Andrew David Coates Brewmaster finds passion, market

Andy Coates' first stroll around the Fayetteville square left him thirsty.

The experienced brewer had only recently moved to town, and he saw the tanks through the window under the sign reading West Mountain Brewing Company. He stopped into the building, which also houses one of the area's Tiny Tim's Pizza restaurants. That day in the fall of 2010, he stepped up to the bar and asked for a beer.

Self Portrait

Date and place of birth: Jan. 9, 1982, Cedar Rapids, IA

Family: Wife Lacie Bray, son Truitt

Each one of the beers I make is: Drinkable and approachable.

My high school classmates would have expected me to: Have a career in science

If I could only drink one last beer, I would choose: Bell’s Two Hearted - a classic American IPA

What I learned when I became a father: That I have more patience than I thought.

If I had an extra hour in the day, I would: Go to the woods.

Fantasy guests to sit down and share a beer with: Anthony Bourdain and Willie Nelson

A word to sum me up: Honest

He instead was served up a sad story. West Mountain Brewing Company did not make its own beer. The beer tanks at the site, empty for 10 years, needed parts before they would function. It only confirmed Coates' belief he had entered an untapped market. Despite the rapidly growing population of Northwest Arkansas, only one microbrewery existed in the area. The Hog Haus Brewing Company in 2004 took over for the departed Ozark Brewing Company brew pub on Dickson Street in Fayetteville and brewed small batches to accompany the meals served there.

But Fayetteville and the rest of the region needed another option, Coates reasoned. He moved here after a sojourn to South America with his wife, Lacie Bray, a Rogers native. Having their own commercial brewery was something they had discussed at length. In a eureka moment, Coates decided Northwest Arkansas would be their home, not someplace such as Colorado already tapping in to the craft beer movement. He'd been here only once, to visit Bray's parents, but he knew this was the perfect place.

"There was no one here. This market was wide open," Coates says.

The idea looks prescient now. Since Coates introduced his first craft beers to the area, seven other Northwest Arkansas breweries have opened, including his own Ozark Beer Company, the Rogers production facility that debuted as the first brewery in Benton County. At least three additional breweries and a hard cider maker have announced plans for local drafts by the end of the summer. Those breweries, jointly, expanded the region's beer-drinking palette. Coates helped start the process.

"It's cool to be on the ground floor of that," Coates says.

'TOO SMART TO FAIL'

Coates earned a bachelor's in political science and international affairs at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio. It took him only three years to earn the degree.

He briefly considered becoming a teacher, like both of his parents.

"I don't think he knew what he wanted to do," says Katie Boyd of Chicago, his friend of more than 20 years. They grew up together in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and met at marching band camp. Boyd played flute; Coates was a member of the drum line, despite carrying all of 95 pounds on his then nearly 5-foot-tall frame.

As a teen, Coates wanted to be a marine biologist. He played with science kits and went to summer camp, where he learned to scuba dive. But he sometimes lacked motivation. He got good grades in courses he cared about. He settled for lesser scores when he didn't care, says Katie Selberg, his older sister.

"The running joke in the family was that we never knew what he would do, but we knew he would be fine," Selberg says. "We knew if he found his passion, he'd dive in with two feet." He was too smart to fail, the family always believed.

After college, Coates disappeared into the great outdoors, something he'd do more now if he had the time, he says. Coates spent one winter as a lift operator at a ski lodge and for several summers served as a rafting guide in Colorado. He met Bray, also a guide, on the river. They became fast friends their first summer together, then it turned in to a romantic relationship the next summer when they returned, Bray says. They married on Aug. 8, 2008.

Coates found his career passion in his mid-20s after working at a brewery, Boyd says. He didn't initially love beer -- in fact, he never drank in high school. He drank a few of the mass-produced, purposefully cheap Natural Lights in college. His first foray into something more refined came courtesy of a college roommate who brought in some beer a family member had made.

Coates started to get into beer, and he loved the science behind the beer just as much.

"It's a lot more complicated than people imagine," says Selberg, an engineering consultant who lives in rural Illinois.

TIRED, WET AND HAPPY

Coates followed Bray to Denver, a city where some of their rafting friends had landed. He went door to door, looking for a beer-industry job.

Coates found work on the packaging line at Great Divide Brewery for the then-smallish brewery in Denver. When the machine messed up a bottle -- and it often messed up a bottle -- it meant free beer for him or the other workers on the bottle line. It was about the only consolation in his $7-per-hour position.

Working in a brewery seemed like a glamorous job. But Coates' position called for hard work. He realized quickly that despite the low wages and the less-than-ideal environment, he enjoyed every minute.

"It's hard. You're either wet or cold or hot, but I didn't mind," Coates says.

Encouraged, he took a course on brewing through the American Brewers Guild. It ended with an eight-week apprenticeship at Goose Island Beer Company in Chicago.

He eventually landed full time at Goose Island, a large craft brewery that later sold to Budweiser and Bud Light maker Anheuser-Busch, now known as Anheuser-Busch InBev after its subsequent purchase by a Belgian beer conglomerate. He worked at Goose Island for about two years, shifting back and forth between the brew kettles and the cellar, working through every stage of the beer-making process.

"That job was invaluable in terms of experience. You got to see everything," he says. It also provided the large-scale brewing experience he would need later.

But large scale for a craft brewer is relative. In 2014, Ozark's first full year of operation, the company produced 1,400 barrels (a brewing term equal to 31 gallons) of beer. By contrast, 37.6 million barrels of Bud Light were produced in 2013.

But habits are changing. The industry tracking Brewers Association reported that U.S. beer sales were down 1.9 percent in 2013 from previous year totals. Craft beer was a major exception to that trend, increasing at a 17.2 percent rate over the same year.

