Blackfoot River Brewing Company

Brian Smith Legacy Partner

Brian, like every other American of his generation started out drinking pale, fizzy, flavorless industrial beer. After joining the military and spending 3 years serving in Germany, he had the opportunity to experience & enjoy many different traditional European styles of beer. Brian returned home and attended graduate school in Missoula, where he worked as a Graduate Teaching Assistant in Economics. However, his meager TA stipend didn’t allow for much quality beer drinking. Mostly at that time it was 60-cent Heidelberg drafts at Charlie B’s. He was aware that you could make beer at home, but just didn’t have a place to do it.

After moving to Helena to work in politics in 1990, Brian got a real job as an Economist with the State. It was there that he worked with Brad Simshaw and the two of them started homebrewing, and they haven’t stopped brewing since.

Besides beer, Brian enjoys kayaking, rafting, fishing, hiking, skiing, mountain biking, hunting, gardening, cheese-making, chicken-raising, and his latest hobby is trying to build and maintain the “perfect” saltwater reef aquarium.