Averys grew brewery from homebrew start

BOULDER – Nearly 15 years ago, when Adam and Larry Avery started their microbrewery, Avery Brewing Company in Boulder, there were many reasons to see the glass as half empty: competition at every turn, no capital, no experience.

But the brewery has remained as innovative as some of its beers. Resiliency, it turns out, is a key ingredient to success in the brewery business.

Today, the father and son team has about 2 million reasons to see the glass as half full. For the last six years, the company has enjoyed steady and healthy growth. In 2005, sales were up by 30 percent; in 2006, 38 percent.

“It was our best year ever,´ said  Adam Avery,  president and brewmaster. “We had $2.8 million in sales, and things really couldn’t have been rosier.”

The company has grown from brewing just 800 barrels of three kinds of beers in 1994 to churning out 10,000 barrels of 19 different beers in 2006. While the company has witnessed huge increases in Colorado (it’s ubiquitous in Boulder County), Avery beer is now available in 27 states and beyond. Avery said he’s in negotiations with Oklahoma, Rhode Island and “a few other states” to start selling Avery beer. “We should be in 30 states by the end of 2007.”

Additionally, Avery now exports its beer to Denmark, Brazil and Puerto Rico.

Avery has won silver medals at the Stockholm Beer Festival with its 14er ESB (extra special bitter), named for the 54 Colorado peaks that rise above 14,000 feet; and The Reverend, a Belgian ale named after Sales Manager Tom Boogaard’s late grandfather, an ordained Episcopal reverend.

To keep up with demand, Avery purchased another 2,500-square-foot building to house some fermenters, which increased capacity to 12,000 barrels a year.

Last year, Avery put nearly $1 million back into the business, buying more fermenters and bottling equipment. That’s nearly double the amount of money the company had spent on production equipment in all of its 13 previous years it has been in business.

Much of the company’s success is because beer drinkers gravitate to brews with more interesting flavor profiles. Avery explains that the company isn’t afraid “to brew big, bold, aggressive beers with plenty of flavor.” T

he complex flavor of the beers (primarily English- and Belgian-style ales) comes from sparing no expense – using lots of specialty malts, imported hops and imported Belgian candy sugar – and the brewery’s hopping methods.

“We don’t have a flagship beer that brings in 60 or 70 percent of our sales like some breweries. I suppose we’re kind of an eclectic brewery that way.”

Avery Brewing began in 1993 when father Larry and son Adam experimented with home brewing. They worked to perfect the recipes for what would become Redpoint Amber Ale, Ellie’s Brown Ale and Out of Bounds Stout.

Within a year, Out of Bounds Stout took home a gold medal in 1994 in the dry stouts category at the largest beer tasting event in North America, the Great American Beer Festival, held annually in Denver.

 Production and sale of those four early beers began with a seven-barrel brew house, but within two years, Avery replaced it with four 30-barrel tanks, a new bottling machine with a labeler for its 22-ounce bottles. In the mid-’90s, Avery created one of its flagship beers, the 14er ESB.

Soon after, it started making six-packs with a new bottling machine, and brewed the first batch of Avery IPA (India Pale Ale), which is now its best-seller.

In 1997 the company added three 80-barrel tanks and basically doubled the brewery’s size, from 2,500 square feet to 5,000 square feet. By 2000, Avery added a 40-barrel brew house along with a boiler and a 50,000-pound grain silo. Then two years later, they added an 80-barrel tank to make 4,000 barrels a year.

For its 10th anniversary in 2003, Avery added two 120-barrel tanks, which doubled capacity again, to 8,000 barrels a year. To end 2003, it added 2,000 square feet of cold storage to help with distribution.

Avery’s biggest surprise after all the growth and changes, is, “That we’re successful. We had a lot of hurdles in the late ’90s, but we got through that time, and now things are really good.

His goals for 2007? “To do what we did in 2006.”

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