Montana Sends Their Best: The Great Northern Brewing Company

Whitefish: The Great Northern Brewing Company is the last building on the left 

A while back while writing about the beer and brand that is Black Star I commented on the sort-of tangential relationship it has to The Great Northern Brewing Company (GNBC) in Whitefish, Montana.  I lamented that it was not possible for this Oregonian to try the myriad of other beers GNBC brews.

Well, the good folks at GNBC noticed and decided to take it upon themselves to rectify the problem by sending me a little care package with a couple of their more special beers.  I was delighted to receive them straight from the Flathead Valley, and you can read my take on the beer with this felicitous acquisition in mind.

By the way, the internets tell me that Whitefish, MT emerged as a proper town with the arrival of the Great Northern Railway, and thus the provenance of the brewery's name is established - and it is pretty cool.  It is a really beautiful facility and the pub looks pretty spectacular as well.  But its location is truly remarkable, in northwest Montana right on the doorstep of Glacier National Park.  Wow.

Another cool thing about their location is that it is suitable for hops cultivation: warm, dry and long summer days.  Makes sense given the northerly location and the arid Inter-mountain West climate.  Which explains the first beer they sent: the Frog Hop Fresh Hopped Pale Ale.  This beer used hops grown a couple of miles from their brewery at a farm called Purple Frog Gardens which explains the name Frog Hop.  The brewery staff went and picked the hopes themselves and they were added to the kettle within 24 hours of harvest. 

Unlike NW fresh hop ales that generally use one or two hop varieties, GNBC used four: Mt. Hood, Chinook, Nugget and Cascade.  It was a cool and wet summer in Whitefish this year and so the hops did not fully develop.  The brewery believes that this left the alpha acid content low, but did not want to add dried bittering hops to correct this.  I applaud this decision as to me the point of fresh hop beers is not fantastic, well-engineered beers, but different, earthy and unique beers.  It is also important to note that it is now November and the subtleties of the fresh hops are sure to have diminished with so much time in the bottle (which is also okay - another thing I like about fresh hop beers is that the exist in a specific place and time).   

The beer is a truly different sort of fresh hop ale than what we typically see locally.  It has a lively pour (it is bottle conditioned) and produces a wonderfully creamy head which it retains admirably.  It is very light bodied and is a golden/straw color (the picture actually does a good job of showing this).  The nose is very subtle, the material describing it mentioned grassy aromas which you expect from fresh hops, but in this bottle they had become very faint.  Amazingly perhaps my first thought upon tasting this was 'pilsner.'  This thought never left.  The hops are very subtle, but balanced nicely by the very light body.  This stuff is hard to judge, but they produced a wonderfully balances, very light ale that distinctly resembles a cross between a light NW ale and a Czech Pilsner.  How this could be true given the NW hops and ale yeast is not clear to me but the result is quite wonderful.  I do not know what NW hop heads would have said of this beer were it in one of the fresh hop fests, they probably would not have though it as good as the hop bombs, but I think all would agree that it is a finely crafted beer.  This is a 5.1% ABV and I am guessing IBUs in the thirties.  On a hot summer day, a sure winner.

If the fresh hop beer was a last vestige of the summer now past, the other beer was a perfect welcome to winter beer: the Snow Ghost Winter Lager.  Now, I am a big fan of lagers and lament their rarity in the Northwest and the idea of something other than a winter ale is quite appealing.  I'll also state at the outset that while I am a big fan of winter beers, I take them in moderation finding many to be a bit overbearing.  My NW favorites are the classics: Jubelale and Wassail.

Snow ghost immediately evokes Samuel Adams' Winter Lager (which I haven't had recently and will not try to compare).  But Snow Ghost is another beautiful GNBC beer: a rich creamy and tawny head on top of a dark reddish brown body (this beer is also bottle conditioned.  It has a strong malt presence and a subdued hop note, like an Octoberfest on steroids but not quite a dopplebock. I immediately smelled and tasted the roasted malts along with a hint of chocolate and caramel and like a typical lager it as creamy and smooth.  If I were in charge, I would amp up the hops but I am in incorrigible hop-head and don't like malt forward beers as much, for example, I am not a big fan of Scottish ales.  This beer is not spiced, so the winter warmth comes from the roasted malts and gentle spice of the Aurora and East Kent Goldings hops.  Again, like Frog Hop a superbly crafted beer without an off note and very, very well balanced.  The literature identifies this as a 6.3% ABV beer (the website say 5.9% with 34 IBUs).  

