Brewing, Cideries & Spirits  March 7, 2018

The Post’s recipe for beer: Keep it simple

Post Brewing Co.
Image by Jonathan Castner

General manager Matthew Glassford is more than happy to share the secret behind the award-winning beers and tasty chicken at The Post restaurants:

Don’t overthink it.

“We just always set out to do great fried chicken, elevated comfort food and crisp beer,” said Glassford, a native of Nashville, Tenn. “We wanted to keep it simple. Everybody overthinks things at times. So we decided that if we’d just treat people like they’re in our home, make sure the beer’s delicious and make sure the food is tasty, everything works out.”

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From the very beginning, when Post Brewing Co. opened its first restaurant in Lafayette in 2014, Glassford said, “the vision has always been that our beer should taste good, everyday beer for people who drink beer every day. Our beer is the perfect pairing for yard work and a fishing rod, just as the heart of The Post is a blue-collar style of food.

“We didn’t do an IPA at first, and we took a little heat for it. We finally did one after being open eight months to a year. Sometimes beers can be too big. They have a place in the world, but we always wanted to have beers that would make you want to have another beer after it.”

Jess McElvain, brewer, works behind the scenes at The Post. Image by Jonathan Castner

The Post’s blue-collar brewprint was drawn by Bryan Selders, who helped create innovative beers for Dogfish Head Brewing in Delaware for more than a decade and co-starred in The Discovery Channel’s Brew Masters reality-TV show. Boulder-based Big Red F Restaurant Group — which ran the former Q’s restaurant in Hotel Boulderado and currently owns Zolo Southwestern Grill, West End Tavern and Centro Mexican Kitchen in Boulder as well as Lola Coastal Mexican restaurant in Denver and Jax Fish House seafood eateries in Fort Collins, Glendale, Lower Downtown Denver and Kansas City, Mo. — hired Selders away in 2013 to run the brewpub and chicken restaurant it was to open the next year in Lafayette. He teamed up with Brett Smith as executive chef and partner. “Smitty” had held the reins at Zolo and crafted the gluten-free roast chicken, homey side dishes and desserts for The Post’s menu. Glassford had helped open Riff’s Urban Fare and West Flanders Brewing Co. in Boulder before joining Dave Query’s Big Red F at Centro.

“We opened in a former VFW post, so out of respect to our military veterans, we named it The Post — and the ‘1771’ was their post number. We asked them if we could use it, not to exploit it but to pay respect. There’s a lot of good, rich culture in that building; there were weddings and funerals there.”

Yet even with Selders’ fame as a foundation, Glassford said, beer that would win awards wasn’t the original focus.

“No, I couldn’t say that for a fact,” Glassford said. “When you do anything, you want to do the best at it, master your craft — but we didn’t set out to break any records. We knew the beer was good because there are pretty good palates in our company. I don’t think beer really was talked about as a beginning business, but we knew Bryan was a great brewmaster.”

Among those pretty good beer palates, Glassford said, are Nick Tedeschi, who apprenticed under Selders for four years and “helped open the doors in Lafayette,” and Brad Landman, whose sudsy resume includes stints at Denver’s Prost Brewery and Wynkoop Brewing Co. Landman “handles the big-picture stuff,” Glassford said. “We brought him on, and the rest is history.”

History indeed. The Post’s Howdy pilsner won a silver medal at the 2014 Great American Beer Festival and gold at the 2016 U.S. Open beer championship, where its Top Rope lager took silver. Its Achtertuin Seizoen farmhouse ale collected a gold at the 2015 GABF, and its Townie IPA won silver at the 2015 Denver International Beer Competition, where its Meathooks mild ale won a bronze.

Building on its success in Lafayette, The Post’s team opened in south Denver’s Rosedale neighborhood and started a counter-service concept called Goodbird in Longmont. In 2017, Query struck a deal for a downtown Boulder location with Shine Restaurant and Gathering Place after its owners — triplets Jill, Jessica and Jennifer Emrich — announced they wanted to cut out the brewery portion of their business and move their organic, gluten-free restaurant to a smaller space to the east on Canyon Boulevard.

Glassford said Goodbird turned out to be a learning experience. “It was originally a little faster, casual place where the turn time wasn’t like a sit-down restaurant. It was the first project we had trying to go outside a full-service restaurant, but the concept got confusing really quick when you walked in the door. Three or four months after opening we decided to go back to our strength as a company and turn it into The Post’s model. We hired and trained a new staff, and I wanted to close for two days for the transition, but Dave Query and the investors compromised and gave me a day and a half.”

Dillon Boveri is general manager there. “He was actually one of the lead servers from the Lafayette location,” Glassford said. “He took over from me in Longmont when I went down to open the south Denver location.”

Are more locations of The Post in the works? Glassford said that for now, he sees just two things on the horizon:

“More chicken and more beer.”

 

The Post

2027 13th St., Boulder • 720-372-3341

105 W. Emma St., Lafayette • 303-593-2066

1258 S. Hover St., Longmont • 720-588-2883

postbrewing.com

 

 

 

Post Brewing Co.
Image by Jonathan Castner

General manager Matthew Glassford is more than happy to share the secret behind the award-winning beers and tasty chicken at The Post restaurants:

Don’t overthink it.

“We just always set out to do great fried chicken, elevated comfort food and crisp beer,” said Glassford, a native of Nashville, Tenn. “We wanted to keep it simple. Everybody overthinks things at times. So we decided that if we’d just treat people like they’re in our home, make sure the beer’s delicious…

Dallas Heltzell
With BizWest since 2012 and in Colorado since 1979, Dallas worked at the Longmont Times-Call, Colorado Springs Gazette, Denver Post and Public News Service. A Missouri native and Mizzou School of Journalism grad, Dallas started as a sports writer and outdoor columnist at the St. Charles (Mo.) Banner-News, then went to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch before fleeing the heat and humidity for the Rockies. He especially loves covering our mountain communities.
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