Pony Express Brewing Company
Brewery has roots in Kansas farmland
August, 1999by Brian Gustafson
The spirit of the Pony Express is alive and well and living in a brewery in Olathe, Kansas called the Pony Express Brewing Company. This brewery embodies the attributes that made the original Pony Express an organization to be admired and a legend in its own time -- integrity, honesty, strength of character, a strong work ethic, perseverance, quality and pride in what they have accomplished.
And Pony Express Brewing, like the original, has its roots in the land itself. "My family has a large grain farming operation here on the south side of Kansas City," explains Joe Effertz, Jr., President and Founder of Pony Express Brewing Company. "It's what I grew up around, it's what I went to college to study. Agriculture teaches you to do a lot of different things. If something breaks down in the farming business, you learn how to fix it yourself. And if there is a better way to do something, you engineer it. It really teaches you to be very diversified."
The family operation was a large one, and Joe decided that he wanted to go out and accomplish some things on his own. He loved the farming life-style, so he started out by farming a bit on his own. But after a while, he was ready for a new and more "social" challenge. "Being in the agricultural world, your social life really suffers," explains Effertz. "So I wanted to get out of it for a while and accomplish things outside of agriculture, because I knew that I could always get back into it if it became necessary."
From there Effertz got into the restaurant business, the bar business, and started a retail liquor store. "When I started the liquor store in 1990 I had one microbrew," Effertz notes, "and when I sold it four years later I had three 'doors' full of micros and I really saw a transformation of what the consumer wanted."
Effertz spent the last year of those four years in the retail liquor business researching the craft beer industry. Then he met Ed Nelson, who had just opened up 75th Street Brewery. "We had mutual friends and we just hit it off," he explains, "and from there the initial idea was to open up a large microbrewery with a restaurant overlooking the brewing operations. We wanted to be in Overland Park on the Kansas side, because we knew that the day we opened the doors we would be the largest brewery in the state -- versus a couple of miles east where we have the largest brewery in the world in Anheuser-Busch. It was a choice between being number one or number three."
The local demographics also favored an operation on the Kansas side of Kansas City. "There's a lot more money on the Kansas side, which is what you're looking for with the craft beer industry," Effertz notes. "The problem was with trying to find a building that would house that kind of a facility. There were no established buildings with character in Overland Park as it is a new community. As for the available buildings, I was competing with Sprint on one, and CompUSA on the other. And being a start-up company, you knew who would win -- it didn't matter how slick your business plan was."
"So finally after being frustrated by this I ended up investing in another brewpub downtown," continues Effertz, "because I thought by God I'm going to own a piece of a brewery if I do not get to open up my own."
At that point Effertz and Nelson decided to separate the business and let the restaurant be a stand-alone operation and likewise for the brewery. Rent-wise it made a lot of sense and they found the Olathe building and bought it. "I'm a big believer in fate," adds Effertz, "and I'm glad it happened that way. Because having this much square footage in a restaurant location in Overland Park and paying at least $15.00 per square foot would be tough. So on the restaurant side of it we now have the two restaurants called Barley's Brewhaus, where we have 99 taps. That kind of took on its own focus, from just a restaurant overlooking a brewery, to having its own identity. Both the restaurants and the brewery are doing very well. Probably the most incredible thing is that we built the brewery and the two restaurant all at the same time. To have three construction projects like that going on all at the same time -- thank God I wasn't married."
Pony Express Brewing Company was founded in May of 1995. The first beer came off the line on September 29th, 1995. They started off with draft accounts, but within six months realized that they were going to have to get into packaging the beer. "We looked around at some equipment here in North America," explains Effertz, "and we didn't find anything that we thought was quality equipment. We had some connections over in Germany so we made two trips over there - the first time just to scout out equipment and to put down deposits, and the second time we went back with literally a suitcase full of tools and rented a big 20-foot truck. We loaded up four truckloads full of equipment, took it to a central location in Germany where a guy rebuilt everything we needed to be rebuilt, and then we packed it all up and shipped it over here. About 90% of our bottling line, the filters and heat exchangers all came from over there. It was just an incredible adventure."
Pony Express brews five year-round ales, two of which are medal winners at the Great American Beer Festival. The Honey Blonde Ale and the Nut Brown Ale were the first two beers brewed. The Honey Blonde is a light, crisp, refreshing ale brewed with locally grown wheat from the Effertz family farm, and Midwest clover honey, coriander and orange peel. The Nut Brown is brewed with crystal and chocolate malts for a complex character with a smooth finish and nice balance.
The Tornado Ale is a copper colored, American-style ale with an aggressive hoppiness that is followed by a smooth malt flavor due to the use of European crystal and Munich malts. "Right after we came out with the Tornado Ale, we won a Silver Medal in the amber ale category at the GABF which was the second largest category with 103 entries," noted Effertz. "We're very happy about that."
The other medal winner is their Arrowhead Red, brewed with select two-row barley malt, locally grown wheat, and special caramel and chocolate malts. This is then combined with a hint of ripe berries to create a red ale with a unique flavor. This brew won a Bronze Medal in the Berry Ale category last year.
The newest beer in the line-up is the Rattlesnake Pale Ale, with a nice balanced blend of hops and malt, with contributions from both side of the Atlantic.
"Some of the other beers that we have done or are doing seasonally are a Blizzard Ale, which is our holiday ale," adds Effertz, "we've got a Hailstorm Hefeweizen, and we just did a Red Sky Rye. We are also doing some contract brewing for 75th Street Brewery. We started out doing the Raspberry Wheat, and it won a Bronze Medal in 1995 at the GABF, and last year we just started making their Brown Ale and the Golden Ale, and the Brown Ale won a Gold Medal. So now we are making 4 medal-winning beers and we're very proud of that."
So how did the Pony Express theme come about? "With my agricultural upbringing, I've always loved animals -- horses in particular," explains Effertz. "We were down at my bar in Columbia, just kind of brainstorming, and the name Pony Express came up and we just went wow, what a great name -- everybody has heard of that name. It is something you can build a marketing theme around. It really did not start out this way as much as it evolved this way. Fortunately marketing plays a big part in what you do, and you want something that is easy to identify with. When I went over to Germany and bought a lot of this equipment, I was talking to people that do not understand the language very well. And when you say Pony Express and they understand you halfway around the world it makes you feel like you picked the right name. Our packaging features a horse and rider - always in the same position, with a different scene behind them which tries to portray all the different weather conditions and environments that the original riders rode through to deliver the mail. Thus when we came up with the Tornado Ale concept, we decided that we needed to name all our beers to fit the Pony Express theme. So our Nut Brown has been renamed Thunderbolt Nut Brown, and I think our Honey Blonde is going to be Sunny Honey Blonde."
Pony Express Brewing Company has a hospitality room, where beer is available for the tasting. Tours are generally conducted every Saturday at 1:00 PM except for holiday weekends. Please call 913-782-6699 for a current tour schedule. The brewery is located at 311 North Burch in Olathe. Information is also available on their web site at www.ponyex.com.
