Denali Brewing hops to the top

TALKEETNA — Denali Brewing Co. recently won the 2017 Small Business of the Year Award from the Alaska Chamber of Commerce.

Owner, operator and “head floor sweeper,” Sassan Mossanen said he was humbled and very grateful for the recognition. To him, the brewery is a “the fulfillment of a lifelong dream” — a dream shared and a seed flowered with his family, friends and industrious neighbors. He said that there are a lot of farmers in the Trapper Creek and Talkeetna area. He’s familiar with the toils of living off the land in the Alaska. He also said there are a lot of creative people in the area. His team treats crafting beer as an art form. The brewery opened in 2009 but the dream started long before that. After many years, everyone in the brewery is reaping what they have sowed from innovation and collaboration. The harvest of many hours clocked in, meticulous analysis and refinement, experiments made, ties formed, reducing, reusing and recycling and up cycling — putting the craft in craftsmanship.

“Something that we’ve really worked on here at the brewery is to create a culture of highest manufacturing practices that you can have. Even though we are at the end of the road here in Talkeetna, we don’t use our location as an excuse to not have the highest standards for how we produce beer,” Mossanen said.

Back in October, Mossanen went down to Sitka and rubbed elbows with other local business owners from across the state for the Alaska Chamber of Commerce’s annual Fall Forum. There, he spent time listening to speakers, participated in panel discussions and workshops, and took part in the Top Business Award Gala, walking away with the Bill Bivin Small Business of the Year Award.

“To be amongst people who had been in the state many, many years, much longer we have, to get recognized by that group of folks was hugely exciting, and to get some of the business side of what we do recognized was in many ways one of the biggest honors our breweries ever had,” Mossanen said.

There are four different award categories: William A. Egan Outstanding Alaskan of the Year, Bill Bivin Small Business of the Year, Local Alaska Chamber of Commerce of the Year, and the North Star Award. According to the Alaska Chamber website, to qualify for any of the awards, all nominees must: “Provide a significant contribution to the future of the great state of Alaska.”

The Alaskan spirit of work ethic is not lost on Mossanen.

“In my opinion, Alaska businesses are some of the most industrious, hard-working folks that are out there dealing with some incredibly challenging situations,” he said.

Mossanen said that from day one, the company had a set of core values to instill on all employees as they distilled their product. The first and highest was to establish a culture of safety. Inside a brewery can be a dangerous place. There’s hot fluids and high pressure valves, so maintaining a safe work environment has been instrumental for the company’s success. Second is quality. Mossanen said that word gets thrown around a lot but for Denali Brewing, it means putting all their beers through extensive lab work and steady refinements over time. That also means sending their brewers to gain more knowledge, year-round. They head Outside to get more training and bring back what they learned. Thirdly, Mossanen said, Denali is community-minded and civically driven. He said that means taking care of their own backyard and helping reduce their carbon footprint for all of Alaska.

“It may sound like a cliché, but it’s true: Alaska is a big state but a small community,” he said.

According to the Alaska Chamber website, “Each year the Alaska Chamber recognizes an outstanding individual, a leading small business, and a local Alaska chamber of commerce for their accomplishments and contributions they make to our statewide economy.”

Denali Brewing has a set of best practices in place to maximize quality, minimize waste, and collaborate with the surrounding businesses and communities. The brewery forms a symbiotic relationship with the area, combining efforts with other local businesses like Kahiltna Birchworks Birch Syrup and Berry products, combining resources to craft special beers and promote each other’s businesses.

Mossanen said that their facility is one of the few in the state that has its own waste treatment system. He noted that most weeks their Dumpster isn’t even full. He also said they recycle what they can and re-use what they can. One of the most commonly re-used materials from the brewery is their spent grain, which is the remaining grain after the sugar has been extracted. Spent grain has multiple purposes, namely for gardening and animal feed. This means the brewery has close knit relationship with the local farmers.

“Alaska needs to foster more of that lifestyle,” he said.

About a decade ago, the brewery won the silver medal for in the World Beer Cup for their Flag Stop #2, a Flanders style red ale that was named after the Alaska Railroad train that drops people off north of Talkeetna. Mossanen said that the brewery won about eight or nine medals this year.

“The biggest medal is when people choose to purchase our beer and support their local brewery,” he said.