If you don’t believe Chase Healey is a beer nerd, you should see his fridge.
In an innocuous-looking warehouse off of 51st Street in Oklahoma City, Healey, advertising senior, proudly oversees the brewing and bottling of his very own craft brewery, Coop Ale Works. But his personal beer fridge, located in a side-room of the brewery, contains world famous beer rarities, exotic “chocolate indulgences” and a beer called “Ale to the Chief”—all of which he considers to be major influences on his own beer.
“I really am a beer nerd,” he said.
Healey began brewing his own beer a few years ago when a home-brewing shop opened up in Norman.
“I loved it,” he said. “I just got more and more serious about it and got crazy about the stuff until I was brewing every weekend, and I decided to make it into a profession.”
After finding a series of lucky breaks, some big risks and a few people willing to invest in his idea, Healey is closer now than ever to realizing his dream of bringing a more quality craft beer to Oklahoma.
Healey projects Coop Ale Works will produce around 700 barrels of craft beer this year. That’s 21,700 gallons.
While it sounds like a lot, larger beer company Anheuser-Busch produced 100 million barrels last year, but Healey is OK with that.
“The bigger breweries, like Anheuser Bush, Coors—they’re making bland beer; it’s the beer that everyone drinks,” he said. “Craft beer produces a much more hands-on beer. [My] beer took over 450 pounds of grain to brew and I had to lift every pound of it.”
The hands-on approach is a very important part of brewing to Healey, who brews all of Coop Ale Works’ beer himself, crafting every drop coming through the brewery.
On a typical Tuesday or Thursday, it’s very likely that you’ll find Healey among the damp and fragrant rooms of the brewery—checking temperatures, mixing ingredients, overseeing the fermentation in giant metal tanks or the cellaring and carbonation of the finished product.
“I do it all,” he said.
But on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, Healey spends his time at OU, where he’s finishing up a degree in advertising. He actually left OU his junior year to work in the advertising business, where he had the opportunity to travel around the country, but Healey said it still didn’t seem like something he wanted to do.
“I’m just so close to being finished [with my degree],” he said. “It’s a lot of work, but I know in May I’ll graduate and I’ll have that accomplishment.”
His degree has helped him pursue his true passion for brewing, from the artwork to the marketing strategies he uses.
“I’ve been able to use a lot of what I’ve learned in my degree to complement what we do here,” he said. “Plus I want that degree because it’s a degree from OU.”
With his OU degree in advertising, Healey plans to market beers tailored to people from Oklahoma City.
“Right now we’re offering a cerveza-style light beer called Horny Toad. It’s the beer to introduce people to craft beer,” he said.
Coop Ale Works also will be offering an amber-style beer called Native Amber – which contains some Native American artwork on the label – and a darker beer called “DNR” with an alcohol content of 10 percent – six percent higher than most beers.
As he stood over a massive tank of boiling beer, where hops are added to bitter the beer as it begins to boil, Healey looked on intently, periodically spraying it with water to keep it from boiling over. It isn’t difficult to tell that to Healey, beer is more of a passion than it is a hobby.
“It’s not about partying,” he says. “It’s really about enjoying the flavor [and] appreciating what this region has to offer.”
Region is another important part of brewing for Healey. He appreciates beers with local ties. Coop Ale Works, Healey said, wants to brew the beer that people think of when they think Oklahoma.
“We don’t really want to go beyond Oklahoma [with Coop Ale Works],” he said. “We want to offer an Oklahoman beer. If I’m going to Kansas I’ll drink some Boulevard there, or there are several breweries in Austin or Ft. Worth and I’ll try those when I’m there.”
Healey said he wants others around the country eventually to have beer from Coop Ale Works in their eclectic personal fridges.
“That’s what I like about the regional thing,” he said. “You can travel there and try their unique beers. That’s what I want to offer to people coming to Oklahoma City—it’s a major city that people are traveling through, and a lot of them want to try the local beer of Oklahoma.”
With plans to add more locally-grown ingredients to his beers and officially assert his brew as the official Oklahoma beer, Healey said he has high hopes for Coop Ale Works, and Oklahoma.
“I think we are offering a lot of beer styles that people are just now getting interested in, so it’s really put us in a unique position,” he said. “We’ve seen where the market’s gone and what [people] enjoy in craft beer, and we try to offer them that. I’d say it stands up to any local product that comes into the state.”
Coop Ale Works will begin distributing beer March 2nd to bars and liquor stores in Norman, Oklahoma City and Tulsa. Healy encourages of-age students to try it.
“There’s more than just Bud Lime, you know?”
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HomebrewMan 8 months, 2 weeks ago
I hope that the University of Oklahoma catches on with the increased activity of local and regional brewing of beer. Consumption of locally brewed beer, provides jobs in operations of breweries, marketing, logistics, and agriculture. With increased pressure from Russia to dump cheaper grains on a world market, it is helpful to provide a local set of NEW buyers for locally grown grain. If OU ever offers a Master's degree in the business program for brewery operations, I am there.