Lake Arrowhead Brewing Finds a Gold Lining in an Otherwise Frustrating First Year 

With hindsight, 2020 probably wasn’t the best year to open a brewery. It was March when Lake Arrowhead Brewing got approval to open its taproom – the same month the state went into mass lockdown. In a resort town, heavily dependent upon tourism, it wasn’t the grand opening that owner Travis Lanthier had anticipated. They were well supported by the local community, but what followed was a logistical obstacle course. 

There has been at least one silver lining, or a gold lining to be more precise. The brewery’s flagship, Pinnacles Pale Ale won a gold medal at the US Open Beer Championship. “This was the first beer our new brewers brewed in our facility,” Lanthier enthusiastically told me when he first got the news, “So, we are excited for what the future holds.” 

The 2020 opening meant that I’d not had chance to make it up to Lake Arrowhead, but I did manage to snag a crowler of Pinnacles Pale Ale prior to interviewing Lanthier. More on that later, but first: 

BEER PAPER: Congratulations on the gold medal. That must feel like quite an achievement in your first year. 

LANTHIER: Thanks Andrew. That means a lot. Winning a gold medal in the first year is something that never even crossed my mind when putting the brewery together. Me not being a brewer, it means that we have the right brewers on the team. It also validates the path that we have laid out in the beer program, one we are still in the middle of building. We are very lucky to have Rich [Shaltz] and Vince [Bao]. 

BP: What is about Pinnacles Pale Ale that made it such a hit? 

LANTHIER: It was a goal of ours from the beginning to have a solid mountain pale ale. I don’t really know why but I just associate pale ales with the mountains. Alper’s Trout from June Lake Brewing, Oskar Blues Dale’s Pale, and Sierra Nevada Pale Ale have always just resonated as a beer style that represents a mountain community. You feel comfortable drinking a pale ale in the mountains and I think that has something to do with what made it an initial hit with our tasting room customers. It has the right amount of maltiness you want in a craft beer and finishes crisp, while being light enough to not weigh you down. 

BP: You’ve stuck to mostly traditional styles with a few twists – basil in the strawberry blonde and cucumber in the Kolsch. How do you sum up your approach? 

LANTHIER: Our approach is “approachable beer.” The Lake Arrowhead community thrives on summer up here so you’ll notice a lot our beers are lower in ABV and something you’d want to drink while enjoying a nice day outside. Although, as the seasons change so will our beer styles. In the winter, expect traditional darker beers with some fun winter flavors in the mix. It’s important to us that we nail the fundamental beer styles first. Being the only brewery in Lake Arrowhead, we see a lot of people who have never been to a brewery or are just looking to taste the local flavor. We don’t want it to be an intimidating experience.

BP: What made you settle on Lake Arrowhead? 

LANTHIER: My wife/co-owner and I grew up in Lake Arrowhead. We moved around a bit from Portland, to Mammoth, to North County San Diego and always loved the beer scenes there. We would always talk about how there needed to be a brewery in Lake Arrowhead and how every little mountain town has one or two except for Lake Arrowhead. Fast forward ten years. The building we always thought the brewery should be in became available. We just knew it was the right timing. 

BP: There’s a noticeable group of breweries opening up in the mountain and remote areas where recently there were none. Have you noticed much of a change up there? 

LANTHIER: I haven’t noticed much of a change up here with breweries opening up, but it makes sense to see that happening. Airbnb has transformed the way people visit the San Bernardino mountains so I can only imagine it’s happening in a lot of other mountain and remote areas. 

BP: How frustrating was it to get cleared to open right when the pandemic hit? 

LANTHIER: Very frustrating. 

BP: How has Covid changed your business plan? Was it a case of throwing the old plan out the window? 

LANTHIER: Covid has forced us to execute plans that we thought wouldn’t happen until after we got on our feet a bit. We built the brewery around an idea of mostly on-premise sales. When you walk in, it’s open air, the bar looks right at the production area, and you feel like you’re right in the action so to speak. So, to shift to a to-go model from the beginning was not ideal but we knew we needed to do something. 

We had a pallet of crowlers, six different pilot beers, and didn’t know how long the shutdown would last. So, we decided on releasing one beer a week, online, with pickup at the brewery. Within six weeks, we were selling out in less than five minutes. It was fun for the community in a very unsettling time and gave us a chance to try the limited release model. It’s something that we will be implementing in the business model moving forward. 

BP: Since you opened during Covid, myself and many others haven’t had a chance to visit. Can you give us a brief overview of what to expect? 

LANTHIER: Our brewery is located lakeside in a converted metal butler building. We have a small tasting room that leads to our 3,000-square-foot beer garden, surrounded by old growth forest. The interior is a mix of modern and industrial with an open-air brewery production area. We have a core beer lineup mixed with a variety of rotating taps featuring one- offs, seasonals, and root beer.

BP: Your crowlers are something of a souvenir. Can you tell us a little more? 

LANTHIER: For a brewery our size where 4-packs don’t always fit into the mix, the crowler makes the most sense for us as takeaway packaging. We didn’t want to just slap a logo on it. Creating a souvenir was actually the driving force behind the idea. Lake Arrowhead is a tourist-driven community so, we wanted to make something that was giftable and photographable. The idea of going heavy on the branding for the crowlers was an opportunity to create a standalone product that represents the brewery while touching on a little bit of Lake Arrowhead culture. 

BP: What are your hopes moving forward? 

LANTHIER: Moving forward, we’d like to be self-distributing throughout San Bernardino Mountain range and open up a second tasting room somewhere on the mountain. Long term, we hope that LABC will stand the test of time and create a good life for everyone involved. 

BP: Thanks, Travis. 

Early accolades bode well for Lake Arrowhead Brewing, and I can certainly vouch for the quality of their Pinnacles Pale Ale. It’s streamlined and light in body, like a good west coast IPA or the Extra Pale Ale’s that you used to see 20 years ago. That light body truly accentuates the finest local water resource, while pushing the fresh hop burst to the forefront. It’s a showcase of Cascade hops, packed with fresh lemon and grapefruit citrus as well as a touch of floral spice and pine. It really fits the warm SoCal climate while evoking imagery of natural mountain cedar and pine. It’s a hophead’s delight while dialing it in at a steady 37 IBU’s.  I thought this pale ale was excellent, and thought their North Bay IPA was even better. 

Andrew Smith discovered beer at a young age back in England. He “thought” he knew everything about beer before moving to the States 20 years ago. He covers the Inland Empire on his own blog at CraftBeerIE.com