Not just a hobby; Connoisseur creates brewery

LAZY MOUNTAIN — Neil Gotschall sold the first Lazy Mountain Brewing Company beer to a restaurant in June and is racking up the list of places his beer can be found around the Valley and even in Anchorage.

Gotschall grew restless in his retirement and decided to ramp up a hobby he’s been tinkering with for two decades. Gotschall put a five-barrel brewhouse in a 670-square foot building on his family’s goat dairy farm on Lazy Mountain as a way to keep himself busy and share his beer with thirsty Alaskans.

“I got the feel for it over the years and so I started brewing beer and I made some really bad beer but I was dead broke and when you’re dead broke no matter what kind of beer you make good or bad it always tastes good,” Gotschall said.

Gotschall’s title he gave himself is ‘head cook and bottle washer’ and his wife Sarah runs the communications side of the business. Gotschall had multiple stints in Alaska as a helicopter pilot and first got the idea for a brewery while flying on the Kenai Peninsula in the early 1980s. His first batch was brewed in Texas with Sarah in the late 1980s. Sarah has had an active role in her husband’s love of brewing and the business he began this year as well.

“I think it’s rich without being sweet. It’s rich without having a super high alcohol content which makes it drinkable but i don’t have a good beer vocabulary, I just like to drink his beer,” Sarah Gotschall said.

Neil brewed with smaller equipment in his home for two decades and after one house guest was so taken with one of his recipes that he nearly finished off Neil’s batch, he decided to begin selling his beer. Neil said he has made up his own recipes along the years of guessing and checking. Neil said that the beer benefits from the 240-foot deep well water at their home on Lazy Mountain.

“We unfortunately are not able to locally source our malted barley, or our yeast, or our hops, but we local source some really good water,” Sarah Gotschall said. “I just really love that connection to the community supported agriculture and local sources.”

Neil’s Lazy Mountain Brewing Company Beer can be found in 11 bars, restaurants and growler bars in Palmer, Wasilla, Chugiak, Anchorage and Girdwood. Without space for a tap room, Neil hopes to continue to serve more bars, restaurants, and kegs to individuals. Neil’s idle hands developed an obsession over the production of his beer. In two of his five tanks sits a beer with the same recipe that presents flavors in a uniquely different fashion. Neil said that the only difference between the two beers is the timing of his hops. Lazy Mountain Brewing Company currently offers the Lazy Stout, the Lazy Blonde, and the Lazy Cart Ride Ale.

“I came back in from a road drive with my horse and he said here, try this one and so I did and it was a nice day and I said oh, that’s good. I like that, and he says let’s call it cart ride ale,” Sarah Gotschall said.

Neil said that each beer currently in tanks at Lazy Mountain Brewing company is slightly derivative of the Lazy Cart Ride Ale, a recipe he first brewed three years ago.

“I sort over the years stumbled across the correct combinations. All my beer is water, grain, hops. and yeast. I don’t add anything to it,” Neil Gotschall said. “I have a pretty good idea of what the right stuff is to put into a recipe. The experimentation isn’t as much as it used to be.”

The Gotschalls hope that their beer might make it into cans someday, but are happy with the rapid growth of businesses that like the beer from Lazy Mountain. With the smallest space of any brewery, Lazy Mountain Brewing Company joins a rapidly growing contingency of local brewers. After attending the Boo Fest beer event at Raven Hall, Sarah said that the existing brewing community had been more than friendly and welcomed Lazy Mountain to the tribe.