HARRISON -- Kenny Peden is a busy guy. In addition to putting in 40 hours a week as a welder, he devotes several more to crafting another product.
Peden is the brew master at Boone County's first microbrewery at Brick Oven Pizza.
"I always liked drinking good beer," said Peden, who also has been home brewing for more than eight years.
According to manager Nathan Patton, Brick Oven has been crafting its own beer for about two years, but it wanted to keep it low key while the brew was developed.
Brick Oven has two systems in place: The original equipment, which can make 12 to 15 gallons at a batch, and a new tank, which can make about 140 gallons. The stainless steel tanks are in the open, and customers can watch as Peden goes about his work adding ingredients, checking burners and temperatures and the other steps that go into making beer.
It takes about four weeks, Peden said, for a batch to go from mixing the recipe to being poured into a customer's glass.
A fermenter and an old coffee grinder, to grind hops and barley, round out the microbrewery's equipment.
The shiny, sparkling tanks in front of him brought another comment from Patton.
"It's amazing how clean you have to be," he said. "One small bit of dirt can ruin a batch."
The Brick Oven microbrewery orders its ingredients through Prairie Market, which is near the restaurant. For a small batch, Peden said, he will use 20 to 30 pounds of grain and a pound of hops.
Peden makes two main types of beer, pale ale and brown ale, but he's always "dabbling" with other recipes, such as amber ale, red ale and oatmeal ale.
"The recipes are always evolving," Patton said.
The variety is what makes the product appealing, Peden said.
"That's the great thing about craft beers," he said. "It doesn't always taste the same."
The microbrewery has the support of Brick Oven owner Scott Stevens, whose passion is beer, Patton said. Stevens, who lives in Cabot, owns 10 Brick Oven restaurants, six of them in Arkansas. Stevens will ask about sales, store appearance and other business-related areas whenever he visits Harrison, Patton said. There's always one other question.
"How's the beer coming along?"
Patton hopes within a year or so, the microbrewery can supply all the other Brick Oven restaurants with beer. There are also plans to eventually bottle the beer. Making its own root beer is still another goal.
The craft beer craze has resulted in numerous microbreweries popping up. Patton said numerous beer lovers have stopped at Brick Oven to sample its offering to the world of craft beers.
Regular customers have also taken to the product.
"They drink it faster than we can brew it," Peden said.
NW News on 12/13/2015