An internationally trained brewer with experience leading barrel-aging programs in Denver and Seattle plans to open a new brewery in the Kansas City area.
Nick Mader registered a new corporation called Alma Mader LLC with the Securities and Exchange Commission in June and started raising $500,000 for the new endeavor. He registered trademarks for Alma Mader Brewing in January. No address for the new brewery has been filed.
Mader could not be reached for comment.
Mader earned an international business degree in 2009 from Menéndez Pelayo International University in Spain. Then he earned a bachelor's of business administration with a focus on finance from the University of Missouri-Kansas City in 2011. He also graduated from the International Centre for Brewing and Distilling at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 2017.
After originally focusing on internships in sports management, Mader's career in the beer business started in 2012 with a bartender job at Boulevard Brewing Co. He then headed to Denver to work in production at the Crooked Stave Brewery and Barrel Cellar, where he started studying barrel aging, eventually becoming cellar reserve coordinator. He had a particular interest in barrel aging sour beers to bring out characteristics similar to wines.
"There are many wine drinkers coming into our taproom and not expecting to enjoy our beers," Mader told Boulder Weekly in June 2014. "One beer in particular, Surette, has vinous characteristics and finishes very dry and oaky due to the yeast and barrel aging."
Mader left Crooked Stave in 2015 to join Fremont Brewing Co. in Seattle as a brewer and cellarman. At the time, Fremont was heavy into experimenting with barrel aging using yeast strains, such as brettanomyces lambicus, that are used to make sour beers. Fremont was releasing high-end specialty beers under the "Black Heron Project" brand.
Fremont Brewing eventually named Mader as research and development brewer and mixed fermentationist. The job was all about experimenting by inoculating barrels with different yeast strains.
Mader left Fremont in November and started working to open his brewery.
Barrels of beer produced, 2017
| Rank | Prior Rank | Name, |
|---|---|---|
1 | 1 | Boulevard Brewing Co. |
2 | 2 | Tallgrass Brewing Co. |
3 | 4 | Kansas City Bier Co. |