The Buffalo Brewing Company
Owner Nolen Buffalo, customer Claire Carothers of Sheridan, freelance brewer Andrew Teague, Buffalo Brewing manager and brewer Jack Higgins, customers Kimberly and Jerje Stoneman of Little Rock
Nolen Buffalo, owner of The Water Buffalo, has opened The Buffalo
Brewing Company as a great new extension of his store at 106 South Rodney Parham.
His brewing company will make small batch beers and focus on about
four different ones to begin with, Mr. Buffalo said.
Other breweries in town have been excited to join in this new effort, he said.
“We will have a bunch of different varieties with 12 different breweries represented. We will have 16 taps represented to start with.”
Among Buffalo Brewing’s beers is a red ale, a signature beer, which will be on tap regularly.
“When it gets colder, we’ll have a chocolate stout, an oatmeal stout and a pineapple wheat.
“The beer I am most excited about is Raspberry Honey Cream Ale.
We serve that at festivals, and it is always very popular.”
The honey that is used in the making of the beer is made by bees
who feed on raspberry flowers.
“Every time bees are making honey, they bring back a little bit of that flower taste, a hint. As the beer is fermenting, the sugar ferments out, and the honey flavor is left over with a little bit of raspberry.
“It has raspberry color, raspberry tartness. We put real raspberries on top right before we are ready to carbonate the beer. It’s pretty to look at, easy to drink.”
A Beer By the People, For the People
Then there is the pale ale Nolen and his crew are “building by popular opinion.”
They are starting off with a 5 percent pale ale, relatively hoppy and a reddish color. Then they are going to let the public decide whether to use a different hop, for example, or to make it lighter or darker, or with more or less alcohol.
“We are going to build that beer to specifications, let the people decide - a beer for the people, by the people.”
Nolen has been making beer for about 20 years as a home brewer. As a professional brewer, this is relatively new territory for him.
The brewery is an extension of The Water Buffalo store, which carries a wide variety of beer and wine making supplies. It has lot of malted barleys, a variety of hops, and yeasts. It offers beer making kits, all the utensils and gadgets needed to make beer, and teaches lots of classes to both budding and experienced home brewers.
“This is an opportunity for us to show how to improve the quality of their home brew. It can expand someone’s palette, compare what they already made or want to make with a known quality product, and help provide a direction for where they want to go.
Buffalo Brewing will not distribute its beer. It will be make in small batches that Nolen expects to sell quickly.
Folks are welcome to bring their own food, stay and watch a game or socialize. Later, Nolen plans to provide a few snacks.
“We will sell samples, pints and growlers to go,” he said. (A growler is about a half gallon.)
“I am expecting brisk Sunday sales.”
Nolan has had a very positive reaction from other area brewers.
“The brew community is a very tight community. Everybody is excited about it.”
Nolan wants other brewers’ beers on tap. In addition to the arrangement with the initial 12 brewers, others want their beers on tap in midtown too and are going to produce more than usual so they can.
“I want their beer on tap. We have a saying (in the brew community), ’No crap on tap.’ It’s all good beer, small batch, craft beer.”
Buffalo Brewing will be open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturdays (hours later to be extended), and most likely hours for Sunday are noon to 7 p.m.
For more information, call 725-5296, email buffalo@thewaterbuffalo.com or visit thewaterbuffalo.com.
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