Montane Brewery Ltd.

"If I hadn't been drinking champagne at noon on Friday, I would have been over at the honey house with Manny Chapman, my beekeeping mentor and owner of Queen Bee Honey, and possibly, just possibly, I might have saved him from what must have been a very painful death. Instead, oblivious to his pending demise and feeling slightly tipsy, I popped open bottle number three and filled more flutes." – Hannah Reed, from Buzz Off, a Queen Bee Mystery







They all told me way back, guys like Harley himself, the one this story is about in the first place, and Molly and Wayne and all his crew, that if you head up the side of the mountain too early in morning and without as much to wear or drink, especially in spring when it always looks better than it is, you literally start to freeze up without knowing it. Your muscles tighten and your heart starts to wonder where all the oxygen is at, the mind gets a little faint, maybe a little silly or cocky and when you are tempted by the lure of the wild creek rushing down the narrow valley, more than one has walked right off into the sound itself. I had almost said buzz off, my mind was at work for my own wild schemes of settling a little spot along that trail for a nano brewery.  "A whato what," said Harley, usually game for virtually anything, but he happened to be from around here in the Gore Range Mountains of the Eagle Nest. "I think some of the valley transplants have gotten to ya. There are so many schemes in town nobody knows what's next. Have you noticed there aren't any micro breweries in town. Think that's for a reason?" We were on bikes, far east along the Gore Valley Trail, stopped and looking out

at the famous grass roofed house near the interstate. "So you can plant grass on your roof and maybe even recruit a few mountain goats from up at the top of Bighorn Creek Trail to settle up there, but I can't open a nano at 10,000 feet?" How could anybody know, besides myself, that to use the flora and fauna of the landscape for my small batch brewery had been in the works for years.  There were more private plots of land up there in mountains than most knew. I had found a willing taker, Mam Sherman, as she liked to call herself, who was pleased to lease me her husband's cabin he built 46 years ago to the day.  "The-e-e-e day." she said, when I first met her.  "He didn't build that old thing for us, I can assure you, we never got up in there overnight any more than I can count on one hand. It was so folks could get up on these mountains, find out what they were missing back in Kansas City and Minneapolis.  If you can haul it up, you can use the cabin." Mam Sherman was about as tall as I was, lean but strong, and even though she said she was in her early 70's, based on the smooth skin of her short flowery face, she didn't look much over 55. "Consider it done," I told her. We'll treat the lake, use the water. grow our own hops, use the wildflowers. Mam Sherman's face didn't give it all a second thought.  Her husband mush have been a similar loon. Harley, on the other hand, simply shook his head left and right until I showed him tall thin 12 oz can with mountain art. "Oh, well, where do we begin."