Laughing Dog builds on award-winning brews

PONDERAY — Who knew?  Not Fred Colby, who got into home brewing as a hobby and had no visions of grandeur beyond crafting a good-tasting beer. When the suds had settled and all was said and done, he did that and a whole lot more.

This month, Colby and co-owner Michelle Douglass celebrate the five-year anniversary of their award-winning Laughing Dog Brewery by preparing to move into a new brewing facility that will give them the capacity to produce up to 15,000 barrels of beer a year — a benchmark that could be reached by as early as 2015.

Laughing Dog, which opened in 2005 with a first-year production total of 200 barrels, is now the second-largest brewery in the state, following the Grand Teton Brewery in Victor.

“I originally envisioned that this would be me and Michelle and we’d be happy as a little brewery, but it took on a life of its own,” Colby said. “Do I want to be the largest in the state? Maybe. At the rate we’re expanding, that’s definitely a possibility.”

In 2009, the brewery moved into the second slot with production of 2,000 barrels. This year, Laughing Dog plans to brew at least 3,000 barrels from its facility at the Emerald Industrial Park, a building measuring 4,000 square feet.

Colby shared an early photo of the place, showing a back room that had far more open space than brewing equipment.

“And now look at us,” Douglass said as she looked out over the tightly packed room of shining tanks and stacked barrels. “We’re bursting at the seams.”

The new Laughing Dog Brewery facility — currently under construction on Fontaine Drive immediately east of Highway 95 in Ponderay — will be filled in stages, the owners said. The first part of the business to make the shift will be the popular tasting room, which will be expanded to accommodate more customers, as well as live music and larger indoor events. The brewery itself should be completely relocated sometime between October and November.

At 10,500 square feet, the new site will nearly triple the current location’s size. One of the first changes to come with the move will be the addition of more brewing tanks. With those in place, Colby estimated that Laughing Dog would be ready to reach a brewing capacity of about 10,000 barrels a year.

The business employs seven people today; a number that will keep growing as more beer gets produced, according to Colby.

“There’s an industry rule of thumb that you need one employee for every 700 barrels of beer you brew,” he said. “It’s inevitable that, as we continue to grow, we’re going to have to have more employees.

“But we will always be able to say that we handcraft our beers,” the owner added. “We’re not a push-button brewery and we never will be.”

Because 75 percent of Laughing Dog’s beer is sold off site — its 22-ounce bottles are now favorites with handcrafted beer aficionados in 22 states — the business is designated as a “packaging brewery.” 

Business really popped about two years ago and, in 2009, the addition of a national distributor helped establish the Laughing Dog brand name and caused a decided shift in how that brand would be marketed going forward.

“It was just last year that distributors started calling us, instead of us always having to call them,” Douglass said.

The new location will give the brewery more room to respond to the wider recognition, as well as much-needed wall space to display its mountain of accolades from the beer industry. Over the past few years, Laughing Dog has hauled in an almost embarrassingly large number of first-place awards for just about every beer it produces.

As Colby describes it, beer drinkers’ tastes have simply moved into line with the kinds of brews he has always enjoyed crafting anyway. When the market for India Pale Ales and what the brewer calls “big, hoppy beers” took off, Laughing Dog was in a perfect position to fetch the new business.

“Every brewery has got to have some kind of a signature and ours is the IPAs and the ‘big’ beers,” Colby said. “My tastes have definitely changed and matured over time, but the hoppy beers still reflect my own tastes in what I look for in a good beer.”

Not too many years ago, beer was beer and that was that. The advent of wine-tasting groups and foodies who started to match wines with meals has crossed over into the beer world, with especially favorable results for smaller, craft breweries. Beer may not have wine’s cachet — not yet — but it no longer labors under the reputation of being solely a blue-collar beverage.

“Beer is now appearing on The Food Channel and other cooking shows,” Colby said. “And you’re starting to see it turn up in things like pairing dinners, where they pair the meal with different beers.”

If beer lovers can’t seem to keep quiet about their affinity for Laughing Dog’s roster of 12 full-time, seasonal and reserve beers, the owners have kept a very low profile when it comes to trumpeting their own involvement in just about every charitable event and fundraiser the community undertakes. Throughout the year, the brewery works with organizations such as Kinderhaven, Panhandle Alliance for Education, Panhandle Animal Shelter and countless other, smaller groups to help raise money.

“We live here,” Colby said. “I grew up here, so helping out whenever we can is important to us.”

The most recent charitable relationship has been with the upcoming Race Across America, for which the brewery will sponsor the Team Laughing Dog group of cyclists who will compete in the coast-to-coast ride to raise money for autism research.

On Saturday, Aug. 28, Laughing Dog Brewery will hold its last hoorah at the current brewery location when it hosts a 5-year Anniversary Pig Roast Competition to raise funds for the cycling team challenge. The event will feature six teams in heated competition — even more heated for the pigs — for professional judging and people’s choice awards. Laughing Dog will roll out its bourbon barrel beer, which is aged in wood bourbon barrels to add a distinctive flavor to the brew.

The event also will include the premier of Laughing Dog’s latest addition to its beer line, a red ale that continues the tradition of big, hoppy flavor by using three kinds of hops — clusters, fuggles and nuggets. The name?

“We call it ‘Cluster-Fugget,” Colby deadpanned.

For more information on Laughing Dog Brewery, call (208) 263-9222 or visit: www.laughingdogbrewing.com.