.

Banter will run out of a small location, less than 2,000 square feet, but the founders believe it will become a neighborhood focal point.

Weddle said, "We thought, hey, it'd be really cool if we could put a spot on the south side of town here that would be convenient and would really create an atmosphere where people can come in and just relax."

Harbison said, "In all the local craft (beer scene), brewers are always helping (other) local craft brewers out, which is fantastic, it's great. But once we found that space down here, it made sense for us to kind of get away from being centralized downtown and be more like, hey, let's just serve a neighborhood."

Weddle added, "It's all about that conversation," by way of explaining the name of the place. "I've heard the comment more times than I can count of, yeah, we don't really have a little neighborhood bar in this area where we can just drop in and have a beer after work."

The place will be kid- and dog-friendly, Weddle said.

He and Harbison said they have been working on the project for roughly three years, and both have long experience and interest in craft brewing. Harbison, as a 20-year-old, got started brewing his own beer because it seemed like it was technically legal for him to buy supplies like hops and grain at a local brewing-supply shop, he said.

In Harbison's telling, his parents told his younger self they were "totally fine" with him brewing his own beer.

"I was in college at the time," he said, "and it was more of just in a weird way kind of like, this beer is kind of this mystical thing. You can do that yourself."

The first beer he brewed was a honey wheat-style one, Harbison said. The Banter founders plan to have a honey wheat on tap on their first day open. They're also planning to brew a pale ale with sweet orange peel, a rye IPA and a hazy IPA for their "core beers" to start.

They'll also introduce guests to what they call "the triptych," borrowing an art-world term for a three-paneled image that provides distinct variations on the same theme.

"We're going to basically brew a base style (of beer), and then we're going to do two different iterations with it," Harbison said.

The idea is to "really push into that homebrew mentality of 'let's pick something and see how far we can push it and what can we do through experimentation,'" Harbison said.

To punch up their theme of conversation among friends, Banter will have old-fashioned typewriters in the tasting room. Guests will be able to type out "whether it be a one-liner, or a joke, an expression, a short story, whatever it might be, and pin it up there" on a community message board. In keeping with their community theme.

Did anyone think they were crazy for trying to start yet another brewery in Springfield?

"I think anytime you go to open a business, people look at you and say, 'Are you crazy?' especially with all the stuff that's happened with COVID," Weddle said.

The business partners declined to state their investment in getting Banter to market, but Weddle said they aren't relying on outside investors.

"It's a lot less (money) than what you would probably think because we've been doing everything ourselves," he said. "We're really bootstrapping this."

Weddle said he and Harbison plan to commit to giving 10 percent of proceeds to local community charities.

"The whole basis of this and what makes it successful is that we want to be part of the community and we want to be connected with the community," he said.


13 June, 2021