Boyne River Brewing Co.

Cyndi and Scott Hill don't mind taking those late-night phone calls from barflies. The "flies" are usually old friends, calling to let them know that a pint of the Hills' Boyne River Brewing Co. beer is sitting in front of them at some Detroit-area watering hole.

"We've had people call us from the Berkley Front (a popular suburban multi-tap) and say, 'We're down here drinking your beer,' " Cyndi Hill said.

A few years ago, the Hills moved 250 miles from suburban Detroit to set up a bottling microbrewery and brewpub in Boyne City, on Lake Charlevoix in the northwestern part of Michigan's Lower Peninsula. Cyndi was an accountant and, later, a nurse, and Scott was in sales. "We hated our jobs, and he decided he wanted to go to beer school," Cyndi said. Scott studied at Chicago's Siebel Institute of Brewing Studies, and they visited brewpubs out West. Although he originally intended to work as a brewer in someone else's brewery, "the pay was just terrible, like $7 an hour," Cyndi said. So, they decided to go into business for themselves. Now, she jokes, "$7 an hour has started to look good."

"We looked into opening down in the Detroit area, but they wanted to put us in an industrial park," Cyndi said. They visited Boyne City (population about 3,500) during vacation and decided the concept could work there, but they weren't sure how the townspeople were going to greet the project. "In Oakland County (near Detroit), they were really negative," she said. They happened to be in Boyne City on the day the proposal came up on the city commission's agenda and surreptitiously sat in on the meeting. "When our issue came up, everyone was like, 'That would be so great.' "

"The concept was absolutely new to people up here," Scott Hill said. "When we first moved to Boyne City, there was nothing (good-beerwise) on the store shelves. That's starting to change."

Although the Hills created a brewpub that is as comfortable as its slogan, "Home of the Laid Back Ales," suggests, Boyne River is foremost a microbrewery. "Our concept coming in was that if this front part (the brewpub) doesn't make it, we can shut down and just do the brewery," Cyndi Hill said.

Added Scott, "We didn't know if the distribution would go well, and we didn't know if the pub would go well, so we decided to do both."

Not surprisingly, Scott brought a laid-back attitude to brewing, and said he doesn't stick religiously to style guidelines. "We brew what we like to brew and go from there," he said. "And people seem to like what we're doing."

He uses only two-row, British malts, saying he prefers their quality, and adding, "There aren't a whole lot of suppliers who do pre-crushed malts." All the hops are domestic, and most of the beers are fermented with a London ale yeast. The pub usually keeps six beers on tap, with three or four available all the time. Scott describes some of the beers as "not too much for people who aren't into the beer scene," while others are more assertive.

The biggest seller, 10:30 Ale, is named after the fire whistle that punctuates the Boyne City air every night at that time. It is a light ale made with pale and wheat malt and lightly hopped. "It's closer to a 1040," Scott said, referring to the original gravity.

Log Jam Ale is an amber-type ale made with several different malts and Cascade hops, with about 28 International Bittering Units. Pale Ale is made with three malts and hopped with Cascades, with 35 IBUs. The British-style Brown Ale features four malts and Chinook and Fuggles hops. Lake Trout Stout is made with five malts and Chinook hops. Boyne River also brews a Bavarian-style hefeweizen, made with two-thirds wheat malt and Weihenstephan yeast. Other seasonals have included a pumpkin beer, jalapeņo beer and oatmeal stout.

While the Hills were busy hatching the brewery, Cyndi was pregnant with daughter Hannah, who was born about two months before the brewery opened. Hannah's Root Beer is named in her honor.

The beers have earned a good reputation in Michigan since the brewery went on line in July 1995. The brewery sold 945 barrels in 1996, about one-third of that in the pub and two-thirds through distributors. About 20-25 percent of off-premise sales are draft, the rest in bottles. Having a balance has been essential.

"If we had to depend 100 percent on distributed sales, it would be very, very tough to do," Scott Hill said. On the other hand, sales of beer in southern Michigan help cash flow during slow months at the brewpub.

The Hills sought out their first distributor and started small, distributing in three local counties. Word-of-mouth brought more wholesalers to them, and eventually distribution spread to Detroit and environs and throughout much of the state. "A bar owner would ask us how to get the beer, or a tourist would want the beer back home," Cyndi said.

