IT'S A GRAND SLAM FOR SUMMIT BREWERY!

Though the St. Paul Saints emit colorful sparks in the shadow of the Minnesota Twins, the minor league baseball team embodies a certain romance with tradition that consistently keeps their small stadium packed on nice evenings. In stands that nicely hug the field, fans and purists beam as they take in the true essence of a sport many believe has been diluted by the majors with big money, inflated egos and corporate structure. Saints hustle for the love of the game (as well as salaries that approximate those of their supporters), and a circus-like atmosphere pervades the stands. Stars can be taken in when pop flies briefly join them.

It just makes sense that only a couple of miles west of the stadium there sits a small St. Paul brewery that shares in the excitement generated by an enthusiastic return to something grand - and the rejection of something bland.

In providing the Twin Cities metro area a variety of beers with hearty flavor and character, Summit Brewing Company has simply knocked the ball out of the park. Feisty president and head brewer, Mark Stutrud, smiled when told his brewery shared an allegorical connection with the beloved Saints. After brave starts, both now operate at full capacity, have captured the hearts of loyal locals and they plan to keep slugging away.

Stutrud possesses a warm laugh. It breaks out often when he's talking about his brewery and beer. When he walks through his brewery and calmly chats with his employees, you sense a deep pride that developed over Summit's eight successful years. His flagship brand, Extra Pale Ale, is found in many metro area liquor stores and draft accounts, and his other popular year-round beer, Great Northern Porter, boasts a first place medal from the 1987 Great American Beer Festival. Summit Brewing Company has been mentioned several times in national publications as a brewer of high quality, distinctive beers, and the Twin Cities' local papers and magazines have also piled on awards and accolades. Stutrud acknowledges the praise, but other things make him tick.

"You look for a certain amount of notoriety, but I really believe that awards are one thing, and sales and consistency and a belief in your own products are absolutely necessary," he said. This business acumen, paired with a passion for brewing a unique beer, brought two success stories to St. Paul and Minneapolis: the rise of a popular business that now employs 21 people, and a rise in the quality of life with fresh, local and extremely tasty beers. Both successes are not lost on Stutrud. They were all a part of plan that started as a dream/educated guess in 1982.

Early on, he and three other employees focused on what kind of beer they themselves would like to drink. After concentrating on how to make it different, they decided because the area lacked a local brewery that produced authentic, British-styled ale, this should be the route to take. In the early and mid-80s this decision proved quite ahead of its time. Though lovers of great beer have been around since civilization, many drinkers weren't as adventurous in their beer quaffing exploits at the time Stutrud and crew made their decision.

"There were a number of people who found it quite odd and strange," said the head brewer, adding that for someone to go from a famous light beer to a full-bodied ale such as Summit could be a shock to the system. "Quite often the response could be a negative one," he chuckled. However, as time and tastes travel on, people now seem to be actively seeking something they might have shunned a decade ago.

"What really strikes through as a commonality is that people have been weaned on typical, bland domestic U.S. lagers. But beer drinking is becoming much more of a conscious activity, where people are seeking flavors - a sensory experience beyond just drinking for euphoria for example. They want to be able to taste something pure in their mouth. And once people become oriented to that kind of experience, it's awfully difficult to go back. As the number of smaller breweries grow, and the larger breweries are producing more flavorful beers, you have more and more choices. Which is what it's all about," Stutrud shared.

With a heavy background in social work (Stutrud served nine years as a clinical social worker with a specialty in adolescent chemical dependency) the brewer possesses a special knack for keeping his finger on society's pulse. His insights on why people are starting to reach for the unknown and untried beers show the man has spent years studying not only the process of running a successful brewery, but the cyclical nature of society as well.

"We're in a society that expresses itself through its consumption. Beer is a type of product that is being rediscovered. Europeans are brought up with the full knowledge that there are more types of beer than there are wines, but U.S. beer drinkers with a wide range of ages, are actually discovering beer for the first time," explained Stutrud, adding he believes this resurgence in microbreweries is beyond a trend.

"It's definitely a reality of what's happening. People say that things come in cycles, and certainly we are in a cycle where beer is coming back - different styles and different characters and flavors, away from something that is uniform, a beverage that's reduced to the lowest common denominator. I would not call it a fad. The fact that there's still a lot of people out there in the population who are not familiar with our products is a good thing, because the market potential for flavorful beers is quite great."

Having a handle on society's shifting makeup as well as the key to brewing excellent beer has Summit Brewing Company sitting at the right place at the right time with the right thing. Even the bigger beer companies seem to be furrowing their brows as they observe the rise of microbrewery beers. And when a company as huge as Anheuser-Busch starts test marketing an ale, it's obvious that some long dormant cages have been rattled. Still, will the major league players be able to produce something as tasty, fresh and distinctive as a local brewery that has pledged allegiance to quality and serving a small area?

