The new year brings good news for Treasure Valley craft beer lovers — Bend-based 10 Barrel Brewing will open a new brewpub in Downtown Boise next summer.
The owners of 10 Barrel Brewing had been talking with State of Idaho officials for several months about leasing a building at 9th and Bannock streets owned by the Department of Lands.
10 Barrel owners signed the lease last month and work is expected to begin soon to retrofit the building for a brewing system and restaurant equipment. The work is expected to be completed by summer.
10 Barrel has also hired a brewer for the new Boise brewpub known to many Treasure Valley craft beer enthusiasts — Shawn Kelso, the former brewmaster of Barley Brown’s Brewing in Baker City, Ore.
Kelso is perhaps best known for creating the Turmoil, a Cascadian Dark Ale, one of the first black India Pale Ale’s that have become such a popular style over the past decade. The Turmoil won a coveted gold medal at the Great American Beer Festival in 2010 in the American Black Ale category.
Kelso’s beers have won seven other medals at the GABF since 2006. In addition to brewing 10 Barrel beers, Kelso will also work on recipe development for the company.
“Joining an up and coming brew scene in Boise will allow me to really showcase my talents in front of a larger audience,” Kelso said in a press release issued by 10 Barrel Brewing Monday to formally announce the opening of the Boise brewpub.
10 Barrel partner Garret Wales told the Idaho Statesman in September that he and the rest of the company have been looking at the Boise market for a while and feel the city is a good fit.
I talked to Wales at the GABF in Denver this past fall and he told me the new brewpub will have some kind of outdoor dining experience, with significant work being done to the building to make it open and airy for summer dining.
On Tuesday, Wales told me the tentative plan is open up the front west corner of the building to create a large covered patio area which will be open on good weather days. The plan is to have an indoor fireplace and an open floor plan, where people in the restaurant can see into the brewhouse.
The building requires a pretty extensive renovation but the hope is to be open for business by June, Wales said.
Bend has emerged as a craft beer hotbed over the past decade or so, with 11 breweries operating in a town of about 80,000. Boise, by comparison, has about 200,000 people in its city limits, with five breweries.
10 Barrel Brewing is a relatively new company. It began brewing in 2006 in Bend and operates a brewpub there. The company began selling 22-ounce bottles in regional markets such as Portland as business has grown, Wales said. Now it can’t brew enough beer to meet demand.
The brewery has four partners and is making a significant investment in the future, with a new 50-barrel production brewery in Bend that should be completed by March.
While most of the 10 Barrel staple beers — such as the S1nist0r Black Ale, Apocalypse IPA and India Session Ale — likely would come from Bend, there would be a brewing system built in Boise for unique pub-only beers, Wales said.
Local beer enthusiasts can also expect to see bottles of 10 Barrel beers in Boise area stores this spring, once the new brewhouse in Bend is up and running, Wales said.