As summer approached this year -- it doesn't hurry in Boyne City, where it snowed in mid-May, and leaves didn't fill out the trees until June -- full-time brewers Tony Vollmar and Bill Kroncke had plenty to keep them busy. They brew two batches two days a week on used equipment acquired from a defunct Canadian brewer, following recipes Scott formulated. "Two days before you brew, you know you have to bottle two batches," Kroncke said. "It's bottle-brew, bottle-brew, and maybe squeeze in labeling somewhere." The bottle filler and labeler are somewhere between low- and high-tech, so Vollmar and Kroncke can bottle about 20-25 cases an hour and label about 10-15 cases an hour.

Originally, the brewery produced only 22-ounce bottles. Now, Vollmar and Kroncke also roll out 12-ounce six-packs, which has helped sales to restaurants. "A tap handle is the hardest thing to get in a restaurant," Cyndi Hill said. "If people want to try your beer, they don't want to have to buy a 22-ounce bottle."

Boyne River is set in a storage warehouse that was built at least 80 years ago and had several previous functions. The original corrugated siding and roof, plus plenty of wood inside, give the place a rustic feel. It looks like it has been around for years. Scott Hill and an assistant did the interior work, with help from Scott's mom. Scott made the tables, while the mismatched wooden chairs and stools were acquired at garage sales or traded by patrons for food. The rest of the decor is also "garage sale stuff" -- fishing gear, snowshoes, skis, college team flags, a hockey stick, a life preserver. A stack of board games stands against one wall, near a row of old theater seats. A foosball table is parked next to a real dart board. A large blackboard lists the beers available. Decorating the clever tap handles are an alarm clock for 10:30 Ale, a small pail for the pale ale, and a carved fish for Lake Trout Stout. Guests wishing to relax out in the beer garden have their choice of telephone company spools to sit at.

The brewpub is more pub than restaurant, with the emphasis on beer rather than food. "The food is pretty much here to keep people here," Cyndi Hill said. The first menu had three sandwiches and nachos. It has expanded a bit, but remains basically a sandwich menu with a daily special such as chicken with pasta. Nothing on the menu is more than $5, while pints are $2.75.

The pub is smoke-free inside, which is still unusual in Michigan. "Michigan is a very smoky state," Cyndi said. "Everyone said, 'You can't have a bar and not have smoking.' " But being smoke-free has proven popular with many patrons, especially those with children. The brewpub is conveniently located near downtown Boyne City and is only a short walk from several hotels.

Boyne City has two main tourist seasons. Summer brings boaters and other beachgoers, and winter brings skiers to three nearby ski areas, so the brewpub's traffic is dependent upon those months. "April and November are the slowest," Cyndi Hill said. "July and August are pretty steady all week long, and weekends are steady in December and January. The week between Christmas and New Year's is Hell Week at the (Boyne Mountain ski area), and it's really crazy. It's a whole week of Saturday nights."

The brewpub's mug club has more than 250 members, a few from as far as Port Townsend, Wash., and Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Club members will leave notes, and even beer money, in fellow members' mugs. "It's like a mailbox," Cyndi said.

The Hills recently opened a second brewpub, Bear River Brewing Co., in downtown Petoskey, about 15 miles north of Boyne City. Also smoke-free, the Petoskey brewpub is more of a restaurant than the original, with a larger menu and a deck that gives patrons a view of Lake Michigan. The Hills take a hands-off approach to the Petoskey brewpub, letting managers run it. "(Boyne River) really depends on us," Cyndi said. "One of us has to be here all the time when it's open."

Under Michigan law, beer made at Boyne River can't be sold at Bear River, but Bear River can sell its beer off-premise, which is one reason the beers brewed there aren't identical to the ones in Boyne River. "Our intent is to market beer out of (Petoskey), so we want them to be different," Scott Hill said. Additionally, he said, a second brewery gives him the freedom to make more kinds of beer.

"We brew beers we like to drink," he said. "We wouldn't make them if we didn't like them."

This story orginally appeared in Brew Your Own magazine in September 1997.