Root Sellers buys a Columbia brewery and increases production of its root and ginger beers

Kit Maxfield and Greg Dennis had never set foot in the brewery that they were purchasing. In fact, three of Root Sellers’ four owners hadn’t even seen Columbia, Missouri’s Rock Bridge Brewing Co. when they agreed to buy it.

They didn’t feel the need.

“We were pretty confident, knowing that all of the equipment was brand-new and had barely been used,” Dennis says of the Tiger-town beer maker, which had succumbed to hard financial times after a short run.

That company’s loss has been Root Sellers’ well-timed gain. Owners Maxfield, Dennis, Corey Weinfurt and Cecil Troutwine were ready to increase their brewing capacity. Demand for their Pedal Hard Ginger Beer and Row Hard Root Beer had increased faster than the Weston Brewing Co. — with which the partners had contracted — could keep up with.

“We’re constantly chasing the demand side,” Dennis says. “It’s been great that there’s been so much demand but at the same time frustrating that we can’t keep up.”

Rock Bridge was leaving behind a 25-barrel brewhouse, with almost-new equipment. To get it, Root Sellers assumed Rock Bridge’s debt. But it also has the Rock Bridge brand and its 18,000-square-foot warehouse. The partners have also hired Rock Bridge’s brewmaster, Stu Burkemper, who already has a test batch in the fermenters.

“We’re up and going,” Dennis says. “Early on, I think we’ll be going down there, whether it’s Kit or myself or Cory, on a fairly regular basis until we have a good comfort level with the way things are going.”

“In the meantime, lots of road-trip tastings,” Maxfield says.

“Not the worst thing in the world,” Dennis adds.

Though the owners would have preferred a brewhouse in Kansas City, closer to where they all live, they say they couldn’t pass up the deal in Columbia. “The opportunity to go into something that was turnkey immediately,” Maxfield says, “we had to take advantage of it.” But they haven’t ruled out someday moving all of the brewing operations under one roof.

Root Sellers started in Maxfield’s basement about three and a half years ago. Maxfield and Dennis, both lead executives at Original Juan, say they had fallen in love with Moscow Mules. So they set out to make an alcoholic ginger beer. After about 60 batches, they figured out their best formula and formally formed Root Sellers in January 2014. They approached Weinfurt, the brewmaster at Weston Brewing Co., to contract-brew their ginger beer and, later, a root beer.

Weston is producing 4,000 cases (24 16-ounce cans per case) of Root Sellers beers a month. The new goal is to increase production to 30,000 cases a month between Weston and the new brewhouse. The partners say they’ll go beyond that as they add new equipment and ramp up production.

“Even though Weston is a fairly small facility, we need every little bit of capacity that we can get,” Dennis says. “Right now, we’re really just trying to get Missouri and Kansas taken care of, and we’d like to keep expanding beyond that.”

Staying in Weston affords Root Sellers an invaluable test market.

“It’s kind of like our taproom,” Dennis says. “We can brew a batch of beer up there and, since it’s consumed on-site, we can do new stuff and experiment and launch them first at Weston. And if people like them, we can get some cans printed up and go through the TTB [Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau] approvals and everything, and we can can it and keg it.”

“And if they don’t like it, we can just blame it on Weston,” Maxfield jokes.

Maxfield and Dennis are considering brewing some of Rock Bridge’s beers. “Their Rye You Lil’ Punk IPA is very good,” Maxfield says.

“It’s fantastic,” Dennis adds. “It could be something that we pursue when capacity allows because there are a lot of opportunities there. But the big one we’re chasing right now is the root beer, which has captured everyone’s imagination and been in the highest demand.”

“I don’t see any reason why we wouldn’t still do Rock Bridge,” Maxfield says, “but the big caveat is that we need to make sure that we’re able to make everything that we can sell of the root beer and our other Root Sellers products first. And once we’re able to get comfortable and get caught up, then we’ll probably go into that. That whole game plan may change in a week.”

Root Sellers is already working on its next product: a carrot-apple beer called Himmel & Erde. It’s carrot juice, back-sweetened with apple cider to create a bright-orange alcoholic juice. Himmel & Erde debuted at Union Station’s KC Brew Fest, where, Maxfield says, 90 percent of the drinkers liked it.

The other 10 percent? Maxfield paraphrases their reaction: “That’s just weird.”

But weird is where Root Sellers’ heart is. This is a business whose top seller is Row Hard Root Beer. It tastes like the nonalcoholic soda, but its ABV is a heady 7 percent. And it’s made with cane sugar and molasses.

“So we’re having to, in some cases, take a different approach to how we’re brewing,” Dennis says. “In some ways traditional but not traditional in the last 20, 30 years of craft brewing in the U.S. It’s redefining what it takes to be a brewery.”

Maxfield and Dennis say they want to keep producing challenging brews.

“We don’t want to be a one-hit wonder,” Dennis says. “Obviously, root beer is what’s getting us in the door, but once we’re in the door, we want to be able to expose our wholesalers and customers to the ginger beer and the carrot beer, and we’ve got a couple of others that we’re excited about. We’d love to launch those tomorrow, but we just don’t have the capacity and the bandwidth just yet.”