Head brewer gets back to roots

David Brendgard had a big year in 2013.

The 42-year old got married, spent a month-long honeymoon with his wife in Southwest Utah, climbed Yellowstone National Park’s El Capitan for nine days, quit his job of 17 years in Bend, Ore. and moved to the Flathead Valley for his new job.

It was a great year in a life built on beer.

Brendgard is the new lead brewer at Flathead Lake Brewing Co., getting back to his roots of small-batch craft brewing after a successful career at Oregon’s Deschutes Brewery.

The long journey to Brendgard’s glory days of beer began when his family moved from his hometown of Havre to the Yakima Valley in Washington, where he graduated from high school.

“When I was growing up we had the hop fields all around us. I didn’t quite know what they were at the time or realize what was going on,” he said. “There was a small brewery in Yakima that was one of the first microbreweries.”

From there, Brendgard moved to Portland, where he was introduced to the craft brewing industry.

“I wasn’t really interested in beer that much when I first moved to Portland, but then the growing industry there in the early ’90s really got me involved,” he said.

Brendgard was already an avid climber, and moved to Bend, Ore. in 1996 to pursue a career in geology at Central Oregon Community College. Coincidentally, that was also the time when the craft brewing industry was beginning to take off, and Deschutes was a part of that growth, having opened in 1988.

So the fledgling geology student got a temporary job on the brewery’s packaging line, stacking cases of beer to help put himself through college.

Brendgard continued moving up the ladder at Deschutes, working in bottling and racking before moving to waste treatment and then cellaring (where fermentation takes place) before eventually becoming manager of the cellaring department.

He then got an even greater opportunity when the company sent him to the professional brewing school at the University of California in Davis.

“When I returned from that program, then I went into the brewing department and got involved in the sour beer and barrel-aged program and then I ran that department until January 2014,” Brendgard said. “During that time I produced award-winning beers, gold medal winners, beers such as the Dissident.”

Dissident, a sour brown ale, won a gold medal at the World Beer Awards, while another beer he helped develop, Wild Plum Stout, won a gold medal at the Los Angeles International Commercial Beer Competition.

Despite his success with and love of Deschutes, by the time 2014 rolled around it had grown into a much larger company. When he was first hired as a temp, the brewery made about 30,000 barrels of beer per year. By the time he left, it was approaching 300,000 barrels per year.

His decision to leave Deschutes was, he said, the same reason why brewers get into brewing in the first place — to be creative.

“Larger companies tend to be less creative,” Brendgard said. “So to truly pursue craft brewing, you want to be with a smaller company that’s growing where the creativity is available. Now the bigger breweries do have creativity, but there are more cooks in the kitchen than in a smaller company where you can be as creative as you’d like.”

That said, Brendgard is extremely thankful for the opportunities Deschutes provided him, from the experience to the education.

It’s that experience, both with brewing in general, seeing the trends in the industry and being exposed to the newest technology, that Brendgard said he is looking to bring to his new employer, Flathead Lake Brewing Co.

“I can bring a lot to the table here at Flathead Lake Brewing Company from my experience with larger breweries to create a more efficient and consistent product while still remaining a craft brewer,” he said.

In fact, Brendgard sees Montana’s craft beer industry as an untapped gem in the market, specifically in the development of wood-aged sour beers.

“The consumer’s palate is starting to be acceptable toward that style of beer,” he said. “You couldn’t produce a sour beer in the United States 15 years ago. People weren’t ready for it. Now people are ready for it.”

He said that by now, everyone has had an India Pale Ale and are looking for the next best development in the brewing industry. Brendgard thinks that next best thing is bigger beers that are more balanced between malt and hops, not just a “hop bomb.”

Overall, he is enthusiastic about the future of the industry.

“Just look at the culture in the United States,” Brendgard said. “There’s the Great American Beer Festival, there’s American Craft Beer Week, which is coming up very soon. People just love craft beers now, and they’re willing to spend the extra couple dollars on the six-pack to get a quality-made, local craft beer over a six-pack of commercial beer.”

And that love of craft beer, he said, has transformed America into the new capital of the beer industry.

“Now that the craft brewing industry is growing, especially here in the Northwest, the rest of the world is looking at us for new beer styles,” Brendgard said. “So now we’re becoming the leading innovators worldwide and we’re being recognized worldwide, especially in the World Beer Cup, for being the most innovative brewers in the world today. And that’s right here in the Pacific Northwest.”

Reporter Jesse Davis may be reached at 758-4441 or by email at jdavis@dailyinterlake.com.