Not very long ago it seems I only needed to issue one of these “Montana Brewery News” items once every six months or so.  This will be the third in the past two months.  By all accounts 2014 is likely to go down as the Year of the Brewery. If anyone wants to create a cool logo for that, that would be totally . . . well, cool.

Lolo Peak Brewing, Beaverhead Brewing and Kalispell Brewing have all opened in the past month.  Cheers to more Montana beer. 

Great Burn Brewing has beer in the tanks, so it won’t be long before they join the ranks.

Same goes for Cabinet Mountain Brewing which dropped its first batch of beer into the fermenter on July 6.  

Meadowlark Brewing is inching closer to completing construction and hopes to be open in late July or early August.

The onslaught in Butte continues at a rapid pace with Muddy Creek, CopperWild and Butte Brewing all proceeding with construction.

Over in Livingston, Katabatic is installing its brewing equipment, having received it on July 2, and hopes to be open around August 20. 

Unfortunately, we’ve got to remove one from the list.  Fat Jack’s Tap Room in Laurel has closed.  That makes two closures in the past year, the first breweries to close in many years.  Desert Mountain Brewing’s equipment was purchased by the future Backslope Brewing Co. in Columbia Falls, though no location has been chosen and some of the equipment is on loan to Bonsai Brewing in Whitefish.

I’ve been counting Kettlehouse’s two locations as one, though they are certainly two breweries with technically separate ownership, thanks to Montana’s less-than-friendly beer laws.  Ryan over at Montana Beer Finder counts them as two.  Maybe I should do the same moving forward.

Thus, Montana now has 44 operating and open breweries, a number that will change soon, you can be sure. 

Expect more news shortly.