A Wichita brewery is about to bring Tallgrass beer back to life
Beer lovers who have been missing their Buffalo Sweat and 8-Bit will be pretty “hoppy” to hear this news.
Wichita Brewing Company, the local brewery that Jeremy Horn and Greg Gifford launched back in 2011, is about to revive a brand that craft beer fans have been mourning since it a year and a half ago.
WBC, which has two local brew pubs and a big production facility from which it cans its beers for distribution across four states, has signed a licensing agreement to start brewing Tallgrass Brewing Co.’s once-popular beers.
Owners have already started production at their brewing facility at 727 E. Osie and plan to roll out four of the brand’s most-loved beers: Buffalo Sweat Oatmeal Stout, 8-Bit Pale Ale, Key Lime Pie and Raspberry Jam. None of those beers has been available since August 2018, when Tallgrass — a Manhattan brewery that former geologist Jeff Gill opened in 2007 — suddenly stopped production.
At the time, Tallgrass was Kansas’ largest craft brewery, but it was a eventually a victim of its own rapid expansion in an increasingly overcrowded field of competitors. Tallgrass had moved production from a 14,000-square-foot facility to $7.5 million, 60,000-square-foot space in 2014 and started selling its beer in 18 states. Four years later, it was gone.
Fans of the beer were despondent, and that included WBC’s owners, Horn said. Buffalo Sweat was one of the beers that inspired them to get started, Horn said.
In a strange twist, when WBC opened its own 18,000-square-foot brewing facility in 2016, it purchased Tallgrass’ original brewing equipment, which it no longer used after expansion. Soon, Tallgrass beer will be brewed in that equipment once again.
“We loved the romantic aspect of bringing those brands back,” Horn said. “And it kind of made sense since we have the original brewing equipment.”
Horn said that he signed a licensing agreement a year and a half ago to bring Tallgrass beers back and has been finalizing the details ever since. WBC is working with the Topeka company that bought Tallgrass’ property after it closed and in the process also obtained its intellectual property rights.
WBC will now pay that company for the right to use the old Tallgrass recipes and brew and distribute its once-popular beers. And WBC is taking that right quite seriously. It’s even had the chemical makeup of the water in Manhattan analyzed and reproduced so that it can make the beers taste exactly as they used to.
WBC will start the revival with Buffalo Sweat and will release it in Wichita’s two WBC brew pubs and also in Manhattan the week of March 23. The following week, the beer will be back in liquor stores.
After that, WBC will roll out the other three beers one at at time, though they haven’t settled on what order they’ll appear.
“The big thing is just bringing those brands back,” Horn said. “They were just so popular. Tallgrass and Free State (in Lawrence) kind of helped provide the foundation of craft brewing in Kansas.”
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