Daily Inspiration: Meet Tim Myers

Today we’d like to introduce you to Tim Myers. 

Hi Tim, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstories with our readers?
I worked in the IT Department for the Rocky Mountain News starting in 1999. When the newspaper shut down in 2009, I could either look for another IT job during the Great Recession or go with “Plan B” and open a craft brewery. This wasn’t just a spur-of-the-moment decision. I saw the writing on the wall back in 2006-2007 that Denver could not support two newspapers. So, I started writing a business plan and talking to other breweries about their business models, challenges, and any advice they might have for me. Back then there weren’t nearly as many breweries in Denver (less than 10), or even Colorado (less than 100), but brewers and/or owners like Brian Dunn at Great Divide, Adam Avery, and Matt “Hand Truck” Thrall at Avery Brewing, Peter Bouckaert at New Belgium, were very generous with their time, and patient with my constant questions. But all those breweries packaged their beer, and each one I talked to had similar advice – “You could probably get open for two, two point five, but you’ll need at least one point five in operating capital to get you through the first few years until you turn a profit.” Of course, the “two, two point five” was millions! Where the heck was an avid homebrewer/IT tech going to get two to four million dollars during the Great Recession?! Then I got lucky. I was working on a new homebrew recipe and realized I was short a few things. My regular homebrew shop was closed (they were always closed Mondays) so I had to drive much further to the Brew Hut in Aurora. This was a shop I visited only occasionally as it was a 30-mile round trip. But they always had everything so off I went. As I was talking to Steve Headstream about my recipe, I noticed some tables and chairs next door. “What’s that?” I asked. “Oh, that’s our new brewery, Dry Dock. You should head over and grab a pint.” WAIT! WHAT?! A brewery serving PINTS?! Across the bar?! In the BREWERY?! Is that even legal?! But they were doing it. I must have spent an hour peppering Kevin DeLange with questions. And his brewer Bill Eye (now co-owner of Bierstadt Lagerhaus) as well. 

On May 19th, 2010, we opened Strange Brewing Company in an out-of-the-way industrial strip mall near Mile High Stadium as Denver’s first Taproom Brewery. We only had a Pale Ale and a Coffee Stout on tap that first night. It took us over two years to match the crowd that first night. For the first sixteen months, all our beers were brewed on my homebrew equipment, which I modified to allow us to brew 31 gallons (one barrel) at a time. A great mentor of mine, Tom Hennessey of Palisade Brewery and later Colorado Boy in Ridgway had shown me how to build an affordable brewhouse using converted dairy equipment and used parts. Everything in the brewhouse was second-hand equipment – practically a museum of used Colorado brewing equipment. We had a couple 3-Barrel fermenters and four 1-Barrel fermenters. Every Monday, we brewed three batches of the same recipe into one of our “big” fermenters, and every Tuesday we brewed two separate recipes into two of our 1-Barrel fermenters. After 27 hours of labor, we had 150 gallons of beer brewed – crazy inefficiency! But we were “professional” brewers, and we were loving it! Except that we were running out of beer ALL the time. 

We solved that problem over the summer and fall of 2011 by slowly acquiring larger kettles and tanks – again from other Colorado breweries. Our mash tun came for Golden City Brewery. A couple fermenters came from Eddyline and a couple more from Glenwood Canyon. A regular brought in a heat exchanger that had been sitting in his garage for 10 years. Turned out it was from the original Lone Tree Brewing in Commerce City. And I found some old storage tanks at a defunct brewery in Pagosa Springs. Now we had the means to keep the taps flowing efficiently! Eight hours of work yielded 300 gallons! 

I probably couldn’t have opened Strange without the help, advice, and encouragement I received from so many great brewers. And in that spirit, I’ve always tried to pay it forward whenever possible. There are at least a dozen breweries in Denver that started out at Strange, peppering me with the same questions I’d been asking a few years earlier. Usually, my advice was some variation of “do as I say, not as I did.” Being Denver’s first Taproom brewery meant we were making a lot of things up and figuring a lot of things out as we went. Any opportunity to save a future brewery owner similar pain was a strong incentive. I’ve also been lucky enough to teach a brewing class at Metro State, encouraging eager young minds to pursue a brewing career. 

