A popular brewery and restaurant made Reno "beer history" this month when it was ordained the best mid-size brewpub in the country, beating out some better known breweries from places like San Diego and Denver. Brasserie Saint James has been gaining popularity since it opened in Midtown about two years ago. This award is now giving national cred to Northern Nevada's growing craft beer scene.
It’s a double brew day at Brasserie Saint James.
“This is the barrel room. The fermenters are on the left side. We’re currently brewing Third Man Triple.”
That’s one of the many Belgian influenced beers the brewers here excel at making. Jordan Moore, a bartender and brewery rep, navigates the humming back rooms, filled with vats and stainless steel.
“All the wood on the walls is original wood from when they were doing the ice through the Great Basin area. Lots of steam, lots of great smells. It’s almost like making oatmeal or baking bread is the same smell you’ll get.”
For decades, this building housed an ice and bottled water factory, run by Crystal Springs. The cavernous room we’re standing in used to be filled with ice. Now, it’s refurbished, but the brewery stills pulls water from that aquifer several hundred feet below, as owner Art Farley explains.
“We use that water for everything. We cook with it. It's in our beer. It's in your water glass when you get a glass of water here. The best thing being that it doesn't have any of the elements that are put into municipal water. There's no fluoride, no chlorine. It's just straight mountain water."
And it isn’t just the water that distinguishes Brasserie’s beer. Farley explains they also mature their brews longer than other makers.
“We give them a lot of cold rest. We also dry our beers out more because we like beers that finish with a drier as opposed to a sweeter finish.”
Whatever they’re doing, it’s paying off. Farley and his colleagues recently scored a big victory when they were named the best "Mid-Size Brewpub" in the country at the Great American Beer Festival, an event you could call the “Super Bowl of beer.” This year the festival boasted more than 3,500 brews—the largest collection of beers ever served.
Along with the mid-size brewpub distinction, Brasserie won a gold in the style of beer known as Saison, a farmhouse ale that has seen a major revival in recent years.
Now, in the front of the restaurant, Farley places a small sample of the straw colored drink on the white marbled bar top.
“It’s still a refreshing beer, but it's got a lot of flavor and complexity... peppery, dry. It's got a little bit of an earthy, barnyard funk on it.”
Farley would like to see more people think of craft beer as part of a good meal, like wine, and many of the options at Brasserie are brewed with that in mind.
Since they won, potential customers have been calling from all over the country, hoping to carry their beers. Farley says that recognition is good for all of Reno and encourages more businesses like his to come to Midtown and Downtown.
“We have a greater population of over 300,000 in the Reno-Sparks areas. I think Bend, Oregon is a third of that, and they probably have three times as many breweries as we do, so there’s still room."
Along with Brasserie, several other local breweries medaled this year, including Mammoth Brewing, Great Basin Brewing and Tahoe Mountain Brewing.
Brasserie’s Jordan Moore says it’s a big change.
"Because, five years ago, you would have to travel to Southern California, Northern California or parts of Oregon to even experience the scene that is now moving through Reno and Northern Nevada, which is incredibly exciting for a beer geek like we all are here."
And now beer geeks, like Moore, can be a part of that in Reno.
