[title subtitle=”WORDS Dwain Hebda
IMAGES Dwain Hebda, Amy Adams and courtesy Fort Smith Brewing Company”][/title]
The rows of former Army barracks at Chaffee Crossing jut straight and rigid as a platoon leader’s chin. Little distinguishes one from the other in shape, form or décor and you can almost hear the boots of soldiers long gone tromping on the pavement in taut formation. The sky is big and the view is largely unbroken out here. It’s a peaceful, beautifully solitary place.
Except, that is, for the one building stirring at this happy hour. Down one lane of the base-turned-commercial-development there’s life to break the quiet at Fort Smith Brewing, a frothy stake driven into the parched Sebastian County earth.
“There’s still a lot of room for growth, but we have seen huge improvements,” says Quentin Willard who founded the company with business partner Micah Spahn. “Just since we’ve opened up, everywhere around town has been changing their taps. These are all things we envisioned. We wanted to put pressure on Fort Smith to start inviting craft beer, to be a city that looks promising for other breweries and other craft spirits. We have started to see that.”
Pulling chairs down from tabletops in advance of the night’s clientele, Quentin looks at home out here and not just because he’s standing in the middle of the brewery that has been a longtime, and hard fought for, dream. A native of Van Buren, he’s an Army vet whose service to his country took him all over the world and introduced him to the brews that would define his once and future trade.
“I was living in New England at the time and wanted to open up a brewery. I fell in love with craft beer up there,” he says. “I traveled all over the world and tried flavors from everywhere. I’m a very social guy, so I talked to some people and got an idea of some flavor profiles that they liked. Based on that information and trying beers all over I kind of figured out what people enjoy, generally speaking. I’ve come up with a palette that’s very pleasing to a large population.”
Quentin is particularly attuned to what it takes to move the non-beer drinker into the fold, something he can relate to personally.
“I actually hated beer until I had a craft beer that I enjoyed,” he says. “I even tried multiple craft beers and I didn’t care for them. Then I went to this one brew pub in New Hampshire. You can’t get Miller and Bud up there even if you wanted it, so you had to drink their local beer. I had one of this with my meal and it was actually really nice.
“I was like, I can’t believe I’ve actually enjoyed a beer. It complemented the food. So, I ordered another one. This is not the beer I grew up knowing about. Because of that experience, I tried some other ones and had some more I liked and I just kept trying them.”
Quentin had seen the future but had no idea how to make it come to fruition until he was introduced to Micah through mutual friends. Micah was looking for an entrepreneurial opportunity and had beer-making chops to boot. Still, it was a long slog before the doors would open.
“It took us a long time to get open; it took us four years,” Quentin says. “In that time, Micah got heavily involved with his current company, so he wasn’t able to put a lot of work in here. I had to learn how to brew and I’ve actually come to enjoy it a lot. It’s a very creative process.”
In addition to its Chaffee Crossing location, Fort Smith Brewing opened a downtown location in 2019. Total brewery production last year was one hundred seventy-five barrels with ninety-seven percent of sales over the counter at the two locations and the rest coming from a smattering of local taps. It’s a volume Quentin is comfortable with for the time being.
“We care about Fort Smith more than anything,” he says. “Just like in our name, that’s really all we care about. One thing I noticed from traveling the world trying craft beers, had some amazing beers at a brewery and then I go try it somewhere else and it didn’t taste the same. So, I learned real quick that you want fresh beer. You want it at the source.”
“We don’t have aspirations of blowing up and being huge and going all over the world. We really just want to make sure we make a name for Fort Smith. Remind people that some of the best beers in the world are created here.”
Quentin has other reasons for focusing on the Fort Smith market. According to the Brewers Association, there are thirty-eight craft breweries in Arkansas. Central and Northwest Arkansas have blown up with the majority of these, while locally produced suds in western Arkansas have been few and far between. In the state’s second-largest city, being essentially the only game in town – the other craft beer establishment in Fort Smith doesn’t brew their beer onsite – means there’s a lot of ground to make up in this market.
“Fort Smith is a culture that’s very slow to change,” Quentin says. “There’s a lot of opportunity here and potential that hasn’t been capitalized on in my many years for a number of reasons, part of it is cultural.”
“By showing a business model that people do drink craft beer and they’ll drive to the edge of the city to get a craft beer, it entices other people around town to start putting craft beer on. That naturally entices them to start learning about [craft beer] and figuring them out and being able to explain it to the customer. So more and more people are getting involved with this now. That’s awesome to see and exactly what we want to see for our community.”
Quentin and Micah embrace the role of the city’s Pied Pipers of pilsner and porter, so much so that the taproom carries an unusually large number of taps – sixty-two, to be precise – only a few of which are pouring the house product. The rest comes from breweries across the state, the better to round out customers’ hops education.
“We never originally planned on having a lot of other Arkansas beers on tap, but throughout the development process, and realizing Fort Smith ain’t getting another brewery anytime soon, I realized we had a big responsibility to educate this part of the state on craft beer,” Quentin says.
“It’s hard for one small brewery to create that many varieties of one style of beer. The benefit of having everybody else on tap is we can have six pale ales and let people try them. We can also show the differences in interpretations. Pale ales range from this much hops to this much hops. So it’s a great educational opportunity we can provide our customers.”
Naturally, Quentin ranks Fort Smith Brewing’s selections right at the top of the list of best beers in the state. He flagged two brews as best-suited for first-time visitors: Pearl Star Saison, an orange and coriander influenced brew for the newbie and Dat Nguyen stout for the aficionado, named after the College Football Hall of Famer who was born at Fort Chaffee.
As for his own palate, Quentin swears he’s beer agnostic and has learned to appreciate each style and category on its own merits. Doing so, he believes, helps him envision beers to round out the Fort Smith Brewing lineup in a way that provides something for everyone.
“I like all beers,” he says. “The more you learn about it the more you appreciate it. I’m a firm believer that everybody likes beer. You’ve just got to find the right one.”
Chaffee Crossing
Fort Smith Brewing Company
7500 Fort Chaffee Boulevard
479.242.3722
Downtown Fort Smith
115 North 10th Street
479.242.8277
fsbrewco.com
