Brewing company opened late 2013 to provide authentic tastes and fun, relaxing tasting room for Reno community
Signs for a defunct paint and body shop camouflage the entrance to Under the Rose Brewing Company, as well as its size. The main entrance’s door looks like it got ripped off a house and nailed to the wall. Inside, game tables surround stacked cargo-palettes meant as seating or tables. A black pitbull, Avi the “#brewpup,” greets each customer at the tasting room bar made of wood anyone can buy at a home improvement store. People say it reminds them of a buddy’s garage, but better.
Scott Emond and his wife Jesse Kleinedler launched the brewery Oct. 5, 2013 and the tasting room Nov. 30. Scott serves up taps and sells bottles at Craft Reno when he’s not brewing twice a week and running the tasting room with Jesse.
No TVs, a huge bar with ample seating and an indoor bocce ball court were Scott’s only requirements for his brewery — other than producing drinkable, authentically styled beer.
The brewery is squished between the Reno-Sparks Gospel Mission Thrift Shop and the Nevada Transmission Exchange on the same block as the Reno Bike Project on 4th Street and Elko Avenue. A vinyl sign on their front garage door under the old Paint & Body Shop sign points customers in the right direction. They have plans for a bigger sign and new paint, but Jesse isn’t sure what color they want the outside yet. Scott said Jesse is in charge of all the design, the tasting room and the business— he just makes the beer.
Scott believes in making drinkable beers and he wants feedback from his customers. His philosophy differs from breweries that make beers with huge, face-punching flavor or those that love crazy experimenting and throw consistency and style to the wind.
“Why would I ever make a beer I wouldn’t consume?” Scott said.
Which isn’t to say they don’t try things or want to punch you in the face at Under the Rose. Right now, there’s a blondebeer aging in a pinot noir barrel in preparation for a beer dinner at Old Granite Street Eatery. The regular blondebeer will pair with the opening citrus salad while the blondebeer in the pinot noir barrel will pair with a smoked chukar.
Scott approaches each beer with a slightly different goal. The blondebeer is a German Kolsch-style ale that only uses German ingredients — Munich malt, Perle hops and Kolsch yeast — and water treated to match K öln, Germany’s water. The britishbeer is made using water treated to match the mineral content you’d find in Burton-on-Trent, England with British hops and English Ale Yeast. This makes Under the Rose’s beers taste like they are coming from totally different regions or different breweries.
No beer in Under the Rose’s current line-up uses Cascade hops or any other hop originating in the Northwestern United States. Scott and I both enjoy more subtly hopped beers and India Pale Ales that come out of England, such as Samuel Smith’s IPA, which uses a more traditional level of European hops. Jesse thinks Cascade-rich American IPAs, such as Stone IPA, are a good gateway beer for people starting to explore craft beer. The first time someone tastes beer with big flavor, it’s easy to get hooked and start searching for them before branching out and exploring all the other styles, she said.
But just because he doesn’t like heavy Cascade IPAs doesn’t mean he won’t make an IPA that has Cascade or other hops in it. Scott acknowledges that IPAs are in demand and he may be missing out on a customer base by not making one. Maggie Scaling and her husband Jeff looked through the menu and immediately asked if they had a beer with Cascade hops in it. I asked Maggie why she wanted Cascades specifically and she said that after living in Seattle it was something she came to expect and enjoy.
Maggie may get her wish too. Right now, Under the Rose has a 10-barrel brewhouse (mash tun and boil kettle) with four, 10-barrel fermenters (315 gallons or 2,520 delicious pints per fermenter) with a maximum capacity of two brews a week. But Scott is already dreaming big and eventually wants to up that to a 40-barrel system — and he has the space to do it (he actually has the space to drive a food truck all the way into the tasting room on Friday, March 14).
As it is, he’s having trouble keeping up with demand as bars drain those kegs fast. Campo just replaced their Peroni tap with one of Scott’s beers and Public House can’t seem to stock up fast enough, Scott said. Last time he was at Public House he met three guys asking for Under the Rose’s beer because it’s local. Unfortunately, they were out. Bars interested in helping local breweries by buying their product over national beers are what will help build this community, he said, and that’s what Under the Rose wants to be a part of.
“Why have something from California when you can have something local?” he said.
Craft beer has an economic impact on the state and local city and can even be an indicator of better economic times as people spend more money on non-essentials (I know, beer is essential but not the same as rent and food), according to the Brewer’s Association. It’s important to Scott and Jesse to be a part of Reno’s growing economy and growing brewing industry.
“We want to help people that help us help Reno,” he said. “We are a cog in Reno.”
Where to find the beer
You can find their beers throughout Reno. They try to keep a running list on their website here. But the distributors sell the kegs wherever they can, so you may get lucky and find it somewhere else.
UNDER THE ROSE BREWING COMPANY
559 E. 4th St
Reno, NV 89512
info@undertherosebrewing.com
(775) 657-6619
Mike Higdon
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