Hello to our family, friends, neighbors, and all beer lovers ! As we work towards getting BKS Artisan Ales to opening day, we will begin providing regular blog entries to keep everyone up to date. If it seems like there hasn’t been much communication regarding the status of the brewery, some of that is intentional and some of it is for our own sanity (ha ha) ! Everything we do with our brewery is by the bootstraps. My wife (Mary) and I are the only employees for the brewery. Balancing a brewery opening, along with our full time jobs, and trying to carve out some time for rest/relaxation has been a challenge. That said, putting together the pieces of the puzzle to make this brewery happen has been some of the most fun we’ve ever had !
“BKS” is the acronym for the “Brookside” neighborhood in Kansas City that we call home. Our brewery will be located at the corner of 63rd St. and Holmes Rd in what’s now referred to as Brookside East. Our mission is to create the most flavorful and delicious beer we can possibly produce for our family, friends, and neighbors. For us, enjoying finely crafted beer, with the company of those you care most about, is one of the great things in the world. Having the privilege to produce and sell quality beer to our community is meaningful work that we take seriously.
We have received approval for our Federal TTB license and are within a week or two of receiving our State license. We have completed the necessary City paperwork and hope to wrap up the entire permit/licensing process by early Jan. 2017. We will be applying finishing touches to our tasting room during the month of January. If all goes as planned, we should be brewing by Feb. and hopefully serving some of our first batches of beer in March.
The types of beer we will be producing will include a range of styles. We’re most inspired by the Belgian farmhouse tradition of brewing. These can run the range of your traditional saison to some of the more modern takes on sour/mixed-fermentation ales. We are also continually amazed by the hop-forward beers coming out of the Northeast area of the United States. Most of our hoppy beers will focus on the Northeast style of brewing. In addition, we will have a range of milk stouts and imperial stouts with interesting adjunct additions and spirit barrel aged variants. And finally, we have the English Mild Ale. Perhaps the most simple beer we make, but one of our personal favorites to drink.
We’ve received a lot of questions about how we will run our tasting and retail room. It’s a small 750sq ft. space. We will have approx. 50 seats with a bit more seating on the patio when the weather is nice. Since we are a small batch brewery, we do not have the capacity to be open on a regular basis. In the beginning, it will take time to build capacity/inventory for serving on a regular basis. In lieu of that, be on the lookout for soft openings (likely starting in March). We are working on details, but the concept would be admittance by ticket or invite and you will have a specific # of pours provided and a bottle to take home. After a few soft openings, we will announce our plans for being open each Saturday. What you can expect when we open for Saturday’s are draft pours in the taproom and bottles to-go. We will use social media (Facebook, Twitter, and this blog) to update everyone on the bottles that will be released. The only place to get our beer is in our tasting and retail room !
Mary and I would like to send a “thank you” to the many people who have helped make our brewery possible, and very much appreciate the kind words and positive support that continues to flow in from the KCMO craft beer community ! Thanks. –Brian & Mary
