CRAFT PROJECT
New collective brings beer fans under one roof
After the state’s craft beer boom of 2017, Oklahoma City brewers are joining forces at a new beer cooperative and setting the tone for another banner year in 2018.
The Brewers Union, 520 N Meridian Ave., opened last fall in the former Mustang Brewing location, with its first three members — Vanessa House Beer Co., Elk Valley Brewing and Angry Scotsman Brewing.
Craft beer fans can visit the taproom to purchase growlers and cans to-go or sample more than a dozen beers brewed at the facility. “It’s kind of like a mini pub crawl but without ever leaving the taproom,” Brewers Union owner Brad Stumph said. “It’s great, too, for people who want to talk directly to the brewers, who want the freshest beer and who want to support their local breweries, but the benefits for breweries is where our focus is really at.”
Even a small, startup brewery costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to launch, said Stumph, one of the founders of Oklahoma’s Black Mesa Brewing, which also got its start in a co-op called OKCity Brewing that fizzled after a tornado damaged the shared facility in
2013.
“Black Mesa would have never started if we didn’t have the co-op space,” Stumph said.
At the Brewers Union, member breweries take turns working the bar and using the facility’s 15-barrel system to reproduce top sellers, experiment with new flavors and collaborate. Members are charged per batch brewed and collect profits from taproom sales that help fund the breweries’ future plans.
Overcoming obstacles
Taproom sales were expected to launch in the fall shortly after the co-op opened, but hiccups with the building’s zoning caused a three-month delay.
When the city changed software in 2007, there was a database error that led staff to believe that Mustang Brewery’s facility was properly zoned as a light industrial use, said Jeff Heinze, Oklahoma City’s plan review supervisor. The brewery operated for years under the impression that it was properly licensed, but when Stumph approached the city about licensing, the co-op the mistake was spotted. It turns out that the building was still licensed as a medical office, which needed updating before the taproom could receive its alcohol and beverage consumption permit required to sell pints, he said.
“It’s almost a comedy of errors,” Heinze said. “They didn’t do anything wrong, but I’m sure it caused them a lot of grief. And Mustang didn’t know because we gave them their licensing, so as far as I’m concerned, the error was on us.”
The building has been rezoned to light industrial use, which is what most of Oklahoma’s breweries are zoned, and got the green light from the city to serve beer in the taproom last month.
Despite the hassle, it was worth the wait to be able to provide Vanessa House beer directly to consumers, co-founder Andrew Carrales said.
Since launching in the fall of 2016, Vanessa House has been brewing with O’Fallon Brewery in St. Louis adding to the company’s costs and complicating logistics, Carrales said. Thanks to the Brewers Union, Vanessa House was able to move its brewing operations to Oklahoma, boosting revenue from distribution and taproom sales, and moving forward plans to open a $750,000 15-barrel facility in Oklahoma City later this year.
The shared space also allows Vanessa House brewer Evan Smith to experiment with more recipes and learn from seasoned brewers like Elk Valley’s John Elkins.
Construction will begin soon for Elk Valley’s planned brewery in Midtown and is already underway at Angry Scotsman’s facility on Reno. Both breweries are expected to open this year leaving room for new members to join the Brewers Union.
At least 10 new breweries and taprooms opened in 2017 and with three breweries already setting up shop and a new co-op fostering young brewers, 2018 is shaping up to be one of the state’s biggest craft beer years ever.
“Right now, our breweries are already pretty established,” Stumph said. “But in the future, I think we’ll have more startups in the space. We really want to help those startups get going. That’s why we’re doing this.”