A new Boise brewery plans to open (yep, with a patio.) Got a good idea for a name?

As Idaho breweries struggle to make ends meet, a future one is starting to take shape.

Elijah Taylor, owner of Craft Brewers of Boise, has applied for city approval to turn his store at 420 N. Orchard St. into a licensed brewery. Open since 2018, Craft Brewers is a combination taphouse, bottle shop and home-brewing supplies store.

Taylor also plans to build a patio in front that could open by late summer, he said. It will serve customers who frequent the store for its 30 taps of beer, kombucha, wine and hard cider. The patio will be 15 feet by 20 feet, he said, and seat 20 to 25 people under normal conditions.

Taylor has mulled the idea of launching a full-fledged brewery for a while, he said. The coronavirus pandemic nudged him into action.

“This is an opportunity,” Taylor said. “When people are sitting around thinking about what they’re going to do with their business and get back into it, this is an opportunity to say, ‘Hey, let’s work super hard. Let’s figure out where we can grow and how we can come out of this ... . We didn’t just sit around during this time and have a difficult time. We really tried to figure out how we’re going to push this forward and keep it going the best we can.’ ”

By fall, Taylor said, he hopes to be looking for brewing equipment. He’s also considering a separate rebrand of the beer-making side of the business. He isn’t ready to share any possible new names just yet — but COVID Beer probably won’t be it, he agreed with a chuckle. “As simple as the name could be, it also could be what crushes you,” he said. “We just want to make sure we are aligning with our long-term strategy.”

Quality used brewing equipment for sale is uncommon, Taylor said, but he’s going to keep his eyes open. The market might loosen up because of economic pressure put on breweries during the pandemic.

“I think we’re going to see, obviously, what happens after things start opening up,” Taylor said. “I imagine there’s going to be some good equipment available. In the brewing industry. It’s very, very hard to find really good used equipment. So I feel that there will be better opportunity at that point. Maybe not. Maybe we go brand new? But I think we’ll kind of know exactly where we stand with our capacity and where we go with that route.”

Right now, Craft Brewers makes small batches of beer on a homebrewing scale. The new brewhouse will be significantly bigger, but still nanobrewery to microbrewery size, Taylor said. A three-barrel system seems likely.

When the brewery fires up, it will be “kind of the center of a lot of the beers that we have on tap,” Taylor said. “Right now, we still have a ton of local beers, which we plan to do. And our to-go cooler, we’ll continue to fill that up with local favorites.”

During the pandemic, Craft Brewers has survived by pivoting to online beer ordering with delivery. “When it first happened, we pulled almost all-nighters working on the website and getting the logistics set up,” he said.

It paid off. Sales of mystery six-packs of mix-and-match beers erupted. “The first weekend we did it, I don’t even know if we had enough in our cooler to finish off some orders,” Taylor said. “So we had to move them to the next day. We were busy.”

Taylor even drove to Twin Falls for a “huge drop-off” delivery, he said — “a trunk full of beer.”

That kind of effort and innovation makes Craft Brewers of Boise’s plan to spin off a successful brewery seem more plausible.

“I think a lot of breweries are trying to figure it out,” Taylor said. “We got lucky with our delivery service. Other breweries have really tried to figure out how to maneuver during a challenging time. Like us, other breweries are going to find creative ways to come out of this — and have some really cool things to look forward to in the next year.”

This story was originally published May 12, 2020 at 5:00 AM.