DETOUR // Get Your Sips on Route 66

Take a tour of Flagstaff, Arizona’s flourishing craft beer culture

Story by Penelope Bass, Photograph by Michael Beilecki

If you’ve never been to northern Arizona, dismiss everything you think you know about the state. Forget spiny cacti and mirage-inducing, sun-scorched earth. Replace them with snow-capped peaks and the largest contiguous ponderosa pine forest in North America. Picture balmy summer days under a turquoise sky, ideal for drinking a crisp pilsner on the patio, and imagine snowy winter nights spent fireside with a rich, chocolaty stout. Getting the picture?

Flagstaff, sitting around 7,000 feet above sea level at the base of the San Francisco Peaks, not only offers a plethora of activities for nature and outdoor enthusiasts, but is also home to a thriving
craft beer scene.

For a small town of roughly 65,000, Flagstaff receives a fair amount of attention for its more famous features. The Grand Canyon is a mere 80 miles away, and historic U.S. Route 66 runs through the dead center of town. This famous American road also happens to serve as the ideal starting point for a beer tour of Flagstaff.

The eponymous Flagstaff Brewing Company was one of two breweries to open their doors in 1994. “They all thought we were crazy to open here in Flagstaff,” says Jeff Thorsett, brewmaster and co-owner. “But we’ve always relied on the product and the people who buy it.”

It was a bet that continues to pay off, with Flagstaff as deeply enamored with its beer culture as ever. On summer days, you’re sure to find a jovial crowd filling Flag Brew’s picturesque courtyard patio, complete with pitchers of their Agassiz Amber or Weisspread Wheat. Cold nights draw beer lovers inside for live music and pints of Sasquatch Stout.

Less than three blocks away sits Flagstaff’s craft brew institution and first official microbrewery, Beaver Street Brewery, which opened in May of 1994. It’s a rare evening when the brewery’s restaurant and adjacent bar isn’t packed with both tourists and locals.

“When we first started, people bought into the concept because they thought it was novel, a cool feature to drink a beer on the premises where it was made, but maybe not really paying attention to the quality,” recalls head brewer Gene Almquist. “But I think with the popularity of [craft] breweries increasing over the last decade, the consumer is more selective and knowledgeable about the quality of the beer.”

The brewers at Beaver Street are only too happy to keep expectations high with their continually award-winning brews, having brought home more than a half-dozen medals in the last three years alone. Both the hefeweizen and the Railhead Red (which remains their most popular) have taken gold medals at the Great American Beer Festival. Last year, their
imperial red also won gold and their American-style IPA captured the bronze in what was the largest category in the history of the GABF.

Buoyed by their long-term success, the owners of Beaver Street opened a new brewery in May of 2010, less than a block away in a renovated lumberyard. Aptly named Lumberyard Brewing Company and at more than double the size of the original brewery—about 3,000 barrels per year to Beaver Street’s 1,300—Lumberyard also distributes in cans across Arizona. The bar offers most of the classic Beaver Street brews, as well as rotating seasonals and a few experimentals.

“We have the privilege of playing around a little bit. We have 12 taps at the Lumberyard, 10 of which are ours and two are guest taps,” explains Almquist. “We have the approach that it should be both the solid beers that people expect… but we’re also going to throw beers on that are different, bizarre one-timers. They may or may not fly out the door, but we’re going to do it.”

Branching out dramatically, though located only across the street from the Lumberyard, is Mia’s Lounge, a spot for those seeking a more diverse selection. The beer-centric bar features 24 (semi-rotating) taps, as well as more than 200 bottle selections highlighting everything from the best in American craft brew to obscure European imports. In addition to their stellar selection, Mia’s tends to be a favorite among locals for its dog-friendly scene—Mia herself was a dog—and on any given night the stool next to you might just as likely be occupied by a canine as a human. But should the packs get too rowdy, they also have a small bottle shop with selections to go.

Returning to our route of origin—and located on 66’s original historic path—is Mother Road Brewing Company, Flagstaff’s newest craft brewery. Spearheaded by two home-brewers-turned-entrepreneurs, Mother Road opened in October as a production brewery and taproom.

“We felt it was important to be part of the community in Flagstaff by having a taproom as the public face of the brewery,” explains Michael Marquess, owner and chief beer officer. “I love being focused on the beer by being a distribution brewery, but I also want to be part of the community and have that interaction. Flagstaff is definitely a beer town, and [locals] are not shy about telling you what they like and what they don’t like. So it’s almost like our own little laboratory in the taproom.”

Anticipating a volume of about 700 barrels its first year, Mother Road will start distribution with three staple beers: Roadside American pale, Twin Arrows English brown and the Gold Road German kölsch. But head brewer and “yeast whisperer” Urs Riner is looking forward to out-of-the-box experimentation.

“The unique position that I’m in coming into this brewery as a start-up is we don’t have someone else’s recipes that we have to brew; we can design all of our own recipes from scratch,” says Riner. “The sky is the limit. I have a smoked doppelbock called The Baconator; I have a chocolate oatmeal stout, a jalapeño amber, a black IPA, an imperial IPA—the list goes on. We refuse to be defined as an American ale house or a German lager house. We’re going to really push the boundaries with these beers as much as we can.”

And rather than be concerned about opening a new brewery not only in the same small town as several other successful breweries but also in the same four-block radius, Marquess and Riner are excited about what another brewery will mean for Flagstaff’s beer culture.

“The better that all of us do it—whether it’s us, Beaver Street, Lumberyard—the better Flagstaff becomes as a beer destination,” says Marquess. “I’d love to see people come out here for the beer. Sure there is the Grand Canyon and the red rocks of Sedona, but there are also a half-dozen great breweries. And the goal is to get the beer drinkers to town and tasting all of our great beer.”

For the full article, subscribe to Beer West today!