Martin City Brewing Co.’s masterminds send their Belgian beers to market

A few weeks back, Matt Moore returned to Martin City Brewing Co. after a tasting in Lawrence. The company’s co-owner and founder walked into the dark brewhouse after 9 p.m. Korn videos were playing on a television. Brewmaster Nick Vaughn was standing behind the bar, scribbling notes on a whiteboard.

“Nick, what are you doing?” Moore asked.

“Coming up with the next great ideas,” Vaughn replied.

That’s how Moore remembers the encounter. Vaughn’s version is slightly different.

“I was also watching Kottonmouth Kings videos for a while,” Vaughn says. “And Digital Underground. I think there’s a country one in there somewhere.”

But Moore and Vaughn agree that the whiteboard was covered with about 10 beer recipes, along with potential names, some paying homage to horror author H.P. Lovecraft.

“They sit there in the back of your head and they become reality,” Vaughn says of his ideas for new beers. “A million ideas float around, and eventually you have to throw 10 ideas at the wall until one sticks.”

A lot of those ideas are coming to fruition. On a mid-July morning, Moore, Vaughn and assistant brewer Grant Bergmann rattle off project after project when I ask what’s new. I ask how they keep it straight.

“I don’t think we keep it very straight,” Moore admits. “If we kept it straight, we wouldn’t have been out of IPA for the last two weeks.”

There’s a good reason for the IPA drought.

“The tanks were empty,” Moore says. “They had to be filled.”

Variety won’t be a problem for MCBC with plenty of new beers set to be tapped at the pub (500 East 135th Street) and distributed in bottles through Central States Beverage. The first to hit store shelves: bomber bottles of Quid Feci (a saison fermented in pinot noir barrels with cherries and Brett), Coming Undone (a Flanders red), Dream Quest (a golden ale fermented and aged in chardonnay barrels) and Colour Out of Space (a Belgian black ale fermented and aged in barrels with Brett). Those beers are already available at the pub. So are flagship beers Belgian Blond and Abbey, which come in six-packs of 12-ounce bottles.

Later this year, Moore expects to release 22-ounce bottles of Brandy Barrel–Aged Tripel, Imperial Porter, Bourbon Barrel–Aged Abbey and Big Boy imperial stout.

To handle the uptick in production, MCBC is adding two 30-barrel fermenters, along with a 30-barrel foeder this week. Bergmann brings out an unlabeled bomber. It’s the Apposite, a Belgian pale with Brett.

“That’s kind of why we’re bringing a foeder in,” Moore says, “is to make that in big quantities along with other stuff.”

“He doesn’t like Brett beers, but he likes that one,” Vaughn says. “That’s my gauge: How much have I skewed his tastes?”

Look for Apposite in large-format bottles and on draught in September. Also on the way, an American wild ale called Fortune Royale, which Moore says is a “blackberry blood orange sour,” and a quad being aged in tequila barrels with agave.

Up next is the release of Martin City’s collaboration with Bier Station — Station to Station Berliner Weisse — Saturday, August 22, at the beer bar (120 East Gregory Boulevard). Backed-up label approval in Missouri delayed its debut. Expect the pale beer to be served, just as it is in Germany, in a traditional goblet-style glass with flavored syrups (Woodruff) to cut the tartness. It will also be sold in six-packs of 12-ounce bottles at the pub.

Then, in September, MCBC will release a dark, chicory-wheat beer in collaboration with the magazine Feast as a fundraiser for KCPT Channel 19. The beer will be available only at the brewery.

This week, Hard Way IPA begins winding its way through the trademark process. MCBC garnered headlines earlier this year after beating Anheuser-Busch by a day to file for the rights to the “hard way” moniker.

“In a month or two, they’ll say that it’s been approved, and then there’ll be a 30-day waiting period for somebody to challenge it,” Moore says. “If Anheuser-Busch wanted to challenge it, they could probably kill it and just challenge it forever. But I don’t know if they’re going to do that.”

Bergmann brings Moore a sample.

“Hard Way?” Moore asks him.

“It wasn’t done the easy way.”

“Hard Way’s not carbonated yet, but damn, that’s delightful,” Moore says.

“Do you like the color?” Bergmann asks.

“I do,” Moore says. “It looks really, really bright, too. Well done.”

Still, there is one beer that Moore wants MCBC to master: a hoppy saison.

“I’m happy with our saisons, but I want the best fucking saison on the planet,” Moore says. “He [Vaughn] says I want a Tank 7. I don’t think I do.”

I tell them it’s interesting that Martin City has emphasized Belgian-style beers.

“I was forced to admit that I’m a very above-average Belgian brewer, I guess,” Vaughn says. It traces back to a yeast strain that Vaughn had worked with during his days as a brewer at 75th Street Brewery. “Now we’re a Belgian brewery in Kansas City.”

“[Co-owner] Chancie [Adams] and I never would have thought we’d open up a Belgian brewery,” Moore says.

“We do everything,” Vaughn says. “It’s just the Belgian beers are the more out-there ones that people get. We’re pretty diverse.”

“If it was just Grant and I, we’d have all the IPAs and stouts in the world,” Moore says. “So it’s a great mix.”