Frontier Brewing Company and Taproom

apparently these guys recently moved just down the street, a little closer to the center of the action, and into an old theater building. i was there for their grand opening, which was a neat time to go, a bit different for a brewery, but cool in some ways. they have some out front seating and a food truck when i rolled up, busy right away, a really interesting tap room inside with tightly packed seating, a small corner bar, but a self service area when you use a card to pour your own beer. these can be cool, especially in brewery or craft bar contexts where sometimes its best to try small amounts of lots of things, but its not ironed out yet, the line to get a card and then settle up was ten deep most of the time i was here, which spilled into the beer pouring area, the spot where you grab glassware was crowded too, and it felt congested right in the middle of the space, no a great layout plan. the cool part is in the back, in the actual theater, where they have converted it into a stage setup with seating and rail viewing, awesome little concert venue back here, country when i was in, but hopefully a more diverse range of stuff when they get into full swing. they only had a handful of their own beers on when i was in, i saw a tiny little extract looking homebrew setup behind the taps, if thats all the capacity they have they are going to be in trouble if it stays this busy, but they did have a range of local and regional guest beers to round out the lineup, pretty well selected. i had a saison they make that was high tone and sharp and not real good, and an imperial stout in a barrel (perhaps a very tiny barrel) that was much better, but i didnt see enough from their own beers to really form an opinion at this point, the jury is still out. the space has a ton of potential to be cool, neat they can spill out into the street, but they need to figure out the self service piece a little better. the gal that helped me out was nice but overwhelmed, no opportunity to talk beer with staff or anything. they seem as much about the venue space as the beer, which is never great for the beer, but it will be cool to see what they turn into here. unique for a brewery at the very least. never made it to their old space, and i do not believe it is in operation anymore...

 

 

 

I've now had 6 of the 7 beers from, currently, Caspers only brewery. The Dark Rye and Belma IPA being my favourites so far. Thank goodness that their beers don't taste like a poorly brewed homebrew!
And they rotate some really excellent guest beers. Love it!