E-Malt.com News article: USA, ID: Edge Brewing Company opens in Boise

For the past two or three years, Marcus Bezuhly and his wife, Sherry, watched patrons at their Homebrewstuff shop in Garden City open breweries: Payette, Crooked Fence, Slanted Rock, the soon-to-debut Bogus and Cloud 9, the Idaho Statesman reported on February 5.

"They're all customers of mine," Marcus Bezuhly says. "To see them opening breweries, I was like, 'I need to do this, too!' "

One transformed office building and $1.6 million later, Boise has its newest brewpub. Bezuhly and his wife opened Edge Brewing Co. and restaurant on February 5. It's the second newcomer to materialize in the past month - Woodland Empire Ale Craft opened in January - continuing a mini-rampage of new breweries.

"I feel like we don't have to be first," Bezuhly says. "We just have to brew the best beer we can. I think that's the important thing. We're all about the variety and quality of beer."

Bezuhly, a home brewer for 16 years, says he hates the term "flagship beer."

"One of the things I've always loved about home brewing is just always being able to make something different," he says.

Edge will focus on variety. The brewery debuted with half a dozen beers on tap (featuring light-hearted names such as Obligatory IPA and Badunkamonk Belgian Golden Strong); that number will rise to eight or nine by the weekend. Head brewer Kerry Caldwell, formerly of Tablerock Brewpub, will experiment regularly at the 15-barrel brew house. There's also a 20-gallon pilot system that Edge's 22 investors - many of whom home brew - use to craft small batches.

"I would say that we should be able to keep 15 or 20 beers on tap most of the time," Bezuhly says.

Edge doesn't plan to offer its beer in cans immediately, but will before summer. Until then, the goal is to have fun being creative.

"Barrel aging is going to be a pretty big part of our program, too," Bezuhly says. "We really wanted to come in town and do stuff that not a lot of people were doing. I think that that's one way for us to show what we can do and really just bring more to the beer community in Boise. There's no reason that Boise shouldn't be known for beer in the same way that Bend or Portland is."


07 February, 2014