As 2016 approaches, many people will be popping the corks on bottles of champagne. However, now the festivities on Dec. 31 can also include a unique offering in the local beer scene.
A new name and a new taste in beer has officially launched on the Kansas side of the state line, taking its spot as one of the growing number of locally owned and operated specialty beer brands.
Crane Brewing — named after Michael Crane who is one of six partners in the company — went on sale early this month in liquor stores and bars around the Kansas City, Kansas, Johnson County and Wyandotte County areas. Lukas Liquor, Gomers and other retailers will offer the first batches of Crane Brewing sold to the public. Four kinds of beer will initially be offered, with more flavors promised to follow.
Crane, a longtime member of Congregation Beth Torah, has been patiently waiting for the day his beer sits on the shelf of his local liquor store. Brewing beer for him started as a hobby, then became an award-winning project and now his business and livelihood.
It has been a long road around the home brewing circuit for Crane as he would ship his specially-crafted concoctions to different state competitions. To see where he is now as a professional brewer, Crane feels very grateful.
“It has been truly overwhelming to get to this point,” Crane said about Crane Brewing. “We have put a lot of work into this and to see this day has been a blessing.”
Crane has been brewing up his own beer creations for years, first in his home and now in his own brewery. He believes he has something different to offer the beer drinkers of Kansas City.
“It has taken a lot of sleepless nights, working on getting here. Everyone has put in a lot of blood, sweat and tears,” Crane said. “But the support of people has blown my mind. This has been an amazing experience.”
A home-brewed award winner
Hanukkah marked the anniversary for Crane of this experience, which began six years ago.
It all started with a Target gift card his wife, June Crane, a Judaica specialist at the Child Development Center of the Jewish Community Center, received for Hanukkah. The Cranes looked around their local Target for something they could do as a family. Their sons were both in college and interests had changed. What could the family do together now? That is when the Cranes spied an at-home beer making kit. They purchased it and Crane made a batch of homemade beer with each of his sons during the winter break.
Soon Crane was making more batches of beer and he built his own system of brewing. He joined a homebrew club, Kansas City Home Bier Meisters, and started making batches aimed at more specialty tastes. He began entering into competitions for home brewers, and doing well in them.
“I got more equipment so that I could make 5 gallon batches at a time,” Crane said. “And the more I made the more I realized I could make all different kinds of beer. I met people who brewed to a certain style, so I worked on my own style and started making more sour beers. And then I entered my first competition and I got first place.
What was even more impressive is that he did all this even though he didn’t really even drink beer.
“My son was really the beer expert,” Crane said. “One day I was talking to him on the phone and asked him what he was having for dinner. He is a vegetarian and he told me he was having beets. He said I should put beets in my next batch of beer. He was joking but he got me thinking.”
From this Crane developed his Beet Weiss. Already a champion with other flavors, this beer would prove to be extremely popular at the competitions. By now he was sending his beer to competitions all over the country and it was in Fargo, North Dakota, where Crane’s entry won Best in Show.
“That was very rewarding,” Crane said. “I had begun entering every competition I could. I loved competing and I loved winning. What started as a hobby had really become a passion.”
More awards and another Best in Show championship followed.
Stan Hieronymus, author of the brewers’ bible “For the Love of Hops,” had been the guest judge at the Fargo competition and contacted Crane afterwards. He wrote an article focusing on this man who didn’t drink beer but brewed champion beer. A similar article ran in the Kansas City Star and was read by Chris Meyers. Meyers had long wanted to start a beer brewing company. He reached out to Crane and they decided to brew some beer together and talked about some ideas.
“I liked his ideas but I still had not thought much about doing this professionally,” Crane said. “I think God wanted me to have that meeting though. It led me down this path.”
Local business with a new flavor
As Crane’s brewing partners traveled to different festivals they began to hear the same question over and over.
“When can we buy your beers in a bar?”
The reputation of his beet beer in particular had grown. His saison, or seasonal beer, was also doing well in competitions.
“The beet beer, everyone was drinking it,” Crane said. “There really isn’t anything else like it. We won awards in three different states in one day. It was after that, at a festival in Parkville, that I was contacted by Central States.”
Central States Beverage Company is a distributor of alcoholic beverages and is the distributor for Miller Brewing Company in Kansas City, Missouri. They asked Crane if he had a logo and he sent them one.
“I went to a beer festival in Waldo and I couldn’t believe it,” Crane said. “They had made banners for Crane Brewing, logos, our own booth. It was great.”
Crane signed with Central States and now knew his business could take off. He just needed to put the right team together. With Crane as president and founder and Meyers as vice-president, the company would have six partners including Aaron Bryant, a chemical engineer and Crane Brewing’s operations manager; Steve Hood, who previously worked at Boulevard Brewing and graduated from the American Brewers Guild in 2013; Randy Strange, a graduate of the Siebel Institute of Technology’s brewing program and another former Boulevard employee who worked on the brewery’s wine bottling line; and Jason Louk, who is Crane’s CPA and the brewery’s CEO.
“I honestly don’t know how other people do it, without a group like this,” Crane said. “Aaron really understands the chemistry part and Jason handles the finance. It is a diverse group that really knows a lot. It may be my name on the company but it’s six partners and I couldn’t do it without them.”
Now they just needed a location. At the time Crane already owned a business, Funblock Inc., which specialized in creating play tables for kids. Crane realized the building he owned that housed his Funblock tables would make a great place to brew beer. He sold off his assets for Funblock, giving Crane Brewing a home to nest in.
On Feb. 1, 2015, they gutted the Funblock building, located at 6515 Railroad St., Raytown, Missouri. They were able to convert the warehouse and light industrial space into Raytown’s first modern brewery. The company also hopes to open a tap room in the building in time for the World Series champion Kansas City Royals opening day next year.
Fast forward to today and that building is turning out their first four beers: a saison, Farmhouse IPA, Apricot Berliner Weiss and an orange gose, with more flavors to come including the beet beer. Crane says all his ingredients are kosher and he has explored working with Vaad HaKashruth of Kansas City to have a fully certified kosher beer in the future.
Crane has been in discussion with other distributors which could put their beers in 22 additional states. He says they are not yet equipped to produce that much beer, but that is the long-term goal. In the meantime, Crane says Crane Brewing is focusing on making the best possible beer they can.
“That will never change,” he said.
Now that Crane Brewing has grown from a hobby into a real business, there’s been one other big changes as well.
“I do drink beer now,” Crane said.
For more information on Crane Brewing, follow them on twitter at twitter.com/Crane Brewing or visit their Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/CraneBrewCo/ or their website at www.cranebrewing.com.
