PAONIA, Colo. You could call him a brewing visionary. Mike King puts his heart, soul and sweat into making beer.
"We grind every pound of our grain with a bicycle. Today's brew took about an hour to grind, that's about 15 miles worth of barley," he said.
Like their beer, Mike and Gretchen King built their brewery from scratch.
Gretchen said, "It's been a lot of work but we really feel blessed to have found this spot."
"It is truly craft beer, humans grind it, we load it into the mash tun by hand, we observe it all along the way. It's not a production facility where a button gets pushed and the stuff rolls through and ends up in a fermenter," said Mike.
Their brainchild, Revolution Brewing, produces craft beers with ingredients straight from small town's backyard.
"He's like a chef in the sense that he sees what's available locally and says, well, I bet I can incorporate that in beer," Gretchen said.
"We explored all over the Western Slope and this is just a really special town," Mike said.
"A lot of times we have cherry in our beer, we have a blackberry porter right now and a lavender IPA, both of those came from the North Fork Valley, all organic."
Mike and Gretchen always make sure to give to back to the town that has given the so much.
"People support us and we want to support them," Gretchen said.
"We try our best to be good stewards of the community as part of the revolution," said Mike.
While their brewing concept is revolutionary, their success is due to passion for their craft and believing in their product every barrel of the way.
Folks can find Revolution Brewing products in the North Fork Valley, Powderhorn Mountain, Bin 707, Pantuso's, College Liquor and other locations.
For more on the company, click here.
