Hiking Mount Jumbo was easier as a teen. I used to zip up it regularly with a friend I met in a salsa dancing class at the University of Montana in Missoula as a college freshman. Somehow 16 years had already passed between those tiny-dancer days in western Montana and this summer, when I slogged back up the oversized hill tethered to my erratic orange dog, Lester, who cowered at rainbow-sailed paragliders landing around us as if they were pterodactyls.
I kept a plodding pace while untangling myself from a web of dog leash, for I was carrying precious cargo: cans of my favorite beer, Montana’s celebrated Cold Smoke Scotch Ale, meant to be sipped at sunset atop the L Trail with my husband, Craig. This was his first night in the beloved Missoula of my youth, and I wanted to help the place make a good first impression.
As we reached our destination, we cracked open a couple now only sort-of-cold Cold Smokes in the fading light while also juggling cameras and restraining our two bloodthirsty dogs, eager to eat an aloof grouse wandering nearby.
“Cheers!”
Things had apparently changed a lot since Cold Smoke and I were young together—not just for me, but for Cold Smoke’s creator. I came back to Missoula, in part, to rapturously drink the Cold Smoke I can’t get in my homeland a few states away, only to find KettleHouse Brewing Co. had just closed its birthplace in Missoula and had moved out of town. As the sun set, my idyllic memories mixed with thoughts about what the beer and I might now be instead.
Like hiking Mount Jumbo, I remember it being easier to drink a Cold Smoke, too.
Below us was a leafy and tranquil Missoula hamlet where I tried my first Cold Smoke at a party, hosted at a Poplar Street house affectionately nicknamed “the Poplar Palace.” A super cool guy there handed me a glass of the Scotch Ale poured from a growler.
That KettleHouse creation was unlike anything I’d tasted before. It was smooth and dark, with hints of coffee or chocolate. It was the first beer I really liked. Up to that point, I’d only managed sporadic sips of pale ale infrequently offered by my dad, or cans of PBR precariously appropriated for college parties.
KettleHouse sometimes describes its biggest award winner as a “gateway beer,” keenly aware of its seductive power to make craft beer converts. “I think a dirty little secret about beer is that people like it slightly sweet,” says Al Pils, KettleHouse’s brand engagement manager. “The domestics—the Bud-Miller-Coorses of the world—are slightly sweet.”
Cold Smoke’s disciples carried its good word throughout the treasure state, resulting in a Montana mania for KettleHouse’s flagship beer since its 2002 release. Four years later, KettleHouse became the first modern Montana craft brewery to can its beer, a decision that coincided perfectly with the start of my college education. Pils says data shows that within Montana, Cold Smoke has been the biggest craft beer for at least the past 10 or 15 years.
The image of a skier or snowboarder (it’s whatever you want it to be, Pils says diplomatically) graces the aluminum, adding to the appeal. Cold Smoke was named after the powder-perfect Montana snow craved by winter sports enthusiasts, but for some, the name evokes actual smoke. There’s no smoke or Scotch in the beer, Pils says, but “the power of suggestion is pretty strong.” Mark Thomsen, who has for the past 30 years been a clerk at Worden’s Market and Deli—part of what Pils calls the “holy trinity” of Cold Smoke’s original retailers—tastes a peaty flavor with “a little kiss at the very end.” For Pils, the Scotch Ale is “basically a modernized Amber [Ale]” and a “widely approachable, malt-forward beer.”
“I think a dirty little secret about beer is that people like it slightly sweet.”
I planned to buy the Cold Smoke for our hike at its birthplace, but we found KettleHouse’s first location in downtown Missoula temporarily closed while visiting in June. The Myrtle Street Taphouse had just been sold to new owners.
For the first time in its history, KettleHouse was suddenly without its anchor in the eclectic city where it all started. Did it matter? We grabbed a pack of Cold Smoke at another “holy trinity” seller, the Orange Street Food Farm grocery store, and saved our questions for the next day’s trip to KettleHouse’s sole brewery in nearby Bonner.
KettleHouse started a craft beer renaissance in Montana after it successfully lobbied the state in 1999 to allow breweries to sell pints in their tasting rooms for on-premise consumption. But breweries weren’t allowed to sell those pints if they produced more than 10,000 barrels a year, so KettleHouse owners Tim O’Leary and Suzy Rizza got creative in the face of growing demand and broke their operations into three legal entities. The beer-and-wine license at the first taphouse came to be owned by O’Leary’s mother, who died last year, forcing its recent sale. Their other Missoula taphouse, a “northside” location, closed in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A 2017 state law expanded taproom pint sales, allowing them at breweries producing up to 60,000 barrels a year. That same year, KettleHouse production started in Bonner. The brewery now produces 25,000 barrels a year, Pils says.
