Golden to bring a new hop into Libby's downtown

Abigail Geiger

Reporter

Cabinet Mountain Brewing Company brewmaster Grant Golden is planning to add a little hop to the local downtown scene.

Golden moved to Libby from Portland, Ore., where he lived for 10 years, to become the first-ever brewmaster at Cabinet Mountain Brewing Company, which will open on July 31.

Although Golden is new to Libby, he isn’t new to beer. He started experimenting with fermentation at age 13, and continued through high school. 

This is the first time Golden holds the title of brewmaster, but as he practices his craft amid the metallic sheen of the brewing machines, it’s clear that he has learned a lot in the brewing industry. After years of experimenting with fermenting beer, he saw an advertisement on an online brewery website for the opening at Cabinet Mountain, and he moved here in May with his girlfriend. 

“I visited Libby and said, “Wow, this is a small town,’” Golden said.

But the small-town-raised Golden said he likes what he has seen in Libby so far, particularly because he enjoys spending time in the outdoors. 

Golden has a lot of different types of brews to offer from his first gig: He said they’re planning to have a lager, a blonde, a pale ale, a red ale, an IPA and a porter. 

Getting to this wide variety of brews is a feat that was in part due to city regulation and in other part due to some strange Montana laws. 

In 1933, when prohibition was repealed, each U.S. state took alcohol regulation into its own hands. For Montana, it was a 1947 law that established the rules that are still around today, and the modern-age brewery trend slips in through a loophole in the law. 

Within a city, one all-beverage license quota is allowed for each 1,500 residents. A city can only earn more licenses if the population grows — and since Lincoln County has had a slower rate of growth, the licenses don’t flow as freely. Getting a liquor license can be a challenge in and of itself.

But breweries don’t need a liquor license, because of a loophole in the same law.    

Section 16-3-213 in Montana liquor law allows “small breweries,” ones that produce between 100 and 10,000 barrels in a year, are allowed to open tasting rooms without a liquor license. However, there are limits on how the breweries can function because of this law. Breweries give out “samples” of beer that can be provided only between 10 a.m. and 8 p.m. In addition, breweries are only allowed to sell or give 48 ounces to a customer. 

The Libby City Council also recently jumped hurdles, too, in letting the brewery open. The brewery planned to have an open seating area, which clashed with local business regulations about “encroaching” on public land. Local businesses worried that the brewery’s open space would load unfair penalty costs on them: if the brewery had to pay to encroach, so would the others.

The council passed a resolution July 21 that would allow the brewery to have an open space connected to the property, similar to the German biergarten style, where beer is served on outside patios, that has become popular at breweries across the country.

Although opening a brewery in Montana appears to require hurdle-jumping, Montana Tavern Association lobbyist John Iverson said Montana’s brewery scene is growing as the state is set to become one of the top state with above 40 breweries per capita.

“The brewing manufacturing sector is thriving,” Iverson said. “The environment is changing. People don’t want to just drink the yellow beers anymore.

The Cabinet Mountain Brewing Company has jumped some Montana-sized hurdles in order to gets its doors open, but its light walls, metallic machines and wooden décor are nearing completion. The Friday before opening, two men angled paintings on the walls while a worker mopped the floor.

On Thursday, Golden and the rest of the crew will become Libby’s newest business and Montana’s newest brewery on Thursday, July 31. The brewery’s hours will be 10 to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 2 to 8 p.m. on Sunday. 

How does the Cabinet Mountain Brewing Company brew beer?

Barley and wheat is malted and the malts are packaged and sent to breweries. Cabinet Mountain Brewing Company’s malts come from Montana, Canada and the Midwest.

The malts are send through an auger, a processing machine, which then siphons them into the mash tun, which makes a porridge-like material. 

There’s a strainer at the bottom of the mash tun, which drains the liquid to the boil kettle. The remains in the strainer are called “spent grain.”

In the boil kettle, the liquid boils for an hour and hops is added.

Then the liquid cools down to 68 or 70 degrees and goes to the fermenters. The yeast here is added, which eats the sugar from the liquid. The byproducts from this are CO2 and alcohol.

It takes two weeks to ferment. After that, the liquid is sent to the bright beer tanks, which help the beer flavor mature. After that, you’ve got the bubbly brew ready for the empty glasses at the bar.