"It's About Beer

KBC When Dick Gray '82 and Staci Chronowski '82 came to Michigan Tech in 1978, Gray came for the skiing and, well, the program in geological engineering. Chronowski came because of her love for the area: after many summers in the Keweenaw, she chose Tech for location, location, location.

Three children and twenty-four years post-graduation, Gray and Chronowski are back in the Keweenaw. Forget the fact that two of their kids are now Michigan Tech students. They're here for their beer.

Keweenaw Calling

After sixteen years as a senior petroleum engineer for Amoco, Gray ventured out on his own, forging a gas and oil exploration company, Presco Western LLC, in Colorado. He and Paul Boissevain, a senior geophysicist, liked to hang out at the Wynkoop Brewing Company in Denver. There they met brewer David Lawrence. Gray used to talk about opening a microbrewery someday and often kidded Lawrence about "buying him."

Over the next decade, the success of microbreweries in Colorado sparked Gray and Chronowski's interest in the business. In the meantime, they kept looking for excuses to come back to the Keweenaw. "The only thing wrong with the place," Gray told Boissevain, "is that there isn't enough good beer."

That was an easy fix, they thought. Let's just make our own. So Gray and Chronowski came back to Houghton. It wasn't too hard to convince Boissevain and Lawrence to come with them, and the Keweenaw Brewing Company was born.

A Downtown Microbrewery

KBC Beer Setting up shop somewhere other than Houghton's downtown business district wasn't even considered. Gray and Boissevain purchased the building that now houses the KBC in November 2003. After five months, renovations were complete, and the building opened for business.

The interior of the KBC is just as Gray, Chronowski, and Boissevain envisioned it—a homey, rustic atmosphere where anyone can come in and feel comfortable. "It's pretty laid-back," Chronowski says.

The bar's two rooms are framed in old, rough-cut barn wood. Sunlight floods through a wall of windows at the back of the bar, and, in the west room, a circular fireplace serves as the centerpiece to what could be mistaken for someone's family room. The brewing vats dominate the back half of the east room.

The work of local artists is dispersed across the wall space on both sides. "We don't buy the art," Gray says. "It's all for sale," and the profits go right to the artists. It's an example of the support that the KBC has forged with the local community.

Support Goes Both Ways

The KBC is a microbrewery, "not a brew pub," stresses Gray. "We make beer; that's all we do." While no food is served at the KBC, patrons are welcome to bring their own, have it delivered from another establishment, or indulge in the KBC's all-you-can-eat, shell-'em-yourself peanut buffet.

The decision to not serve food was "One hundred percent choice," says Gray. "We just want to keep it simple."

"We wanted to be another asset to Houghton, another reason to draw people downtown," Chronowski adds. "Our intent was not to create more competition. That's simply another reason not to sell food. We want to be a part of the community, and we want to support the community."

The community has, in turn, been supportive of the KBC. When it was discovered that an errant run of canning left a pinhole leak in thirty cases of beer, for example, buyers simply returned the cans for replacement. "The community has been tremendously forgiving," says Boissevain.

Gray and Boissevain hope to correct those mistakes by improving their canning process. They currently have a single canning line but plan to increase their efficiency with a second, newer machine. They are turning the old machine over to one of Michigan Tech's Enterprise teams, where students will work on adjusting the equipment and making it better and more efficient.

"A Hobby Gone Wild"

The whole operation is costing much more than they expected, but they've found that they're selling much more beer than they thought they would, too. "It's a hobby gone wild," says Chronowski, noting that the challenge has been simply keeping up with the demand.

While the equipment in the downtown building is enough to support that facility, meeting the demand on the wholesale side of the business has been constrained. An expansion of the business was envisioned two to three years down the road, but they find themselves ramping things up now just to meet the existing demand.

As a result, they're opening a production facility in South Range that will be equipped to both brew more selections and larger batches at one time. With the addition of that facility, "demand for KBC's wholesale beer will quadruple," Gray predicts. That would be quite an accomplishment, considering that, in 2005, the KBC was ranked the 189th largest brewery out of 1,400-plus breweries nationwide, based on current production.

A Place to Call "Home"

Gray is wearing a T-shirt that reads, "It's about beer." Perhaps, that really is what started this whole business venture. But the Keweenaw Brewing Company is more than just a bar. It's a symbol of the sense of community that you find in a place like Houghton. "There is a tremendous satisfaction that it turned out better than we planned, really," Gray says. "It's a complete mix of the community that enjoys this place. It's just so satisfying to see that."

As for the KBC's clients, they get all kinds—students, professionals, and even families. "We have regulars in every one of those categories," Chronowski notes. It sounds like Cheers. "Pretty much," Gray agrees. "We do get the mailman."

And like Cheers, "sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name." In downtown Houghton, that's the KBC.

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