"We use the concentric ring model and only go outside of that if certain goods or services aren't available," says Nelson, adding that the brewery is committed to supporting neighborhood businesses as much as possible.
See also: 38 State Brewing Opens Littleton's First Taproom on Saturday
That means the spices they use in their beer come from a nearby spice shop, their design team is Colorado-based and their seven-barrel brewhouse -- well, it comes from Nebraska, but that's at least one circle closer than Oregon or California and a few circles closer than China or Germany.A commercial airline pilot, Nelson hatched the plan for Locavore with Reinhardt, a longtime chemist, just over a year ago. Recent changes to Littleton's zoning rules allowed them to speed things up this year; 38 State Brewing, which opened in May, was the first taproom-style beer-maker to open in the town. Locavore is the second.
As for the name, Nelson says it came about because the two couldn't agree on one -- at least not until they settled on the term that they had previously been using only to describe their ideas. A locavore is defined as "a person whose diet consists only or principally of locally grown or produced food."
"We want to be a neighborhood brewery and attract the same people and see the same faces time and time again," Nelson says.The brewery is about 4,000 square feet, with the taproom accounting for about 1,400 of that. It has a capacity of 160 people, and a big patio complete with firepit out front.
Both men are longtime -- and award-winning -- homebrewers who plan to split the brewing duties. They have eleven different beers ready to go for opening day, including Uberweizen Hefeweizen, Lil' Dirty Blonde, Sugar Magnolia Belgian-Style Wit Bier, Tooth and Ale ESB, Heisenberg Green Chile Pale Ale, Replacement Killer Pumpkin Ale, Block's Bounty Milk Stout, Oncorhynchus T IPA and a few others.
"We have a lot of strange names, but we're going to go with those - at least until we get the cease and desists," Nelson says.
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