On a morning in early October, Missouri brewers gathered at Narrow Gauge Brewing Co. in Florissant. While a couple people worked to prepare and mix beer ingredients, others chatted about recent projects.
As part of the Missouri Loves Company collaboration series, brewers in the Missouri Craft Brewers Guild come together quarterly to make about 15 barrels of a limited-run beer. On this autumn day, they brewed a triple India pale ale.
These independent brewers are competitors, trying to keep their own businesses afloat. But they see worth in working together — both for the sake of brewing special beers and helping their industry.
Justin Costello is a brewer and bar lead at Boat Town Brewing in Lebanon. He has become a regular attending these events.
“The collaboration brews are as informative or as uninformative as it can be,” he said. “If you show up with the intent on learning how other people approach certain problems, you will come out with all kinds of information.”
Costello attends to learn more about the industry and how his fellow producers react to problems that arise in their day to day. The collaboration series gives them a place and time to work together, which typically might not happen otherwise.
“We had neighbors in the area, but we’d never actually gone and seen them,” he said. “We were just always really busy. And so having these, like, dedicated times where we all know we’re all going to show up helps get us out of our comfort zone as well.”
The operators of small breweries have a wide range of responsibilities. Not only are they brewing their product, but they’re also managing their community spaces, talking to suppliers, maintaining their equipment and more. Typically they’re doing this with limited staff, like Narrow Gauge.
“It’s a husband-and-wife team that owns the brewery,” said Sherry Wohlgemuth, executive director for the Missouri Craft Brewers Guild. “There are many like that, that are husband-and-wife teams or family teams that own the brewery. These are small businesses. These are your neighbors.”
The main goal of the guild is to protect and promote craft beer in the state, Wohlgemuth said. She said the collaboration series started in 2020 as a way for brewers to connect during the pandemic and provide a possible financial boost for the guild.
The series started with a group of 12 people, and now the event usually sees almost 40 participants.
The Missouri Craft Brewers Guild reports it had 165 member breweries as of last year.
“At the moment, about half of the craft breweries that are in existence in the state are members of the guild,” Wohlgemuth said. “So it’s something we’re always working on, trying to get folks interested in being part of the organization. I think sometimes it’s not maybe financially attainable, sometimes it's just a matter of not enough time.”
It’s a challenging time for some craft brewers. After a nationwide explosion of microbreweries in the 2010s, the number has been trending downward the last several years, according to the Brewers Association, a national industry group.
In 2023, U.S. beer production was down 5% overall and 1% among craft brewers. Some local breweries, like O’Fallon Brewery in the St. Louis area, have closed down.
However, Wohlgemuth sees hope. Even with changing industry trends and business closures, she said new craft breweries are still opening across the state over the next year, and there are still ways for craft brewers to stand out against bigger competitors.
Heather Hardesty, one of the owners of Narrow Gauge, said that when someone chooses craft beer over bigger companies, it is a win for all smaller brewers.
“We’re all small, but we’re all one piece of a larger puzzle,” Hardesty said. “We help build the industry up together by providing quality products, reaching out to maybe consumers that aren't craft beer drinkers. That benefits everyone in the craft beer community.”
