Can-do collaboration

Spokane’s two biggest breweries have launched the largest local collaborative effort to date.

No-Li has reached an agreement to brew its flagship Born & Raised IPA – and can it for the first time – at Orlison’s production facility in Airway Heights.

The move allows No-Li to grow without having to create a new production brewery, which it has been exploring, and Orlison to capitalize on its excess brewing capacity.

“It allows both breweries to expand and puts us both on more solid ground going forward,” says Orlison co-owner Orlin Reinbold. “The consumer ends up with two stronger breweries.”

“It keeps it simple, and keeps it local,” adds No-Li owner John Bryant. “Our goal is still to expand and build a brewery, but this essentially buys us a little bit of time to get a stronger balance sheet and stay independent.”

Born & Raised accounts for about 30 percent of No-Li’s sales, Bryant says. The six-packs of 12-ounce cans, expected to start shipping to stores Nov. 12, will retail for around $9.99 and replace the 12-ounce Born & Raised bottles in No-Li’s lineup.

“It gives the customer another package size that’s portable and convenient that we’re not offering them now,” Bryant says.

After a successful test run, No-Li brewed its first official 30-barrel batch at Orlison on Wednesday using its own malt, hops and yeast.

“I think we’re going to learn from each other, too,” Reinbold says of the joint effort.

No-Li, easily the largest local brewery at a volume of roughly 10,000 barrels this year, has outgrown its current production space and has been looking for a location for a new facility. It had hoped to find an existing building that could be converted, but that proved difficult, Bryant says.

“If you want to be in Spokane proper, finding a 20,000-square-foot building with 25- to 30-foot ceilings, a loading dock, where you’re not going to upset people with trucks coming and going, that’s a pretty small number,” he says.

Orlison, on the other hand, will produce about 2,000 barrels this year, but has the capacity to turn out more than three times that from its 30-barrel brewhouse with eight fermenters (seven of them 60-barrel). It also installed a canning line last year, the only Spokane-area brewery to have done so.

The new agreement brings things full circle, Reinbold notes, since No-Li’s predecessor, Northern Lights, launched in Airway Heights in November 1993 just two blocks from Orlison’s current location. It moved to the former Bayou Brewing space along the Spokane River in 2002, and rebranded as No-Li, with a revamped product line, after craft beer marketing veteran Bryant arrived in the spring of 2012.  

Orlison was born the following summer when Reinbold and another investor took charge of the former Golden Hills Brewing and embarked on their own ambitious growth plans.  

“I think the market is maturing enough to have a large production brewery here,” Reinbold says. “We started out with a lot of smaller breweries, but we’re going to have a large brewery in this market, whether that’s No-Li or Orlison.”

Adds Bryant: “The potential I see here is what keeps me in the game, keeps me passionate about all of it. But it’s going to take time.”