Bright sunlight blasts through the garage door window on an early Thursday morning at Peculier Ales in Windsor. The brew tank whirs to life as head brewer KC Lyons starts heating it up. It’s time to start making some beer, and today, Lyons and the other brewers are getting help from some newbies.
“Come on up, Isayah!” Lyons shouts. “Let’s get you in here.”
Colorado State University senior Isayah Lang steps up to the tank platform to make a new, signature beer. He starts by pouring the big buckets of grain one by one into the tank – in total, more than 460 pounds.
“Not so bad,” Lang said, smiling.
The 26-year-old is studying Fermentation and Food Science. Lang’s there for a class assignment called the Iron Brew. It’s a year-end competition that challenges small groups to make a beer from scratch using a secret ingredient grown in Larimer County.
Lang’s group is brewing a Hefeweizen called “Hive Mind” that combines wheat and some rye, along with pear and their secret ingredient – seasonal honey.
“It should be a very nice, like, patio sipper,” Lang said. “We're hoping for a little bit sweeter of a profile with the yeast character from the Hefeweizen, little bit of rye to add a bit of spiciness, pairing well with the pear flavor and then the honey just kind of sweetening it all up.”
Lang loves working with his hands, and this assignment is just that.
Jeff Biegert teaches brewing science classes through a sponsored position from his employer, New Belgium Brewing Company. He created the Iron Brew competition three years ago. His goal is to make learning interactive.
“Hands on really brings the book science into reality,” he said. “I find so many students really start to get everything when they start handling the grain, milling the grain…and all that.”
Biegert said his favorite part of the class is watching students make something they’re proud of and do something they have never done before.
“I love to see the look on their faces when they make their first batches of beer, and they think it's gonna suck, but then they try it and they're like, ‘Holy cow, this is, like, a really good beer,’” he said. “I'm like, ‘Yeah, this beer that you just made could stand up with any other beer in town.’”
Lang used to work in the automotive industry, but he said the job was boring and monotonous. He wanted to do something different, but he didn’t know what.
Then Lang visited Annex Ales brewery while on vacation in Canada in 2019. He tried an oatmeal stout for the first time that he called, “awesome.” As Lang savored the stout, he could see the beerhouse through a gigantic glass window. He had a new dream.
“I’m like, ‘That looks cool! How do I do that?’” he said. “I could do that for the rest of my life and be happy to show up every day. It's physical, it's creative, and it makes you think about things too.”
Lang wanted to learn more about the engineering side of brewing, like how to fix efficiency and taste issues. So he decided to make a career change and go back to school at CSU. It’s a great place to learn, as Fort Collins has been called the “Napa Valley” for craft beer. There’s practically a brewery on every corner.
“Everyone loves the environment of Fort Collins and the jobs here, and they just don't want to leave,” he said.
Lang’s passionate about the industry, but said finding a job was hard for him in this climate. The Brewers Association found that last year, there were more brewery closures than openings. Besides the pandemic, this hasn’t happened for decades – since 2005.
“As someone who's trying to enter the workforce, (it) kind of sucks,” Lang said.
For the jobs that do exist, Brewers Association experts say they’re competitive and hard to come by. It’s even harder to find them in rural areas. They’re mostly on the hospitality side, not production.
Biegert is more optimistic about job prospects for students, saying they are going out with “tons of opportunities.” He states that 95% of students in the Fermentation and Food Science program are placed in a job out of college, but did not say what percentage of those jobs were brewery-focused. He also declined to comment on the current state of the industry or what he tells his students about it.
The industry isn't what it once was
Jobs are not the only industry issue recent graduates are facing. Nationwide, craft beer production last year dropped roughly 4% from 2023. That’s 300,000 fewer barrels of craft beer.
This has caused many local favorites to close their doors last year, like Envy Brewing in Fort Collins and Finkel and Garf’s Taproom in Boulder.
Others are trying to get creative. Left Hand Brewing Company announced last month that it’s merging with Dry Dock Brewing Company to collaborate and share resources. Great Divide Brewing Company was sold to Wilding Brands last month, which is already a conglomerate that includes companies like Denver Beer Co. and Stem Ciders.
