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A handshake over a beer led to the creation of Olde Main Brewing Co., which led to distribution of its beer throughout Central Iowa and the brewery becoming the first in Central Iowa to bottle and distribute its beer throughout the state.

But head brewer Jeff Irvin has even bigger plans. He wants to double production next year – continuing a trend since the brewery opened – add an off-site production facility and distribute his beer to every county in the state in the next six months.

“It’s the little engine that could,” he said.

Since Olde Main launched its bottling line in May, its sales have grown 200 percent. Its six varieties, plus a root beer and a seasonal draft, are found on tap or in bottles at nearly 200 bars, restaurants and retail stores, mainly in Central Iowa. The company is just starting to distribute its craft beer to the Council Bluffs area and will begin sending beer to Fahr Beverage Inc. in Waterloo this week. Now more than half of Olde Main’s beer sales come from outside its restaurant/brewery, located in downtown Ames.

“It’s more to fulfill a request than to push the envelope,” Irvin said, “which has been very, very nice that the demand is there, and now we’re just trying to keep up as the supplier.”

Part of this growth may be a demand nationwide for craft beers. The craft beer market grew 12 percent by volume last year, compared with 1.4 percent in imports and non-craft domestic products, according to the Brewers Association.

“Beer is just as complex if not more complex than wine, and I think people are starting to look at it in that way,” Irvin said. “In Des Moines especially, you’re starting to see more beer tasting at places, restaurants doing beer dinners.”

The first pint

Irvin began working for Scott Griffen as a doorman at one of Griffen’s bars while completing coursework for his degree in biology at Iowa State University and eventually became a bartender. Griffen and Irvin toyed with the idea of opening a brewery a few years later, but it wasn’t until they sat down for a beer in 2003 to discuss Irvin’s future that they decided to go for it.

“It was more of a bet than anything,” Irvin said. “We shook hands and I applied to school the next day.” While Irvin attended the master brewer’s program at the University of California, Davis, Griffen bought an old bicycle shop on Main Street. It took a year to haul out the junk in the basement and turn the ground floor into a restaurant with seating for more than 500 patrons.

The brewing operation started out with “Big John” Rundall and Irvin brewing a few times a month. Now they brew four times a week with a staff of 10, many of whom work part time. Irvin writes all his own recipes and tries to create beers that are unique for the area, such as a Scottish ale and a Belgium-style wheat, which has become Olde Main’s most popular variety. The Reindeer Fuel, a chocolate porter, is made with 45 pounds of Bavarian chocolate per batch.

Part of the company’s demand from outside Ames is a result of its location in a community where students, professors and sports fans come and go. It also sold 268 kegs of beer at the 80/35 festival in Des Moines.

“I didn’t ever anticipate people getting this excited about it,” Irvin said, “which really is a neat feeling, and then being able to have the owner say, ‘Let’s keep expanding. Let’s keep going.'”

Bottling and beyond

In October 2007, Irvin began exploring the idea of bottling Olde Main’s beer after people kept asking for the packaged product. Buying the necessary equipment, including a machine that can package six bottles at a time and a refrigerated truck, designing labels and buying supplies added up to about $250,000. Plus it took several hours to figure out how to use the equipment and how it would fit into limited basement space. Olde Main can now bottle about 50 cases in an hour and bottles once a week.

“It certainly was a huge endeavor to go to bottling not only investment-wise, but you’re taking a risk to see is if it’s going to move off the shelves,” said Jill Haverkamp, who was hired as brewery marketing and public relations manager last month. She has been involved in promoting the brewery’s new products and hosting beer tastings and pairings at restaurants and bars.

Seeing the success in this bottling venture could inspire other local brewers to follow.

David Coy, head brewer at Raccoon River Brewing Co. and president of the Iowa Brewers Guild, said he has explored the idea but is hesitant because of the steep initial costs. However, he said, “I’m watching with interest. As the business model works for them, it’s something I may approach our owner with too as an example of a concept that’s working.”

Local businesses have been eager to pick up the product to capitalize on people’s attraction to Iowa products. In the couple of months Mars Café in Des Moines has carried the bottles, the brand has become one of its best-selling beers.

Not only do customers recognize the name from the 80/35 festival and from visiting the brewery in Ames, said Mars Café co-owner Larry James Jr., but “it helps to have the brewery be really responsive to our needs. They’re not just supplying us with beer, but they’re contributors.” Olde Main hosted a beer tasting at the coffeehouse last Thursday.

Though Olde Main’s beer is nowhere near selling at the rate of his bar’s best seller, Boulevard Wheat, El Bait Shop manager Jason Christensen said, “It does well that they’re from Ames, and people definitely recognize the name.” The bar also carries Iowa beers on tap from Raccoon River, Amana Colonies’ Millstream Brewing Co. and Iowa City-based Old Capital Brew Works.

Big plans

Deciding to mass-distribute its beer also has created some challenges for Olde Main.

Iowa law has quirks, such as its requirement that because the brewery is part of a restaurant that sells other alcoholic beverages, it must sell its product for distribution to other bars, restaurants and retailers to a distributor who then sells it to the other businesses. Though this has created additional expense, Irvin notes that it has created a relationship with Doll Distributing Inc. that has led to new opportunities to deliver its product to Council Bluffs, Marshalltown and other places.

Earlier this year, brewers also faced a hops and barley shortage that sent prices skyrocketing. But thanks to a record hops harvest in Germany and more farmers planting these crops, the price has started to come back down. Still, Irvin said, “with the increased costs, with grain, hops, everything going up, even transportation costs, we’ll probably have to increase the price of our product eventually until something breaks.”

The brewery also is reaching its production capacity, with a prediction that it will brew 2,000 barrels this year. Irvin is in the process of working with the owner to build or buy a building off-site to handle some of the company’s kegging and packaging needs.

“We want to make sure that we’re comfortable producing all the stuff that we want to do,” Irvin said. “I don’t want to promise anybody something we can’t keep up with.”

Yet Irvin sees Olde Main as a pioneer in the craft beer industry in Central Iowa.

“We’re trying to fill that void for an Iowa craft beer, small package product that people are looking for,” he said. “It’s kind of neat to bring something that’s local from where you are into another market. We can see the potential for that and hopefully we can fill that.”

Click here to see a photo gallery from a tour of Olde Main Brewing Co.