Salt & Hops aims to acquire challenging-to-find beers and other beverages in one particular spot.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Mary Rydman and Greg Evans at Salt & Hops, the new Beer Boutique on 27th St. in Ogden, on Monday, Could 2, 2022.
Through lockdown, bored with working at residence, Mary Rydman and Greg Evans fulfilled up for video games of lunchtime pingpong.
Occasionally they talked about beer.
“We both adore beer, but we find it hard to get constantly excellent beer in Ogden,” Evans said.
The discussions turned severe on the road back from Las Vegas last fall. “We talked about a business enterprise program, received to function, used for our business enterprise license, applied for our liquor license, started ordering coolers and earning interactions with distributors and vendors… and in this article we are,” Evans mentioned.
The end result is Salt & Hops, a 500-square-foot “beer boutique,” at 443 27th St. in Ogden’s historic district. The organization opened in February, promoting much more than 150 varieties of craft brews — numerous of them difficult to discover — alongside with mixers, cocktail elements, chocolate and salty snacks.
The pair’s objective is to aid such Ogden breweries as Rooster’s Brewing, Cerveza Zólupez Beer Business, UTOG, Talisman, and Ogden River. They also have potent associations with Salt Lake Town breweries, like Kiito’s, Epic, Level Crossing, Shades and Fisher.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Salt & Hops, the new Beer Boutique on 27th St. in Ogden, on Monday, May well 2, 2022.
“There’s definitely nobody out there making an attempt to put alongside one another all the wonderful craft brews that are remaining created in Ogden and Salt Lake,” Rydman said. “It’s strike and pass up except if you go to the brewery itself, and that’s difficult to do all the time. So we thought, properly, for some of these beers that are challenging to find that we like, and these excellent makes that are out below domestically, there is a true niche in this article.”
Evans and Rydman also want to support Ogden’s resourceful local community. The store is the special stocker of the Ogden-centered queer art zine The LQ, and typically collaborates with Lavender Vinyl report retailer. Previous thirty day period, when Level Crossing brewed a bitter named immediately after Frank Zappa, Salt & Hops invited Lavender to arrive in and provide its inventory of Moms of Invention records.
1 of the first products they stocked was gluten-cost-free beer — due to the fact Rydman’s wife, who has celiac disorder, experienced a tough time discovering it. The business serves Kiito’s gluten-cost-free golden ale, as effectively as challenging kombuchas, tricky seltzers and some reduced-alcohol ciders. (Anything in Salt & Hops’ inventory has 5% alcoholic beverages by quantity or a lot less ciders are likely to have better ABVs.)
The “hops” section of the name is apparent, but the “salt” section, remarkably, isn’t a reference to Utah’s Excellent Salt Lake.
“Mary and I would consume beer on Fridays after operate, and we type of normally experienced this exact joke that we essential salty treats to go with beer,” Evans mentioned. “We just kind of grew from there.”
Just like the beer, the treats are a much cry from the common gas station fare — together with spicy habanero-dusted potato chips, spicy toasted corn, fruit treats created from rescued “ugly produce,” a vegan variation of Cheetos, organic and natural chocolate bars, and scorching sauces and mixers from these kinds of area corporations as Bitters Lab and Z’s Primary Bloody Mary Mix.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Goods from community merchants, at Salt & Hops, the new Beer Boutique on 27th St. in Ogden, on Monday, Might 2, 2022.
The store also accommodates persons who do not consume. “We have a extremely excellent selection of nonalcoholic beers, whiskey and gin,” Evans mentioned. “If you insert up all the nonalcoholic sales, it is probably equivalent to our greatest-offering beer.”
That beer is a seasonal a single: Kiito’s inexperienced glitter beer, brewed for St. Patrick’s Day. Evans said they anticipate Ogden River’s Becker’s Best pilsner to overtake it soon as the most well-liked beer, at the very least right up until men and women get their arms on Kiito’s Significant Gay Ale, brewed for Pleasure Thirty day period in June it capabilities pink and silver glitter.
But Evans and Rydman do not just stick with the bestsellers. They deliver in at minimum 1 new beer each and every 7 days, and generally 5 or six.
Rydman stated the very best way to come across out what’s in the coolers is to test the shop’s Instagram mid-week, when they announce new arrivals. Occasionally which is also where they write-up about cheeky, short-expression collaborations, like pairing Mountain Donuts’ lemon bismarks with Epic’s Lemon Bomb.
Consuming superior beer is vital, but so is owning pleasurable, Rydman explained.
“We’re constantly taking part in truly fantastic music in the front,” Rydman explained. “We just want individuals to feel it is a seriously great room and to want to appear in. You can carry your dog in if you want. It’s just a exciting position to occur. That is what we required it to be about from the commencing.”
Editor’s note • This story is available to Salt Lake Tribune subscribers only. Thank you for supporting regional journalism.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Salt & Hops, the new Beer Boutique on 27th St. in Ogden, on Monday, May perhaps 2, 2022.