It is good to know what goes on beyond the borders of Oregon and Washington, and I am very happy to report that, based on these first experiences, Great Northern Brewing Company crafts exceptionally well-mad beers that represent a slightly different beer culture: beautiful lagers and not as hop-crazy ales.  I can't wait to take the Amtrak to Whitefish and give them a visit.

Black Star Beer

I was, apparently, among many writers of all things beer in the Northwest who were hit with a marketing blitz surrounding Black Star beer.  I will give you my impressions of the beer of course, but as this is Beeronomics what I am most interested in is the economics of the whole endeavor to make Black Star a regional and maybe even national brand.

The Backstory

It took me a little digging to finally understand that Black Star is not the name of the brewery but of the particular beer (something I will return to shortly).  Black Star is the flagship brew of the Great Northern Brewing Company which has a local tie to Portland: its founder is Minott Wessinger, who is a fifth generation brewer and just so happens to be the great grandson of Henry Weinhard himself.  The brewery was founded in 1994 in Whitefish Montana and is a traditional gravity flow brewery.  The creation story from the Black Star website:

Minott grew up learning about beer from his father, Fred Wessinger, at the Blitz-Weinhard Brewery in Portland, Oregon. In 1979, the family sold Blitz-Weinhard. After 14 years away from the hustle and bustle of daily brewery life, Minott and Fred decided to build The Great Northern Brewing Company and began brewing Black Star Double Hopped Golden Lager.

I had not previously heard about Great Northern but I did a little digging and found that it has a history in the Northwest. Here is an interesting Weiden+Kennedy ad from the eighties apparently for the beer in a early Northwest push.

[The sound, for me at least doesn't seem to be working, to see the video on its host site, go here]

Which means, of course, the beer pre-dates the brewery.  I suspect it was contract brewed at the time, perhaps even by Blitz-Weinhard, but of this I know not. According to Wikipedia, Black Star disappeared for 7 years and is only now making a rebirth in 2010.

Now, quite evidently, they are making a very big push to make the beer a major regional brand, if not national. To do so they must have either major expansion plans or are ready to contract brew because their brewhouse is, apparently, only a 20 barrel system (another local tie: the brewhouse was designed, manufactured and installed by Oregon's very own JV Northwest).  And in fact they make reference to now also brewing in Milwaukee, Wisconsin which clearly means they have contracted with a major brewery to churn out the bulk of the beer.  Nothing wrong with this strategy, by the way, I only mention it as I am trying to dig into the business model.

And in fact a little more digging and we find that Wissinger's umbrella company is called the McKenzie River Corporation, based in SF, and responsible for St. Ides and other fine beverages like Le Tournament Vert absinthe.  So the beer-as-brand strategy makes more sense given the provenance of the beer. How much of the down-home, family ties to brewing, following his passion stuff is true or the stuff of Madison Avenue fiction remains a question, but to me it doesn't really matter, the beer is either good or not.

By the way, the Great Northern brew house itself is beautiful and they have lots of slick promotional videos that show it.  Drool.

The Beer

Before going on further about the company, the business model and the marketing we should discuss the beer itself.  This is but one of Great Northern's beers and so it is instructive that they have chosen this beer - a light lager similar to what Minott Wessinger's great grandpappy used to brew - as the beer to push.

I will state at the outset that this is not in my sweet-spot in terms of beer styles, but I do appreciate a nice pilsner.  I shall review it for style.

The first thing you notice when you pour it out is its color.  There can be no argument: this beer is gorgeous - clear with a beautiful golden hue that shines in the sun and a modest head. Beading and subdued lacing is nice as well.  In the presentation of the beer, then, it definitely does stand out from the macro lagers of the Bud, Coors and Miller kind and is a richer golden color than the German and Czech pilsners.

