Wyoming Now Fifth In Nation For Craft Breweries Per Capita; Numbers Continue To Grow

Peanut butter and chocolate. They’re two very delicious flavors when put together.  But in a beer? 

The combination is not as wrong for taste buds as it sounds to the ear. 

It’s a beverage where it doesn’t hit you right away that its beer on the palate. But give it a little time, and the flavors all come together in a way that’s still refreshing, just like a beer should be. 

It’s an easy flavor combination to find these days on the Wyoming craft beer scene, which just continues to grow every day, seemingly regardless of whatever gets thrown at it. 

Pandemics. Supply chain issues. Inflation. Carbon dioxide shortages. You name it. The Wyoming craft beer industry has not stopped brewing because of it. Instead, it just keeps adding more flavors to the menu, and pouring more great beers for customers. 

Margarita beers are on tap in Wyoming here. Pumpkin ales on tap there. How about a grapefruit saison or a hot chilies beer? 

There’s even a beer called Fruity Pebbles on tap sometimes at the Wyoming Brewers Festival, though that particular variety is brewed by the High Plains Drafting — a home brew club — and not for sale anywhere just yet. 

Wyoming On The Rise

Wyoming has risen to fifth in the nation for breweries per capita, according to the most recent figures from the Brewers Association, a national organization in Colorado supporting the industry. 

It lists just over 50 breweries in the Cowboy State on the organization’s brewery finder. The list includes some that have not yet opened and are just in the works, and others that are the same brewery, just in a different location.

But most of them are different breweries, open for business, with a healthy list of new and different beers to try. 

That new and growing list of breweries in the Cowboy State is actually the trend that stands out the most to Coal Creek Tap brewer, Zackary Scott.  

“It’s just the number of breweries that are like opening and coming up,” he told cowboy State Daily. “I’m most impressed by like the number of people who are making the leap and opening up commercial breweries. I think that’s really cool especially in Wyoming.” 

Coal Creek Tap in Laramie is among a number of small, neighborhood craft breweries swelling the ranks of this budding industry in Wyoming. Together the breweries are crafting a stunningly vibrant brewery scene across the Cowboy State. 

Tourist destinations, in particular, appear to be the lightning that’s drawing these breweries to them. Lander, Casper, Laramie, Jackson, Ten Sleep, Sheridan — almost every city with a brewery also has a major tourist attraction of one kind or another in its back yard. 

While nationally, the craft beer scene is fascinated with sour and fruity beers, smaller, neighborhood breweries like Coal Creek are typically focusing on tried and true blends. 

“At the tap house in Laramie, what we keep online is a lot of American IPAs, English-style and Belgian styles, a lot of pales, farmhouse ales, and things like that,” Scott said. “I wouldn’t say there’s a whole lot of, I guess, niche and new and growing styles, but a lot of like, yeah, tried and true, like traditionally brewed styles of English and Belgian beers.” 

The economics of that can work particularly well for small neighborhood breweries, which need to appeal to a diverse set of people, many of whom may be traveling on through.  

There’s still room for more of these neighborhood breweries, Black Tooth Brewing’s head brewer Nick Betzner believes. 

Black Tooth is based out of Sheridan, but has opened satellites in Cheyenne and Casper.

“The room for big, regional breweries is shrinking,” Betzner said. “But the room for neighborhood shops is strong.” 

He expects to see many more neighborhood breweries popping up across the state, and believes there’s plenty of room for all of them. 

“You won’t see a lot of the old thing where Black Tooth started as a small house and then eventually started sending beer all over the state and to other states,” he said. “That’s a lot more limited now, but the big ones if they’re positioned correctly can survive.” 

Steph Reece, who opened Black Tooth’s Cheyenne location, told Cowboy State Daily she believes the Sheridan-based brewery is positioned very well.  

“Our model does about 100 miles of our border,” she said. “So we are in Montana, we just got our Yellowstone National park, and we’ve got South Dakota, Nebraska, and we’re in Colorado now as of 2021.”  

In Cheyenne, Black Tooth is now keeping 19 beers on tap, and some of those beers are indeed fruity, following the national trend.  

“Cheyenne loves fruited beers,” Reece said. “Which is pretty interesting. Not a lot of IPA drinkers here in town, but the industry, in general, it’s always been driven by IPAs.” 

IPAs Still Big Despite National Fruitiness 

Fruity beers are fun to try, Snake River’s Luke Bauer told Cowboy State Daily. The brewery is located in Jackson Hole. But when people buy a six-pack to take home, 60, 70 percent of the time Bauer sees that it’s something IPA. 

“They’re just really enduring,” he said. “Hazy IPAs just continue to dominate, with some fruit addition, and some without.” 

He thinks one reason for that in Wyoming is the state’s craft brew scene is still in a growth stage and is not yet over-developed like some markets in Colorado or California. 

Where he sees Wyoming’s craft brew industry growing best is looking for markets beyond the Cowboy State, rather than producing new and untested varieties that are fun to play around with, but might never catch on.  

“We’ve looked at like following the Snake River itself, and seeing if there are locations possible there,” he said. “We’re basically like the top of the Snake River, but there’s another 1,000 miles of Snake River, and that’s in the Idaho market.” 

Efforts like that will only help continue strengthening Wyoming’s already strong craft beer industry, leading to more great new breweries — and interesting varieties of beer — for a not-so-distant tomorrow.

Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.