Much of Summit's unique flavor has to do with the English ale yeast strains used in addition to the brewery's formulations. A pale malt produced in Shakopee, MN and two-row barley primarily from Montana join filtered St. Paul water in the beer's make-up. The end result is a beer that none of the larger brewing companies could hold a can to.

Stutrud and crew didn't just happen to stumble across the award-winning recipe and immediately secure draft and wholesaler accounts. "We were pretty young coming out of the chute and getting into the market place. There wasn't a beer wholesaler that would touch us with a 10-foot pole to be honest, so we ended up peddling our own kegs place to place as we secured the draft business," he recalled.

During those early days, he and three others brewed a couple of times during the week, filled kegs and self-distributed their beer for the first nine months. Their first six draft accounts in 1986 swelled to 150 by 1994, and Summit beer can now be found in 350 liquor stores. Seventy-five establishments serve the beer bottled. The company has steadily grown at a rate of about 35 percent from year-to-year for the past several years, which has been promising enough to encourage Stutrud to plan building and starting up a new facility in St. Paul sometime in the near future.

The Twin Cities metro area makes up 90 percent of Summit's sales, while the remainder goes into outside Minnesota, western Wisconsin and North Dakota. A little goes into Omaha, and Atlanta has a couple of draft accounts due to a unique freight arrangement. Stutrud and his company have no plans, however, for U.S. or world domination. It just doesn't click with the St. Paul brewer's ethos. "I don't think Summit Pale Ale should be in every draft account in Minneapolis and St. Paul, and I also don't think Summit Pale Ale should be all over the country," Stutrud bluntly stated.

CLEANING OUT THE COPPER TINS AT SUMMIT

He added that from a business point of view, Summit is looking at staying very local and regionalized with a significant market penetration. "We're not looking at national distribution with a superficial penetration of the market. We also believe that by the nature of the product you are limited in how far you can go. That not only keeps you conservative and humble at times, but also a part of what I like about this particular job is that when I get out of St. Paul and go to Chicago or Cincinnati or wherever, then I'm able to seek out the local beers."

This love for exploring other beers pretty much set him on this successful course. In the late 70s he'd been drinking more imported beer, and home brews of friends as well as his own. This led him into seeking out the products of smaller breweries, and he eventually started coming across some of the individuals who had started up small, fledgling operations in the United States.

After deciding he needed a change from the social work career, Stutrud quickly started up some part-time feasibility research to determine whether or not the area would be good for a small brewery. From the beginning of 1984 he conducted some market research in the Minneapolis, St. Paul area, canvassing and interviewing various individuals who owned on-premise establishments (nightclubs, taverns, bars and restaurants). He also travelled other smaller breweries, primarily around Seattle and Portland to gather figures and direction.

Business research showed the brewer he'd need about $400,000 to get up and running, and it took him about a year-and-a-half to raise the money. Selling stocks for the brewery proved to be a difficult task. After roughly 1,600 phone calls and 400 appointments, he eventually found enough people who were willing to put up $10,000 of their own money. The other 40-45 percent of the investment came through a small business loan. The brewery is a privately held Minnesota corporation with around 48 shareholders.

"There are two basic things about me. I guess I've got a pretty good imagination. Secondly, I'm awfully stubborn. It takes both of those kinds of qualities, I think, to get involved with not only this business but other small businesses as well." said Stutrud.

While the business end of things carried on, Stutrud was being mentored and trained by two master brewers - Charles McElevey and Fred Thomasser.

Thomasser is a retired master brewer whose father was a Cooper barrel maker. He started as a brewing apprentice in 1934 after prohibition was repealed and worked with a number of New York City breweries before coming to Minnesota to work with the Schmidt breweries in the 50s. "I was real fortunate to work with Fred in the fact that he knows not only large breweries, but he knows a lot about small breweries. He really typifies the quintessential, practical brewer," added Stutrud. McElevey, the other fellow he learned the trade from, was the original master brewer and engineer for Red Hook Brewery in Seattle. Stutrud also met Bill Newman of William S. Brewing Company in Albany, New York and spent a week with him at his plant. Newman produced primarily cask conditioned ales, which are unfiltered ales carbonated right in the keg. In addition to this tutelage, he started attending courses at the Siebel Institute of Technology, a brewing school in Chicago. Finally, Stutrud started transforming a transmission shop on St. Paul's University Avenue into a brewery. Test brewing started in July of 1986, and draft beer was available for the trade that September.

The company installed a mixture of custom fabricated and some used equipment, particularly from Germany. Summit's copper brewhouse was built in 1938 in a small Bavarian village called Heimertingen. The small, 30 hectoliter system provides about 25 barrels of finished beer per brew and gives the interior of Summit's building a warm ambiance despite its auto history. Three shifts Monday through Thursday keep six full-time brewers busy. This part of the brewery goes 24 hours to produce 75 barrels of wort per day, which is the maximum for the brewhouse.