SHOP (AND DRINK) LOCAL

The business plan Coates and Bray hatched while working on various farms in South America always called for this kind of success, just not this fast.

But the business plan certainly never called for Coates to make beer at West Mountain. Coates left his phone number that first day in the bar. Owner John Schmuecker called him back the next day. Coates told him what was needed to start the system. Schmuecker consented, and Coates started pouring beer in November 2011, just more than a year after arriving in the area.

"That was a real serendipitous thing. People got to know we could make some decent beer," he says.

Schmuecker knew all along that Coates would depart when he raised the capital for his own facility. Coates and Bray settled into Fayetteville, living within walking distance of the downtown square and plotting a commercial brewery for that town. The couple still calls Fayetteville home, and they have what Coates describes as a pretty typically Fayetteville setup, with a couple dogs and a small garden that comes in handy when Coates gets enough time to cook. Coates and Bray welcomed their first child, a boy named Truitt, on April 21, 2014.

As they looked for space for a production facility, the late 2012 vote that allowed liquor sales in Benton County also gave Coates, Bray and their partners another option.

"That wasn't even on our radar when we started this idea," Coates says.

An open warehouse on First Street in Rogers won out over several other choices. It simultaneously allowed Ozark Beer Company to be the first brewing operation in Benton County.

When building the brewery, Coates insisted the equipment be American made. That's a family theme befitting a pair of Iowa schoolteachers, and Coates carried his parent's beliefs into his brewery. He insisted on such products to the point that when Bray's uncle and resident handyman Coby Pistole went to Home Depot to look for a part, as he often did, the workers there identified him by the name U.S. because he demanded it for each nut and bolt.

"How can we expect people to pay more if we don't do the same?" Coates says.

Ozark Beer Company abides by a motto tied to that kind of local pride. The motto is painted on the wall outside the metal-shell warehouse and each aluminum can employees send out the door. "Hard work, honest beer," it reads.

Bray says hard work defines how Coates operates.

"He's pulled more overnighters at the brewery than he ever did in college," Bray says.

His sister knows of the all-nighters, too.

"I don't think that bothers him at all. 'Craft' brewing is a term that gets thrown around a lot. He sees this as a craft. He's an artist," Selberg, his sister, says.

Each can also displays something vital to Coates' philosophy about beer. The American pale ale, the first of his brews to be canned, says the following: "Pairs well with sharp cheddar, grilled meats, spicy foods and great company."

RAPID EXPANSION

Jeff Baldwin met Coates in the first few weeks the latter lived in town. Baldwin now serves as an Ozark Beer partner and also as the company's primary salesman.

As sales jobs go, this one seems easy.

"I'm selling them an excellent product. We have the best beer in the area, the freshness, the consistency," Baldwin says. He estimates he could put taps in another 30 locations in Northwest Arkansas if the supply could keep up.

"The ceiling is just what we want it to be," Baldwin says. "We can take this as far as we want to take it. But we're staying true to what we are. We don't want to take care of the nation and region."

The brewery may eventually enter the Little Rock market, but Coates hesitates at the notion of expanding much further much faster. Already, the brewery in September doubled its capacity, and Coates just hired assistant brewer Jesse Gagnon away from Mother's Brewing in Springfield, Mo. A new canning line, also an earlier-than-expected upgrade, came online the first week of February.

His love of the outdoors plays into his decision to put his retail beers in cans, not bottles. Cans are better for the beer, Coates says, because aluminum blocks more light than glass. The material is also infinitely recyclable. He makes the kind of beer that works well for float trips and outdoor excursions, and "you can throw an empty can at someone and not hurt them," he says.

A CRAFTED COMMUNITY

Coates insists on taking care of his network in Northwest Arkansas first, and the combined brewery and tasting room operate according to a specific plan to do just that.

The tasting room exists inside the warehouse. There are no televisions. Music frequently plays, often from The Wood Brothers, one of Coates' favorite groups. Picnic tables and old dining room tables provide a place to sit down with a beverage in a room where the heater only barely works. The lack of other options forces people to hold conversations with each other, and that's exactly what Coates wanted.

"Beer is meant to be shared," he says. "Enjoy each other, and something delicious."

Central to the idea of sharing is the relatively low alcohol content of the beers Coates makes. Furthermore, there's the planned Table Series of beers, designed to be even lower in alcohol percentage than the normal craft beers. The first table beer, a saison, is a low-alcohol version of a typically fruity style of pale ale. The saison officially debuted at the tap room earlier this month, with more examples expected soon.

The environment at Ozark Beer owes some of its mentality to a winery Coates worked at briefly while the couple lived in Washington, Bray says. The winery was a community center where people flocked in after a day of hard work.

"We try to stay away from the 'bar' mentality. We have Capri Suns (for children). It's less of a bar, and more of a social place," Bray says.

And a non-judgmental one, too.

"I think we're surprised at how many people have never had a craft beer," Bray says.

The brewery's tasting room, open on the weekend, doubles as a teaching center. The brewery makes several principal beers, including a cream stout, an India pale ale, a Belgian ale and an American pale. Coates says the consistency of those products was more important to him than trying something fancy -- although he remains willing to experiment, as he did with the March 20 launch of a bourbon-barrel aged double cream stout at a sold-out event in the Rogers tasting room. Parties of the kind that surrounded the release of the aged stout will happen about once a month, but not all of them will feature special beers. The space is a showcase for art, music and friendship.

The latter of those elements gets doled out in equal portions to the beverages. Beer is best shared with friends.

"No one comes to a brewery angry," Coates says.

NAN Profiles on 03/29/2015

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