In 2015 we started packaging our beers for distribution to liquor stores around the Front Range. This was a crazy busy time at Strange as we were brewing seemingly non-stop to keep up with demand. I think we maxed out at 142 liquor store accounts, which seems like a great thing. Except that I came to realize I gave up control of my beers as soon as they left the brewery. Too many accounts had our bottles sitting out warm on shelves due to lack of cooler space. To protect our reputation for quality, I found myself buying back old bottles, or replacing a customer’s bad bottle with an entire case as an apology for the bad experience of opening an old beer. The final straw came in the summer of 2017 when I was delivering a case of our prized seasonal Watermelon Hefe to an account. The owner made me wait five minutes while he rummaged around his storeroom until he finally produced a case of 2016 Watermelon Hefe that he’d neglected to even put out a year ago. The guy wanted to make an even trade of a year-old case for a fresh case. I turned around and walked out with my fresh beer, ignoring his angry questions about what was he supposed to do with the old beer. At that point, I decided to refocus on Taproom only, where I had total control over quality and could ensure that every beer was fresh and tasted the way it was supposed to taste. 

I’ve watched 100’s of breweries open since our first pint was poured in May 2010. I’ve watched the explosion of cans on liquor store shelves, and even grocery stores now selling full-strength beer. But that model is not for me. Strange will always be a Taproom brewery where I get to hand a new beer to a customer and watch their expression as they explore my new creation. Where customers become friends and then family. Where a would-be brewery owner can walk in the door, sit at the bar, order a Strange brew, and pepper me with questions until well past closing time. 

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle-free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
As I mentioned, being first can have its challenges. One example – before we even opened our doors, we spent months and months working with the Denver Planning Department trying to get our drawings approved. They wanted to know where our kitchen would be located. Where’s the grease trap? You need to install a fire suppression hood over your cooking area. It took many many meetings and back-and-forths to get them to realize we aren’t a restaurant. We’re not cooking food. We’re boiling water. But perseverance paid off and, in the end, it was worth the effort. Quite a few of the discussions with future brewery owners centered around similar challenges they were facing and I was glad to have blazed the trail and hopefully made their startup just a bit easier for them. 

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
My favorite part about owning a craft brewery is the artistry and creativity of developing a new recipe. When I taught brewing at Metro State, our first discussion always centered around recipe development. A new beer is like a blank canvas, and the ingredients are the colors on the artist’s palette. Envision in your mind how it should smell, how it should taste, how it should feel, how it should appear. Then work with your palette of ingredients to make your vision a reality. As a business owner, the opportunity to create can often get buried by the day-to-day grind of running your business. But the opportunity to create something new, to connect to somebody through a pint of beer. That’s precious and that’s what I live for. Beers like Cherry Kriek, which is cherry pie in a glass, like cherries picked fresh from the tree. Or Watermelon Hefe, a German Wheat beer brewed with over 600 pounds of fresh handcut watermelon that we release every Fourth of July. Or Breakfast Grapefruit IPA, brewed with real grapefruit juice for a lively citrus kick. Then there’s Silverbrick Norwegian Farmhouse brewed with Juniper berries and Simcoe hops to give the drinker the impression of a Scandinavian pine forest. 

Is there any advice you’d like to share with our readers who might just be starting out?
I could write a book, and my wife Marni has bugged me for years to do just that. But rather than give the whole shop away… I usually tell would-be brewers to do as I say, not as I did. We opened on a shoestring budget which hamstrung us from the beginning. Too often we had to reinvent the wheel to solve a problem because we couldn’t just throw more money at it. But there was one thing I did right early on – ask a ton of questions. So many great brewers were willing to put up with all of my questions before we opened. I still can’t thank them enough and can only repay their generosity by paying it forward. Hang out at your favorite brewery. Get to know the crew. Offer to help out. Bring ‘em a few bottles of your latest homebrew creation. And always show gratitude when the brewer answers all of your questions. 

Contact Info:

• Email: beer@strangecraft.com
• Website: www.strangecraft.com
• Instagram: /strangecraftbeer
• Facebook: /StrangeCraftBeer
• Twitter: /StrangeCraftCo
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