Summit Brewing Company gladly opens its arms and doors to the public each Saturday at 1 p.m. for a generous two-hour tour. Groups averaging 40 people (though this number fluctuates from 35 to 75 due to various circumstances) are led by a knowledgeable and charismatic tour guide who, in addition to explaining how Summit beer is made and bottled, gives an interesting history of beer itself.

People get to soak in the atmosphere, taste and gain an appreciation for the raw ingredients and are made to feel welcome in the resurgence of small U.S. breweries. Plenty of mingling with fellow beer lovers takes place and the tour guide is easy to corner for specific questions. To top all of this off at the end of the tour, each person is given three wooden nickels to exchange for generous portions of the available beers.

"When you put something together that's entertaining and also educational and very social, it's a nice experience. Various individuals will actually use this brewery tour as a way of getting together socially with each other. When you make your brewery very accessible to them, there's a deeper identification which is directly related to brand loyalty," Stutrud shared.

He encourages folks from out of town to visit his establishment, but stresses to call ahead to set up a reservation. The tours fill up quickly, and lately it seems Summit's popularity has started to snowball.

Getting to the menu, Summit's Extra Pale Ale is 3.9 percent alcohol by weight, medium body with a definite copper hue to it. It's quite well hopped, so there is a degree of bitterness in the flavor and aroma. The Great Northern Porter is a black, opaque ale and is 4.3 percent alcohol by weight. Its finish is bittersweet, and the hoppiness is well balanced by the roasted malt character.

Summit also offers five seasonal beers. Winter Ale, which is a strong, brown ale with a hefty 5 percent alcohol by weight for the colder months will precede the introduction of a new India Pale Ale. This is very hoppy and dry beer. When this new beer finishes its run, then the company will be into its bock season.

The maibock will be called Heimertingen, to commemorate the Bavarian village where the brewhouse came from. The beer is 5.75 percent alcohol by weight. It's a true lager that's held onto for six weeks before packaging, and is very malty with a hint of bitterness.

Just the opposite of this is the new Hefe Weizen, a Bavarian beer with a Bavarian yeast that gives it a clove and fruity taste. It's lower in alcohol, with 3.3 percent alcohol by weight and is meant to be a summertime quaffing beer.

Just last fall, the brewery introduced an alt beer - a style that originated in Dusseldorf. It has a deep copper hue, and possesses primarily a malt flavor profile with a certain amount of hoppiness or dryness with about 3.8 percent alcohol by weight. Stutrud explained "alt" is the German word for "old" and that it's a top fermented beer. This puts it closer to the ale family than the lager and is what someone might describe as a Germanic beer.

The company may add some additional types, but is basically looking at having the pale ale and the porter year round with one seasonal that's available at any given point in time.

As the president described Summit's menu in his office, an atmosphere of calm certainty filled the room. Stutrud admitted his skin used to be thin when he learned someone had never heard of his brewery. Now, however, he relishes the opportunity to gain a potential new customer in the same way a pastor might welcome a lost soul into his church.

"I think brewing is something that is special and unique. In a lot of ways it's been revered I guess to a certain extent, or admired by most individuals and our culture. I don't know if it's quite on the level of being a pastor or a priest. Certainly when settlements were establishing themselves, the two things that usually went up were the church and a brewery. And not necessarily in that order," he shared with a smirk.

With his current facility reaching its capacity (27,000 barrels) and capping out its physical ability, Stutrud lit up when talking about how the planned new facility could have Summit producing somewhere between 50,000 - 60,000 barrels per year. Of course, putting out this much beer per year pushes Summit Brewing Company out of the microbrewery ranks. Technically, Summit stopped being a microbrewery at the end of 1994. And that doesn't phase Stutrud at all.

"I tend not to use the term 'microbrewery', because it's so damned misleading. It's been a nice term to introduce hand-crafted, traditional styles of beer to a consumer, however, it's really been bastardized over the years. Initially, people who coined the term microbrewery said it was a brewery that produced less than 10,000 barrels. Well, when some of their favorite breweries started growing up, so to speak, they changed it to 15,000 barrels. Now we're in a situation where we're seeing contract brewers who are saying they're a microbrewery. They're using that as a certain amount of cache or status to entice the customers...it's an advertising scheme that I'm very critical of," the brewer vented.

Though he chafes a bit at the misconceptions he feels are brought on by advertising ploys, the affable brewer oozes satisfaction and knowledge when it comes to describing fellow brewers and the revolution they helped start. He said he shares good camaraderie with area brewers.

"The resurgence of small breweries has brought more life, more excitement and more interest and awareness about beer in general to the U.S. population than anything in the past. So, any movement or form of competition that raises the awareness of specialty beers and different styles is good overall. It helps the bigger brewers as well."

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