“These are signs of a maturing industry,” said Matt Gacioch, staff economist at the Brewers Association. “Having a leveling out is what we would expect. No industry can grow at that rate forever.”
Supply caught up with demand after the 2010 boom years, he said. Then the pandemic hit, and the cost of labor, ingredients and packaging have only gone up since. Additionally, people will only pay so much for a beer.
“If prices of the finished product haven't been able to increase, then that just means that business owners are squeezed with increasing costs of doing business,” Gacioch said.
Additionally, consumer habits have changed. For example, Gen Z is drinking less than previous generations. They say the flavor of beer isn’t for them, it’s something their parents would drink. So breweries are trying to reinvent themselves with seltzers and non-alcoholic beers. But now, there’s too much choice.
“This is a totally different beverage alcohol landscape than where we were even five years ago, but certainly 10 or 15 years ago,” Gacioch said. “That comes with its challenges for the brewing community to try to make their products stand out on a busy retail shelf, or competing for getting folks in the door to have their products at their taproom or brew pub.”
Gacioch said breweries need to find a niche in the market to entice new drinkers, as they will drive the success in the industry.
Brewing up the industry's future
Industry innovation is something Steven Johnson has been thinking about a lot. He’s also CSU’s Fermentation and Food Science program. Johnson had worked in several hard labor jobs, from manufacturing to working in the oil fields. But he wanted a change, and got hooked on making beer after doing some home brewing with his wife’s friends in the Pink Boots Society.
“(I first made) a churro stout, and it was no good. We ended up dumping it,” he said. “But it didn't matter, like, just doing it was fun.”
Johnson’s team is working with New Belgium Brewing Company on a beer called “The Blushing Duchess.” It’s a strawberry vanilla cream beer that uses Noosa Yoghurt as the secret ingredient.
"(That is) the first time I ever saw real live yogurt thrown into the mash mixer," Biegert, the CSU program professor, said. "Disgusting and inspiring."
His dream is to one day open an event venue for weddings and parties that has a brewery connected to it. But he doesn’t think Fort Collins is the place for it.
“It's really hard for startups, for sure, it's (a) really hard market to break into, very saturated,” he said. “I might find a brewery here and I'm like, ‘I'm gonna go there every day,’ and then six months later, (it) closes.”
Johnson thinks there’s more potential in North Texas, where he’s from. Right now, he said, people there will go to a bar after work, drink a few and then go home. He wants to share Colorado’s culture of hanging out at the patio, playing cornhole and meeting up with friends for hours. He’s still unsure what all the details will look like. But he’s not worried – only passionate.
“It sucks that the industry is on a downturn. There's a million different factors. It's always changing,” he said. “There's nothing really you can do about that, just as long as you go out there and you enjoy what you do and you make something that people love.”
A few weeks after brewing, hundreds of people gathered at CSU to taste the students’ creations.
Kaden Arrastia, a senior at CSU, took a liking to the Hive Mind beer Lang's team made.
"You can definitely taste the honey, it's definitely on the sweeter side," he said. "I really like that one, though, I like rye beers. So that's definitely solid for me."
Anthea Gower, a fifth-year student at the university, doesn't drink beer much, but she really liked New Belgium's beer made by Johnson's team.
"That one's currently one of my favorites, The Blushing Duchess was delicious," she said. "They really went hard with that one."
Johnson’s team took home the gold, while Lang’s team was able to score an honorable mention.
This is good prep for Lang’s future. He recently accepted a job with Anheuser-Busch in St. Louis this summer. It’s a six-month position in their research pilot brewery. He’s nervous about what comes after that, but for now, he’s excited to take the challenges of the struggling industry head-on.
“I think that's what's great about the degree, too, is it's like, ‘Hey, how do we reverse this?’” he said. “‘How do we make this better?’ Or ‘How do we improve upon it?’ And that's the fun part.”
The students’ signature beers will be sold on CSU’s campus along with several local breweries while supplies last.
This story is part of a collaboration with Rocky Mountain PBS.
