[Note: A version of this article first appeared in the 2017 August/September edition of the Rocky Mountain Brewing News.] Billings, Montana, bills itself as Montana’s Trailhead and standing on the edge of the City’s famed rimrocks give a perfect indication why. Seven mountain ranges dot the view, Pryor, Big Horn, Bull, Snowy, Crazy, Absaroka, and…
This month’s Session* topic is hosted by Brian Devine and Maria Scarpello at The Roaming Pint. Their topic, rather appropriately, is an aspect of beer travel. They ask us to ponder and write about one or more of the following questions: So I ask you fellow bloggers and beer lovers, why is it important for…
Montana was predicted to top the list of barley producing states this year with an expected 900,000 acres of barley to be planted, according to the Prospective Plantings Report released by the American Malting Barley Association last March. Actual production is an entirely different matter with storms causing wide-spread damage across Idaho, Montana and Alberta.…
Held each year in June, the annual 2014 North American Beer Awards took place last weekend in conjunction with the Mountain Brewers Beer Fest in Idaho Falls, ID. The competition organized by the North American Brewers Association is conducted as a single blind sampling followed by rank ordering of the entries within a category. It’s…
Here are two dates Montana beer lovers should definitely mark on their calendars: April 25 and October 11. Those are the dates for the Montana Brewers Association’s Spring and Fall Festivals, the largest brewfests Montana has to offer and the added kicker of being all-Montana made beers. The Spring Festival in Billings, the MBA’s second,…
To understand the influence and impact U.S. Senator Max Baucus wields, one needed only to travel to Butte, Montana, earlier this week for the 2013 Montana Economic Summit. There, on the campus of Montana Tech, assembled such industry notables as Jim McNerney, CEO of Boeing, Safra Catz, President and CFO of Oracle, Richard Anderson, CEO…
Well that’s cool. Our neighbors to the north – that’d be Alberta, Canada – are apparently eying our beer culture. Montana’s, that is. In a Calgary Herald article posted last week, author Jason van Rassel had this to say about Montana’s beer scene: Think about Montana the next time you hear someone trot out the…
Look out. The 63rd Session of the Montana Legislature convenes Monday, January 7, 2013. What it holds for the future of Montana is anyone’s guess. The Montana Legislature meets every other year and only for 90 days. While the short, biennial sessions helps maintain a “citizen legislature,” it also guarantees a whirlwind of frenzied action…
In the “how do your beer laws stack up department” comes news from Arizona about a growler fill law which took effect in early August. You’ll recall the 2011 Montana legislature passed a bill clarifying that any establishment with an on-premise consumption license can fill growlers for off-premise consumption. It was considered a “clarification” because…
A big thanks to Innis & Gunn for sharing their latest offering with us at Growler Fills. This Scottish stout, released in the U.S. in March, is the first beer to be aged in former triple-distilled Irish Whiskey barrels. The beer is aged for 60 days as part of three different maturations following fermentation: oak…