New Belgium Brewing

Perhaps New Belgium’s defining moment came in 1998, when the employee-owners of the company voted to get 100 percent of the brewery’s energy from wind power. The cost temporarily pillaged the bottom line yet instantly made it the largest commercial wind power buyer in the state and reinforced its principle of promoting environmental stewardship at every turn while being profitable.

But Jordan and her cohorts didn’t stop at wind power. In 2002, New Belgium built a wastewater treatment plant on its fifty-acre site. The methane produced by the plant supplies roughly 15 percent of New Belgium’s electrical needs. The building itself features a bevy of green designs. Solar tubes capture sunlight to illuminate the packaging hall and warehouse. The brew kettles, which heat thin sheets of wort rather than the whole kettle at once, are estimated to be 65 percent more efficient than standard kettles.

“We have long known that environmental ethos was part of who we are,” says Jenn Orgolini, New Belgium’s sustainability director. “It permeates everything that we do.” . . .

For all of New Belgium’s successes, none seems to make Jordan as proud as what she calls the company’s “high-involvement culture.” Employees become partial owners in the brewery after one year on the job and are allowed to see the company’s books and advise it on all decisions. Employees now own 55 percent of New Belgium Brewery, while Jordan and her sons own 45 percent but maintain a majority voting block. Workers are inducted into ownership at ceremonies twice a year where they are given a “mojo”—a handmade fob of metal and ceramics stamped with the word “love” or “talent” that represents their connection to New Belgium—and are asked to express what ownership means to them.

The other company perks are legendary as well. One year gets you a bike, five years gets you a trip to Belgium, ten years gets you a tree in the company’s fruit orchard and fifteen years gets you both $1,000 in cash and $1,000 to invest in a micro-lending site that aids community-based small businesses. “We just thought it was an interesting way to jump-start philanthropy,” Jordan says.

Odell Brewing

Odell Brewing is legendary for its aggressive and experimental oak-aged beers. But founder Doug Odell would rather talk about his brewery’s impact on the Fort Collins community than its impact on America’s taste buds.

An employee committee picks two charities a month to receive donations from the brewery, and tap room workers give all of their monthly tips to a third environmental, educational or humanitarian charity. Add in Odell Brewing’s large grant program, and its giving equals $2.50 per barrel produced—or $100,000 a year . . .

(Around 2000), Odell began experiments that brought his company into the spotlight, first with highly hopped beers and then with barrel aging and daring ingredients like wild yeasts. Half the space in a 2010 expansion was set aside for barrel-aged and limited-release beers. Odell is one of a few American breweries that ages beer in virgin oak barrels, a technique making vanilla and wood flavors more pronounced.

The brewery’s taproom features as many as twelve pilot-batch beers at one time, ranging from nitro offerings to imperial pilsners to larks using cherries or blue corn. “Unless people come in every day, they’re almost assured of seeing something they haven’t tried before,” Odell says.

Ska Brewing

True to form, the budding entrepreneurs—or “punk-ass kids,” as they now recall—crafted their business plan on the back of a napkin in a bar. When a bar mate asked what kind of beer their new brewery would make, they were stumped. Thibodeau suggested True Blonde Ale, not because he liked the style so much as he loved the name.

The early brewing sessions were, like their high school experiments, fueled by a loud dose of ska music, the pulsating, Jamaican-born reggae precursor that stormed England in the 1960s and mid-1980s and inspired the company’s name. They would get off their courier and construction jobs around 5:00 p.m. and then make beer and invite friends over to try it, as their warehouse didn’t have a public tasting room yet.

The room they did have was interesting, the pair recalls. The makeshift brewery was next door to a laboratory where police officers would test the blood-alcohol levels of intoxicated drivers. The cops and suspects had to walk through Ska’s space to get to the bathroom. Thibodeau, Graham and friends would often watch—as they sat and knocked back beer.

While the way they made their beer would be vital to the future success of the company, arguably the most important decision that Ska’s founders made involved labeling. For that, they turned to a comic book that they and a former roommate created and used characters from that unpublished story on the first beers—and on every beer they’ve made since.

Three Barrel Brewing

As you drive into Del Norte on a Friday night, the storefronts and restaurants are so dark you almost wonder why the town’s lone stoplight hasn’t rolled up and gone home as well. Yet half a block off the main drag, tucked between a post office and a title company, in the back room of a brick building, a man toils over a wet-hopped Scottish Ale or a Brettanomyces-infused sour Belgian ale. And here you’ve found John Bricker, owner of the elusive Three Barrel Brewing Company.

The brewery is through a door in the back of his insurance office, where he’d be happy to sell you a policy for your pickup or a party pig full of his Trashy Blonde ale. A few customers come in to request both. Those who come for the refreshment discover that small town doesn’t mean small beer. And every label on Three Barrel’s twenty-two-ounce bombers tells a story.

Bricker honors the surrounding San Luis Valley’s history with his Penitente Canyon Ale, a Belgian Biere de Garde named for the self-flagellating Spanish settlers who confessed to a priest on his once-a-year trips through town. And he sings his own story with Bad Phil, a Cascade- and Centennial-hopped pale ale dedicated to his neighbor’s rooster, known to attack those who turn their backs.