Somehow, there was no Paso Robles Brewing Company. So he created it
After 13 years in Hollywood, Wisconsin-born Ryan Bonner moved up to San Luis Obispo County for a fresh start.
For six years, he worked at Venteux Vineyards in Templeton and this summer, he traded corks for taps and grapes for grain with the launch of Paso Robles Brewing Company.
“I’ve known for a few years I was gonna open a brewery,” Bonner said. “I was looking for the right location.”
Originally, he had a different location and concept in mind for the brewery, but once he saw the spot at 201 Spring St., Bonner knew he wanted to build an establishment that celebrated his adopted city.
“When I found that building, it was just like, ‘this is Paso Robles Brewing Company,’” he said. “This is a place to put a landmark business.”
Paso Robles Brewing Company founder inspired by local brewers
Growing up in Wisconsin, Bonner’s father owned a bar, so it’s a little bit in the family, he said.
“I always saw myself maybe doing that one day, opening a bar or something like that or having a place on my own,” he said.
After moving up to San Luis Obispo County from Los Angeles to work at Venteux, Bonner started learning more about the beer business and was particularly inspired by BarrelHouse Brewing Company in Paso Robles.
Bonner felt there was plenty of room for another brewery in Paso Robles.
“In a town with 400 wineries, it seemed crazy that there wasn’t a Paso Robles Brewing Company already there,” Bonner said.
While working at Venteux, Bonner said he learned that “Paso is a word-of-mouth town.”
Securing buy-in from the local community is critical to building a regular set of customers in the North County, Bonner said.
“I built this place for Paso,” Bonner said. “I know if we build something that is for locals and the locals love it, everything will work out.”
Paso Robles brewery stores and pours beer differently
Bonner said he wanted Paso Robles Brewing Company to be known, first and foremost, for the quality of its craft beer.
“I wanted to be respected the way BarrelHouse is for beer, but then also have a really cool ambiance and environment for people to come hang out,” Bonner said.
One thing that kept getting in the way of the vibe of any location Bonner inspected was the need for a giant refrigerator to store the kegs of beer. He felt it was an eyesore on the brewery floor and all potential spaces required bonus square footage to accommodate the cold room.
“It always ruined the whole design concept,” Bonner said.
While touring local breweries with James Parrish, who later joined Paso Robles Brewing Company as the brewmaster, Bonner learned that it was possible to forego the use of kegs and refrigeration entirely by using beer tanks.
“It totally blew my mind,” he said.
It is common in Europe to store beer in tanks instead of kegs, but less common in the United States, Bonner said.
He invested in eight serving tanks from the Paul Mueller Company, which allows the beer to be stored in tanks on the brewery floor instead of in kegs inside a refrigerator. They’re currently stored in the back bar of the brewery and add dimension to the space.
Each tank can hold an eight-and-a-half barrel capacity, roughly 2,100 beers per tank, Bonner said. The space the tanks use would hold about 136 half-barrels of beer, which, if distributed in kegs, would take up about five times the space.
“When we make a batch of beer, instead of loading up a bunch of kegs and storing them, we put it into one tank,” Bonner said.
The tanks are hermetically sealed and have an internal cooling system. The beer is stored in bags and is dispensed using compressed air, not carbon dioxide, according to the Mueller Company website.
“So we control the temperature of the tank and we control the fact that there’s no oxygen that ever touches that beer,” he said.
The use of beer tanks allowed Bonner to purchase traditional Czech beer faucets, called Lukr. Brewers can use the Lukr faucets to pour the beer with a foamy head — another old world beer tradition that has gone by the wayside in the States, Bonner said.
“People are used to filling up a glass all the way to the tippy-top with beer with no head,” he said. “In Europe, they would make fun of you for doing that thing. That’s not a proper pour.”
To accommodate the foam, Paso Robles Brewing Company purchased 20-ounce pint glasses and each pour contains 16 ounces of beer, the rest is for the foam.
Bonner said the tank method was a little more expensive upfront, but he anticipates the cost-savings will accumulate within a year or two. Plus, they’ll be able to avoid injuries associated with moving kegs.
Menu features three types of IPAs and Wagyu beef burger
James Parrish joined Bonner’s endeavor at Paso Robles Brewing Company as the brewmaster. Parrish used to work for Firestone Walker Brewing Company and started brewing beer in his teenage years, Bonner said.
The current beer list includes seven beers and a seltzer on tap. Parrish and Bonner focused heavily on IPAs, and there are three different types on the menu — West Coast IPA, Centennial IPA and a Double IPA.
Through Parrish’s connections in the San Luis Obispo County brewery scene, the pair was able to visit some of the popular breweries in the community to learn more about running a beer business.
“The whole community let us take a look around. Nobody would shut the door on us,” Bonner said. “They were all like ‘come on in, we’ll tell you whatever you want to know.’”
Bonner wanted Paso Robles Brewing Company to function as a full-service restaurant as well. When it came to developing the menu, he asked his team to think of some of their most memorable meals.
Despite his love for pizza, he knew they didn’t want to build a pizza joint.
“I wanted it to be this really gourmet, like the exact thing you’d want to have at a brewery,” Bonner said.
By that thinking, the brewery needed to have an unforgettable burger on the menu. Bonner wanted the burger to be fresh, not frozen and finished with the thickest cut of bacon possible — which meant the culinary team had to source pork belly and slice it in-house.
The kitchen was already finished when Paso Robles chef Christian Albers was hired, but contractors were still working on completing the rest of the brewery.
To test out the menu, Bonner had Albers cook for the crew every day, and they gave their feedback on what should be part of the permanent menu.
“We tried every burger. I mean, every kind of every burger, from Certified Angus Beef to Wagyu and dry-aged,” he said.
The crew did a blind taste test, and in the end, the Wagyu beer burger was the unanimous favorite and became part of the menu.
Other menu items include a Philly cheesesteak sandwich, a tortilla salad inspired by Bonner’s favorite salad in Los Angeles, a Cubano sandwich and a vegan falafel sandwich.
Bringing some of his Wisconsin roots to Paso Robles, Bonner also knew he had to have fried cheese curds on the menu.
Paso Robles Brewing Company aims to offer a unique experience
Bonner said he learned at Venteux that people are attracted to establishments that offer the opportunity to learn something new.
At Venteux, he helped build out a live music program that is still going today. For Paso Robles Brewing Company, he wanted to pay homage to the late 1800s — the era when Paso Robles was founded.
The brewery will featured old photos of Paso Robles landmarks, such as Spring Street and the old railway station.
“The train station that first brought people to Paso — people use their cars now, but that’s not how it used to be,” Bonner said. “Paso was still that town that people traveled to, to relax and have a good time and be entertained, be served.”
He bought an old Prize Wheel at an antique shop in Orange County and mounted it on a wall.
From unique pours and beer storage to Victorian Era decor, Bonner promises patrons that “you’ll come in and you’ll see things you haven’t seen before.”
Paso Robles Brewing Company is at 201 Spring St. The hours are Sunday, Monday, Thursday 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Friday and Saturday 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.
The kitchen closes an hour before the brewery closes.
This story was originally published October 4, 2022 at 5:30 AM.
