The newest Fairbanks brewery offers a diversity of flavors for a diversity of customers. With nine drinks on the menu and 28 taps planned for the near future, Latitude 65 serves ale, pilsner, seltzer, kombucha and root beer.
Latitude 65 Brewing Company opened on May 14 with a goal of having at least 18 different beers and ciders, about four non-alcoholic drinks and doubling up some of the more popular beers, said co-founder Adam Keele.
“I want to have options,” he said. “You don’t want to leave people out of the experience.”
Such drinks as the flavorful and light Chena Pilsner, a toffee-like and heavy Scottish ale, a refreshing blackberry seltzer and the summery Zesty Ale are already on the menu, but the brewery plans to gradually increase the number of options and to fill all 28 taps.
“I’d like to be releasing something every week,” Keele said.
Non-alcoholic drinks include kombucha from Mama Bears and root beer from Moose’s Tooth, and “before long, there’ll be nitro cold brew coffee on tap from Alaska Coffee Roasters,” Keele said. These beverages create a family environment in the brewery, but they also cater to the rise of non-alcoholic drinks, soda and bubbly water among the younger generation that often has a more healthy outlook on things and looks for variety, Keele said.
“It’s more about exploration of flavors,” Keele said. Meanwhile, for him as a brewer, “it is a matter of trying to apply that same enthusiasm for everything and finding ways to make things more interesting for everybody. Otherwise, it’s not fun.”
Keele decided to open the brewery with two other people — Zeb Mabie and Andy Roe. They chose an abandoned Alaska Club gym at the edge of downtown Fairbanks as the place for it. Keeping the original racquetball court flooring, the three co-founders needed to do a lot of work to transform the space into a production area and taproom.
While Mabie and Roe manage the business side of things, Keele spends more time on the product. With a career in the U.S. Air Force, he also has a long-standing passion for beer that started in Germany and led him to try homebrewing about 20 years ago. Even with his first batch, he said he knew it was a success, and his perfectionism and precision were helpful for the process.
“I’m very kind of idealistic and very standard driven and I have a really hard time doing things where I feel like we could be doing better,” he said.
After homebrewing, Keele worked in various breweries across the country, doing everything from bottling, to brewing and distribution. A job at a small family brewery in southern Alaska was what brought him to the state.
Now, the Latitude 65 co-founders ended up going big, with a large 20-barrel brewhouse, which equates to 620 gallons.
“I wanted to be able to have more, so I can focus on other stuff too instead of having to chase filling taps,” he said.
Among the nine choices offered at the brewery now, Zesty Pale Ale has been easily the number one seller every day, but is also labor intensive for the brewers. Even with automatic peelers, it takes hours for brewers to add oranges, lemons and limes.
Seller number two tends to bounce around depending on the day, which is exciting to Keeler because “nothing in particular is always leading,” he said.
The task to create and provide a variety of flavors is an ongoing creative process. The other week, Keele was adding dandelions and source tips to one of the beers brewing. But while many draft beer brewers “are basically trying to make liquid nostalgia for people in their 30s and 40s” creating such flavors as vanilla ice cream, Keele said Latitude 65 wants to keep the diversity of classic beer styles.
“Beer is what really is at its core,” he said.
Latitude 65 is located at 150 Eagle Ave. in Fairbanks.
Contact staff writer Alena Naiden at 459-7587. Follow her at twitter.com/FDNMlocal.
June 20, 2021 at 08:00PM
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New brewer on the block bring diversity to classic beer styles - Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
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