Make some Noise: Uberbrew bottling popular wheat beer

Uberbrew recently became the second Billings brewery to put six packs of its beer on retail shelves.

The Yellowstone Valley Brewing Co. has been doing so for years with a bottling operation attached to its brewery at 2123 First Ave. N.

Uberbrew owners Mark Hastings and Jason Shroyer are going a bit different route—having their popular White Noise hefeweizen bottled at the Fort Collins Brewery in Colorado.

“I know these guys so well now,” Shroyer said. “They’re amazing.”

He has gained that knowledge by driving down to Fort Collins every two weeks for the past four months. In fact, his pickup was in the shop Tuesday, after Shroyer, headed home from Colorado, ran into a couple of deer on the icy highway outside Sheridan, Wyo.

Six packs of White Noise went on sale late last month, starting out with some local stores that included Albertsons, Good Earth Market and Lucky’s Market. The list has been gradually expanding, thanks to Intermountain Distributing.

“They’ve really opened some doors for us,” Shroyer said.

The partners acknowledge that there was once a strong stigma attached to what is known as “contract brewing,” and the arrangement is still disdained by some people. The whole ethos behind craft brewing, after all, is that you’re drinking handmade, locally produced beer.

Hastings understands that, but he said contracting out the bottling of White Noise will free up production space at Uberbrew, at 2305 Montana Ave., so they can make more specialty and barrel-aged brews.

There is also the question of cost. To reach the kind of production Fort Collins will be doing for them—200 barrels a month, or 1,600 six packs—would have been too costly.

“For us to build an $8 million production facility maybe doesn’t make sense right now,” Hastings said.

The partners, who opened Uberbrew in the summer of 2012, said they tried finding a contract brewer-bottler in Montana—including Big Sky Brewing in Missoula and Big Hole Brewing and Madison River Brewing, both in Belgrade—with no luck. The good news is that all those breweries are doing so well that they no longer have excess capacity.

Shroyer and Hastings also looked to brewers in Minnesota, Wisconsin and a few other places before settling on Fort Collins. They said one consideration was that Fort Collins has slightly softer water than Billings, making it perfect for producing White Noise. The brewers were also open to working with closely with Uberbrew.

“That’s the other reason we picked Fort Collins—they let us be very hands-on,” Shroyer said.

Although the brewing process is basically the same everywhere, there are subtle differences. As Shroyer put it, his job when he visits Fort Collins is “troubleshooting the engineering of that recipe on their equipment.”

The elevation of Fort Collins is also 1,800 feet higher than in Billings. That means water boils at a different temperature, and “that difference changes your flavor profile,” requiring further adjustments, Shroyer said.

White Noise is made with Bohemian two-row Pilsner malt, white wheat, German hops and German yeast strains. Hastings—perhaps overestimating the knowledge of brewing among general readers—took pains to point out that while they are using German yeast, they are not producing a southern German wheat hefeweizen, but rather an American-style wheat. Just to clear that up.

Hastings also said that when they were still in the planning stage for their brewery, they had considered contracting all their brewing out but ultimately decided to brew in-house. Their 10-barrel system, with its rows of stainless-steel tanks, is on display behind large windows at the back of the popular brewhouse.

Their intention was always to start bottling at some point, once they figured out what their most popular brew was. The White Noise quickly established itself as that beer, outselling any of their other beers by 3 to 1 margin.

Uberbrew self-distributes kegs of beer to 14 or 15 other bars and venues, including Red Lodge Mountain and Dehler Park, so Fort Collins will also be brewing about 300 barrels of White Noise annually for that market. That’s what will free up capacity at the home brewery so Shroyer and Hastings can create more specialty beers and barrel-aged brews. They already have eight to 10 brews on tap on any given day.

At some point, they said, they might begin bottling some of the specialty beers in larger, single-sale bottles, and they might also produce some six packs in cans.

Meanwhile, Uberbrew continues to operate an interesting niche in Billings’ lively brewery scene. By state law, microbreweries can serve beer between 10 a.m. and 8 p.m., but four of the city’s seven microbreweries are open only from 4 to 8 p.m.

Canyon Creek Brewing, on the West End, is open from 2 to 8, while the Montana Brewing Co. downtown, which also has a regular liquor license, is open 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. Uberbrew, which also has a full menu of pub food, is open from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Hastings said their goal was always to stand out. The German word uber, as you can read on the White Noise six pack, is defined as “being a superlative example of its kind or class.” Their hope was to offer a complete package—great beer and food, a beautiful setting, a welcoming atmosphere and good service.

“There’s fantastic beer here in Billings, Montana,” Hastings said, “so we had to be fantastic, too.”

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