Horse and Dragon a Fort Collins family affair

FORT COLLINS — Tim and Carol Cochran could easily have located their Horse and Dragon taproom in Bend, Ore. But after a bit of marital haggling, the couple chose Fort Collins.

Four years later, they remain quite happy about that decision.

“She went to Boulder High, and I grew up in Eugene,” Tim Cochran said. “Her grandparents worked at CSU, and their family has a little cabin up Poudre Canyon. We’ve been married 29 years and have been coming here ever since we’ve been married. We got to see the craft beer movement in Oregon and Colorado happening over the ‘90s and 2000s, so we were always able to visit places that had good beer.

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“Colorado and Oregon were both on the list, with family ties and history. My parents were lobbying hard for Oregon and she was happy to go to Bend. But it always came back to Fort Collins. It’s a great town and a great beer town. But honestly, I had to convince her to move here because we’d never lived anyplace with our families. I had to convince her by giving her some numbers. The opportunity for new growth is better here — but yeah, it’s still tough. The market is relatively mature from a consumer standpoint. You still have to win.”

Getting to live on Colorado’s Front Range finally tipped the scales, as well as Fort Collins’ vibe. “The environmental stewardship, the outdoor activities. Everybody’s involved,” he said. “I wouldn’t describe anybody here as passive. They go out and do what they want to do.”

Hindsight proved their choice was sound. “Her father passed away last year,” Cochran said, “so actually we were glad to be here.”

For a location, he said, “we found an old airplane hangar that backed up on the old Fort Collins airpark. It was being used as a wrestling gym. The downside was the smell — but brewing covers that up pretty well.”

They built a brewery, warehouse and taproom that takes up a total of 7,200 square feet. But they’d obviously have to learn about making beer.

Tim and Carol had met as students at Stanford, and were new to the idea of a brewpub making its own beer when a friend took them to the Tied House in Mountain View, Calif. Tim Cochran learned about the beer industry from working 16 years in international distribution for SABMiller, through branch offices in places such as Taiwan and Colombia.

“I homebrewed for a long time, especially when we were overseas,” he said. “But it’s quite a difference turning out 15 barrels as opposed to five gallons on my stove.

“We hired a brewer from Odell to have the final stamp on the equipment we bought. Then in September we hired a head brewer, Josh Evans. He had a fermentation science degree from Oregon State and had worked at Terminal Gravity Brewing in Enterprise, Ore.”

What kind of beer would they make? “Drinkability is our main goal,” Cochran said. “We want beer that’s drunk in pints, not out of a small snifter — and the best pint is one you want to have another one of.

“We will never sell beer that goes off or doesn’t work. We dumped three batches. We’re not going to sell the beer just to sell it. It’s definitely not a Belgian style or a Saison. We give our brewer the freedom to try new things. I think that’s what the role of a small brewer should be. We’ve come up with 105 different brands since we’ve opened.”

The brewery needed a name, too. “Horse and Dragon was on a list I made while flying around the world selling other people’s beer. We’d lived in Asia, and in the Chinese zodiac, I was born in the Year of the Horse and Carol was born in the Year of the Dragon. It represents our lives together: The Asian dragon symbolizes good luck and strength, and the horse symbolizes history and hard work in the West.”

Horse and Dragon opened on May 1, 2014.

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The best part, Cochran said, was the “dynamic, fantastic” support he got from existing breweries.

“Odell, New Belgium, CooperSmith’s. From the beginning, they just opened up their doors and said, “If you need anything, or if you need advice, come and chat. We got our hops a day before our cooler was turned on, and Odell said, ‘Absolutely. Bring it over and put it in ours.’ There are jillions of examples of brewers sharing yeast or grains, doing collaborations. Everybody is involved in that, not just the big guys. It’s brewers like Equinox and Black Bottle.”

The taproom’s short hours, noon to 6 p.m. daily, are deliberate, Cochran said. “We close at 6 so we’re not competing with the bars and restaurants that are our customers. But we’re the only place where all of our 12 current beers will be on tap. There’s not a bar that will take 12 of ours to handle.

“We’re open every day except New Year’s, Thanksgiving, Christmas and Tour de Fat Day; we think that should be a national holiday.”

After hours, community groups can use the tap room. “We’ve had weddings, Bible study, comic book groups, even political meetings where candidates come,” he said. “If everybody has a beer in their hands, they seem to be a little more relaxed about things.”

The Cochrans employ eight full-time workers and around 10 part-timers. Carol Cochran runs human resources, but her husband said her main passion is community involvement, being proactive, giving back.

“Every employee chooses a cause; hers is childhood literacy,” he said. “Mine is clean water, watershed health, advocating best practices on saving our water and using it most efficiently.”

The brewery had only distributed beer to its customers in kegs, but started bottling its beers in February,” Cochran said, “so we’ll have new challenges with liquor stores.”

But mostly, he said, Horse and Dragon’s future will stay centered around its four governing principles: “Making great beer, operating in an ethical way, treating people like we’d like to be treated, and minimizing our impact on the environment.

“We want to be proactive members of our community,” he said. “It sounds self-serving, but we’re not marketing, just doing — putting in time to make Northern Colorado a more livable place.”

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