They proudly proclaim that it is double hops brewed using Bavarian Mittelfrüh and Czech Saaz both in the boil and as aroma hops.  This suggests two things: they are going after a traditional pilsner taste and they are trying to bring the hop not to the nose.  Both are very good ideas.  I had two samples, one from a can and another from a bottle.  Interestingly the can, which some say preserves beer better, was less aromatic than the bottle version.  The beer does have a nice and distinct pilsner taste, and is well balanced, the spicy Saaz hops complement the malt body well.  Sadly the hops aroma in the can I had was almost nonexistant, but the bottle did have a nice nose, not prominant by any means but there nontheless.  It is possible the bottle was served a bit warmer, but my enjoyment of the bottle was substantialy better than the can.

The beer is a clean a quaffable beer and a very respectable light lager and I have no problem proclaiming it a distinctly better than its American macro competition.  The color suggests high quality malts and, one hopes, the absence of rice adjuncts.  It has a nice mouthfeel and the hops do add a very nice, but subtle spice.  The weather here is turning cool, so not the ideal weather for the beer, this is a beer I would be very happy to have served to me on a hot summer day.  That said, given a choice my personal preference would be grab a Pilsner Urquell or a Trumer Pils first, but it would be a fine substitute and definitely a cut above the macro lagers.

In the end, this might not be a beer that I buy often, but it would certainly be a good beer to buy for someone who drinks only macro light lagers.  I think they will find that they enjoy it immensely but also will notice the difference in quality and flavor. 

The Strategy

This is what fascinates me for here in the Northwest we have a pretty standard SOP: brew a hoppy pale ale, generally an IPA, as the lead beer and build on the brewery brand by having a line-up that includes a porter or stout.  Ninkasi, Deschutes, Bridgeport, you name it, they all follow the same basic business plan.  Call it the craft brewery template. In another post I'll try and muse more about the reasons craft breweries focus on the brewery in branding not a beer, but my first take is that it is a signature of a craft brewery to brew many styles, not just one.

Great Northern's plan is to carve off a distinct identity based on a single beer. As you can see from my links there is even a distinct website for Black Star that mentions the brewery but not the myriad of other beers also brewed by Great Northen.  This single beer strategy is the old macro-brew strategy of Budweiser, Coors and Miller (and Henry Weinhard).  It also makes sense given the beverage focus of the McKenzie River Corporation - they are about building beverage brands not brewery brands.  

Another distinct part of the strategy is the type of beer they decided to go with - a light lager.  This again is a macro strategy and suggests that they are targeting this part of the market.  I suspect that they are not trying to compete for the Deschutes customer, but for the Coors customer that might be convinced to spend a little more for a beer that is a little better.  In a sense this is a market not contested by the craft brewing industry with the possible exception of Samuel Adams, so they might just have a real chance to carve off a small piece of the market (and a small piece of the macro market is still enormous). 

The upside is huge: many many people still drink macro lagers. However, the downside is huge as well: giant macro brewers have economies of scale on their side, so you can only compete by brewing something worth the extra money you charge.  Black Star is going for craft brew prices so the big question is whether drinkers will think it worth the extra price.  

I suspect that here in Beervana the going will be tough.  In their favor is the fact that almost no one lagers here and so there might be a chance for a quality lager to catch hold.  But when Portlanders drink lagers they usually go for PBR either for ironic or iconoclastic hipster reasons.  I also suspect that the glitzy marketing campaign may well backfire here and they'd do well to tone it down.  In addition, we have some hard to find but exceptional lagers like those Heater-Allen is putting out which makes their market as a craft lager not completely uncontested.  So whether Black Star can really gain a foothold will be an interesting question to see answered.  They have rolled out in California and there I think they may do quite well.  It is an appropriate beer for the climate and few craft lager choices exist.

As for me I am much more interested in the other beers Great Northern Brewing produces and lament the fact that they are not bringing us their IPA or ESB. [On a humorous note, the ESB is a bigger and hoppier beer than the IPA - go figure]  But then I am a Northwest hop head and a lost cause anyway.

I wish them luck.