Pikes Peak Brewery Owner and Head Brewer Chris Wright loves beer, but he knows that tastes evolve. His home brewing days in Colorado and experiences overseas in Germany serving in the military opened his mind to new tastes. The opening of his brewery in Monument in 20ll influenced the flavors he brewed but also the importance of drinkability.
Wright has lived in Monument for almost 20 years. “I knew this area of the world needed something unique to call their own because when we opened [Pike’s Peak Brewery] in 2011, at that point there weren’t a whole lot of places to go and hang out in Monument to enjoy the day and get to know your neighbors.”
He jokes that the neighborhood he lived in didn’t allow privacy fences, only split rail fencing, “And what that enabled you to do is to see your neighbors. So, we would always wave and say, ‘Hello.’”
His neighbors would see him home brewing and they would be curious and come over to see what he was doing. “There were some summers where every single weekend it felt like either someone came over for dinner, or we went over to their house and brought some beer. And I just realized that beer can connect the community.”
That is what Wright wanted to do with Pike’s Peak Brewery: Create a space where the community could get together and connect over handcrafted beer, similar to what they do in Europe. Wright was in the Army, stationed in Europe, and this is where he first understood that the brewery doesn’t necessarily have to be a bar or a nightclub. It can be a place for the community to gather.
The Pillars of the Pikes Peak Brewing in Three Initial Recipes
Wright began brewing the recipes at home that would become the pillars of the Pikes Peak Brewery: The Devil’s Head Red, the Gold (which was called Gold Rush at the time) and the Summit House Stout. “Several years before we opened, I actually took those three recipes and that’s pretty much all I brewed because I wanted to brew and then tweak an ingredient or a process or something along the way, so I’d understand how that impacts the brewing process. That’s really how I learned. But the first couple of years before we opened, it was pretty much those three beers and that was about it.”
In the Army, Wright eventually got stationed at Fort Carson but before that, he was based in Germany and then at Fort Gordon in Georgia. He laughs that before he went to Germany, his “splurge beer” was Miller Genuine Draft – “not the best taste in high-end beers if you will.”
But he explains that when you are stationed in Germany, you live “on the economy” and they assign you someone who has lived there in the country for about a year to kind of show you the ropes of what things cost and how to go about the standard of living.
“As a recent college graduate, I had no idea, had never been outside the country, and really didn’t really know what it was going to be like to live on the economy in a foreign country.” He says the first meal he had there – he says he’ll never forget it – was in Bamberg, Germany, which happens to be the capital of Rauchbier, which is a smoked beer.
“We went to a Greek restaurant and sat down, and the waitress said, ‘You need to order one of these beers.’” It was a smoked amber from Schlenkerla. When he drank it, Wright says his eyes must have gotten huge because he didn’t know beer could taste like that. “It was unbelievable and that kind of solidified in my head that beer doesn’t have to always just taste one specific way. There are a lot of flavors and different styles of beer. That really started my love affair with beer. And to this day, I try to always have a Rauchbier on tap at our lager house because of that.”
Wright has had success with his flavors but, at the base of all good beer, he says, is one element. “Water is the most important thing. In fact, when I first started home-brewing, right, my wife actually called my beer ‘Ass Beer’. She joked, ‘This is awful!’ And I’m like, ‘What? I don’t understand. I’m using the same hops as everyone else, the same malt as everyone else, the same yeast as everyone else!’ And then I was like, ‘Oh, it’s the water.’”
Wright says that when he started paying attention to the water, that’s when his brewing changed. Water, he signifies, is pivotal to good beer. “In fact, you might have been into some breweries that make a great IPA, but their stouts are ‘eh’ because they don’t pay attention to the water. Because water, your water, your house water, it is kind of natural. It will naturally brew one type of beer well but not all types of beers. So, we actually change our water chemistry at Pikes Peak Brewery based on the style of beer that I’m trying to brew.”
The Community of Monument Embraced the Brewery
Wright is thankful for the embrace that the community, both at the original location in Monument as well as the Lager House Tap Room in downtown Colorado Springs, has given them. “The reason we are still here after 11 years is because of our dedicated fan base. And it’s funny…it’s about the beer, but it’s also about the relationships that we’ve made.” They’ve seen people get married. They’ve seen babies come into this world. They’ve seen old friends pass on … all because of the relationships that were formed in the brewery. “To me, that’s super special.”
From the get-go, Wright says they’ve had people knocking on the door trying to get in, even when they were still doing construction on the place in Monument. “People needed this place. They realized what we were building. I like to say I’m just the guy who started the rock down the hill but it’s my staff and my customers – we call them neighbors instead of customers – our neighbors are what has kept it going.”
The interesting aspect though, Wright says, is that as a person and a business, you always must evolve. “When I first opened, there was another beer we had – a wheat beer – and it was a hoppy wheat.” He says several people came in, and said, “Hey, can we put an orange in a wheat beer?” Wright was adamant at the time: “Absolutely not. There will never be any fruit in my beer ever.”
Now, he says, “ You look at my board and know what? A third of the beers probably have some fruit involved.” It comes back, he says, to the fact that it’s important to know your beer drinkers’ tastes and evolve as their tastes evolve. “And sometimes you lead in that and sometimes you follow. But I think you always have to evolve. And in order to figure that out, you always need to experiment with new hops or yeast or techniques. I’ve never stopped experimenting. I think that’s critical.”
He points to his Hot Shot Green Chili Blonde as one example. “It’s a blonde, and we use Colorado-grown green chilies grown on the Western Slope. We roast them fresh and then use them in the brewing process on brew day. It’s usually a mix of spicy and medium peppers so you get this rich green chili aroma and flavor with just a touch of heat in the back of your throat. I love that beer. It’s a lot of fun. I would actually do that recipe back in my homebrew days. So that’s one I’ve always done. Somebody probably mentioned to me or had an idea “Hey, you ought to put some green chiles in your beer.” I was probably like, ‘I don’t know about that, but we’ll try it’ and it was absolutely delicious. So, yeah, I like to experiment with all different types of stuff in beer.”