It’s a mere 15-minute drive from where Cold Smoke was born to the street now named after the beer (Cold Smoke Avenue) in Bonner, where KettleHouse’s only brewery is today. The roughly 30,000-square-foot facility rests on an old lumber mill site and is far grander than the comparatively tiny industrial building where KettleHouse got its start in 1995 as a “U-Brew.”
Eric Muller, a visitor from Seattle, proclaims from the brewery’s patio that he “hands down” likes the Bonner spot more than the Myrtle Street taproom. It’s easy to see why. We were perched just above the scenic Blackfoot River coursing beside a sunny taproom and the KettleHouse Amphitheater, where I narrowly missed an outdoor concert by my favorite band, Lord Huron. Muller, a river rafter, says the place has a “middle-of-nowhere kind of ambiance” that he digs.
As for Myrtle Street, its new owners want to keep its vibe, Pils says, but a rebuild is expected. The Missoulian reported a mixed-use development is planned after leases expire for a cluster of businesses there, including the taproom and a bakery.
“It was really not set up for growth as far as what we were trying to do, and I mean, full disclosure, it is a piece of shit,” Pils says bluntly of his old haunts. “Like when you shut the back door, the whole wall would shake. It needs to be knocked over. It was a piece of shit, but it was our piece of shit.”
In a perfect world, the birthplace of Cold Smoke would still belong to KettleHouse, “no doubt about it,” Pils adds, but there are also benefits to getting a little leaner. “We’ve invested a lot of money in the brewing side of our thing,” he says. “Our canning line is top-end and our brewhouse is top-end, so that just helps with our quality which of course just helps with everything else. Our owner really places a lot of emphasis on quality control, as any brewery should, and that’s really been a great way to do it.”
KettleHouse brews with Montana-grown and -malted barley, hops from Washington’s Yakima Valley, and water from Missoula’s aquifer. The Cold Smoke—including cherry and vanilla varieties—tasted better than ever fresh from the tap in Bonner. And in the same way Cold Smoke first blew my mind, the new KettleHouse beers I tried were just as deliciously surprising. I tacked on several new favorites in one gleeful sitting, including the spicy Michelada, a whiskey barrel-aged Mexican Chocolate Stout, and the lemon-lime Montanarita. I felt like salsa dancing again.
“When you shut the back door, the whole wall would shake. It needs to be knocked over. It was a piece of shit, but it was our piece of shit.”
KettleHouse’s legacy of innovation and fun was top of mind as I admired head brewer Zach Nelson’s tie-dye shirt proudly advertising Fresh Bongwater. It took me back to epic 1998 news coverage of its hemp beer counterpart, Olde Bongwater, being side-eyed by federal authorities, which spawned fantastic urban legends about late-night raids. (Not true, by the way, Pils adds.)
In the decades since then, Montana’s craft beer market has grown dramatically. When Pils started at KettleHouse 23 years ago, craft beer made up maybe 5% of all beer in the state, he says, and now that’s risen to about 25%. And Cold Smoke has crossed state lines, with a distribution footprint into eastern Washington, northern Idaho, parts of Wyoming, and most recently, Utah. But sadly it’s still not for sale where I’m from, California (yes, sorry Montanans, I’m from California). The next time you see one of us, take pity. We’re weary pilgrims from a land where there is no Cold Smoke.
The Cold Smoke kicked in coming down Mount Jumbo. I was still sipping mine as we descended. My husband’s empty beer can sat comfortably in one of my pockets like it was a koozie, making me feel whimsical. I marveled at giant dandelion puffs ready to take flight beneath a pink and purple sky, but mostly I admired Craig, our big dog, Lester, and our small dog, Gus, walking ahead. I felt like I was floating on a breeze the last time I hiked this trail years before. Now I had taken hold of something. I’d made a little clan, my chosen family, and here we were together, content and connected, in a place I love with a beer I love. Who could ask for more? The Cold Smoke buzz helped slow me down enough to bring that into a blissful focus.
I’ve never set foot in the building where the most significant beer of my life was created. I used to be too young, and then I was too late. I’m glad it turned out that way. The best “taprooms” of my memories will remain hot springs and camping trips and now Mount Jumbo—places where nature is abundant and the company is good. The immortal figure thrashing through snow on the Cold Smoke cans has always known this.
Next time, I’ll grab a free beer with a KettleHouse tube purchase and float the Blackfoot River until it spills into the Clark Fork and Missoula, thinking about how everything keeps flowing so beautifully along. To enjoy a Cold Smoke to the fullest, the key ingredient just needs to be Montana.
Words by Carmen Kohlruss
Photos by Craig Kohlruss
