GREELEY (AP) – There are just too many weird connections for Kyle and Miranda Carbaugh to write off their latest venture as a fluke.
The young couple, who grew up in Greeley and nearby Windsor but who’ve held careers in Denver for the last seven years, will retire their corporate dreams for the risk of starting a business in which they can reconnect with roots of their families that date back a century.
With every step that brought them back to Greeley to expand their craft brews from the kitchen stove to commercial tanks, they can’t deny the deeper meanings they continue to discover.
“If you think about it long enough, it gets more and more eerie,” Kyle Carbaugh said, sitting in a rehabbed version of Greeley’s first brewery, Crabtree Brewery at 625 3rd St. “Yeah, we’re really supposed to do this.”
They’ve opened Wiley Roots Brewing Co., where Crabtree started in the quaint, industrial setting alongside the tracks in Greeley’s downtown.
After six years of home brewing in Denver and testing his creativity and skill as a brewmaster, Kyle, an accountant by trade, was pushed a little closer to the title of brewmaster when Miranda bought him a guidebook to Colorado’s craft breweries. It was Christmas 2008, and the next six months found the Carbaughs traveling to far-out places to find the brews they couldn’t get anywhere else. Along the way, they’d ask questions as they flirted with the idea of being behind their own bar.
They ended up in Greeley and sat down at Crabtree for a pint.
“When we finally made the decision to start the business, it was here, having a pint, right over there,” Miranda said, pointing to the area of her soon-to-be-open brewery, which until a year ago, housed Greeley’s first brewing pioneer. “At that spot, we said, ‘What do we have to do to get there, where can we find a tap room?’”
The pair searched for two years to find a place to build their brand.
“At that point in time, I don’t know that we ever expected to be back in Greeley,” Kyle said. But they did return one night for a seasonal beer. Crabtree was closed. So they walked into Syntax Spirits next door and struck up a conversation with owner Heather Bean.
“All of the sudden, we’re talking about equipment and brewing and trying to start a commercial business out of it,” Kyle said.
At first, they thought of opening a nanobrewery in Denver but decided it would be too labor-intensive for the amount of beer they’d create. They moved a step up and began looking for larger equipment to mass produce beer. They needed a bigger space. And one they could afford. It wasn’t happening in Denver.
Last summer, they got their break. Bean emailed them with the news. Crabtree had moved its taproom across town.
The Carbaughs took a risk, but they aren’t walking into it blindly. They have no children, and never changed their standard of living since they graduated college, even while moving up the ladder at their respective jobs. That’s allowed them to save, so they’ve turned their dream into a reality financed out of their own pockets. Miranda just left her job in human resources at the University of Denver. Kyle is keeping his accounting job for now.
His focus, however, is on brewing a superior beer, but always evolving to keep his creative juices alive. Eventually, he’ll retire his calculator and tie.
Miranda hopes to bring women into the brewery by hosting a different artist’s work each month, similar to the cocktails-and-canvas events that are part of the Denver scene. She’ll work on marketing, and running the tap room, while Kyle audits the books and brews.
The brewery’s walls for now are blank. They’ve decided to evolve with the brewery and see where time takes them.
“Life has a funny way of telling you the things you thought you were going to do are not really the things you should do, or the things you might be best at,” Kyle said.
