At Templin Family Brewing in Salt Lake City, there is no draft beer stronger than 5 percent ABV. That’s not by choice—Utah’s alcohol laws are an antiquated confusion—but cofounder and brewmaster Kevin Templin has been making the most of it for nearly three decades.
“I think it’s an advantage for lager beers,” he says. “And there’s no wiggle room in those beers. The product can’t vary too much when you’re talking about these classic styles that have to be really precise. And I think it just makes us better brewers, to be honest with you.”
In fact, the ABV limit on draft beer used to be lower—it was 4 percent until 2018, the year Britt and Kevin Templin opened their brewery and taproom in Salt Lake City’s industrial Granary District. And while such laws are far from ideal, they’re also a crucible that’s helped to shape some great brewers. (As Brooklyn brewmaster Garrett Oliver told The New York Times in 2009, “Utah craft brewers can coax a lot of flavor out of a relatively low amount of material.”)
At major competitions, Kevin Templin is one of those brewers you expect to see on stage at least once a year. Exhibit A: last year’s Great American Beer Festival silver for their München Helles, after Granary Kellerbier had won medals three years running. (The latter also scored 99/100 with our Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine® blind review panel, going on to become one of our Best 20 Beers in 2023.)
Yet the same detail-oriented approach to producing attractive, hit-the-numbers lagers applies to every Templin Family beer. Exhibit B: two World Beer Cup golds in 2024 for their Squirrel Juicy IPA and Guava Coconut Berliner Weisse.
“Personally, I would love to win in the lager categories all the time,” Kevin says. “But listen: I’m not a beggar, so I’m not a chooser either. I will take anything that can bring recognition to the brewery and the staff, and just pump everybody up, and put some more wind in the sail, and make them feel good about their efforts and all the little shit that we do to make everything so perfect.”
The company mantra is “slow pours and big foam.” Presentation counts for a lot—whether it’s a sparkling lager with ice-cream-cone foam or the spotless brewhouse floors in full view of the taproom.
“We hear it all the time: ‘This is the cleanest brewery I’ve ever seen,’” says Britt, who directs the brewery’s business operations. “I take it for granted, but when I go sit outside, or I go have a beer in the taproom—and we’ll do it, even on a date night—we’ll come in, and we’ll be like, ‘My god, this place is the best. This is why we did it.’”
Photos: Nicole Cordingley
How It Started, How It’s Going
Kevin Templin, ski bum, moved from Maine to Utah in the winter of 1992–93, joining his brother Chris in the resort town of Alta. He was looking for snow, and he found it. He also found a local gal—that’s Britt—from Park City, about 30 miles east of Salt Lake City on the other side of the Wasatch Range.
When Kevin wasn’t making snow and driving snowcats in Alta, he occasionally homebrewed, even if it wouldn’t be legal in Utah for another 15 years. When he heard in 1995 that long-running Salt Lake City bar Desert Edge was adding a brewhouse, he volunteered and started learning the ropes.
“Back in those days, you know, it was ambers and pales and blondes—real typical craft ’90s beer,” Kevin says. “But more than anything, about then, it was just trying to figure out what it all was.” For a homebrewer, that kit was intimidating. “Everything’s bigger, there are more tanks, there’s more danger … It’s like going from driving a regular car to getting into a Ferrari.”
He witnessed early success in 1996, even if he wasn’t directly responsible—“I was just a hose monkey,” he says—when Desert Edge won Utah’s first GABF gold medal. From then on, Utah breweries would keep punching above their weight in Denver, nabbing medals yearly—they only went home empty-handed in 2015—despite the ABV limits.
Kevin joined Salt Lake City’s Red Rock as head brewer in 2000. Later that year, they won silver in an all-Utah sweep of the Schwarzbier category. Back then, the brewery’s owners were making the calls on which beers to enter, and in 2003, Kevin argued for entering his German-style Red Rock Pilsner. His boss told him, “You are going to get smoked.”
Kevin didn’t get smoked. He won silver, and he accepted the medal on stage while carrying his baby son Porter in a backpack.
Kevin’s love and study of German styles only intensified, including a stint at the Doemens Academy near Munich in 2004. A big payoff came in 2007, when he and his team won an absurd haul of five GABF medals—a bronze, three silvers, and a gold—making Red Rock and Templin the Large Brewpub and Brewer of the Year.
The Templins owned a stake in Red Rock, but they’d been thinking about starting their own brewery for years. “And about 2014,” Kevin says, “we looked at each other and said, ‘If we’re going to do it, we need to do it.’” They wrote their business plan, then things seemed to move quickly. “It’s hard to get funded, and I understand that, but it seemed like it was probably one of the easier things we did. Because we had people that were so ambitious to jump on the vision that we had, and the experience that we had, and the awards. And they knew that the product was going to be world-class.”
Templin Family Brewing opened in late 2018 in a former auto-repair shop. In its first full year, it sold about 2,000 barrels. Their target and expectation this year is nearly 5,000—and that’s about where Kevin would like to stay. “That’s plenty of beer for us,” he says, suggesting they might go as high as 7,000 barrels. “We don’t really see ourselves growing much more than that.”
Some of that modest growth is on the horizon—the eastern one, up in the Wasatch Range. The Templins plan to install a second brewery in Wanship—population: 400—right next to their friends at High West Distillery and Blue Sky Lodge. The brewery would have a 15-barrel, four-vessel Braukon system just like the one at their taproom. They’d love to break ground in mid-2025, but that hinges on wastewater upgrades. If all goes well, the Wanship brewery might open in 2026.
“We’re working with the water reclamation department up there now,” Kevin says, “doing all the infrastructure for discharge and water flow, in and out, because the town’s so old that they don’t have any of that. So, basically, we had to build a town water system.” After that’s done, he says, “we can go ahead and start scraping some dirt.”
Among other attractions, the site is home to a 4,000-acre horse sanctuary and a farm with room to grow and forage their own ingredients—including grapes.
About those grapes: Templin Family Wines just became official, its first vintage released in early June and made from Riesling grapes grown in Palisade, Colorado, where Britt’s parents grew up.
“It’s just another craft product that we decided to get into,” Kevin says. “We’re having a lot of fun with it. They’re all-natural wines, there’s no potassium sulfate. We don’t treat it, we don’t add anything to it. It’s just pure juice, natural fermentation, and we serve it.”
The wine is 12.5 percent ABV, which sets us up for the next twist: Unlike their stronger beers, they’re allowed to serve the wine on draft. “It’s wacky,” Kevin says, “but you can have cider on draft—high-ABV cider. You can have high-ABV wine. But you cannot have a [strong] IPA or stout or anything else.”
Photo: Nick Roush
Utah, Draft, Cans, and Can’ts
It’s a running joke, Britt says, that Utahns will often belly up to bar and say, “Gimme the strongest beer you have.”
Legally, the brewery staff can serve beer of any strength—but if it’s higher than 5 percent, they must pour it from a can or bottle. It’s a law the Templins view as wasteful because they empty out truckloads of aluminum cans that were filled just a few meters away. About 40 percent of the beer they serve in their taproom is canned.
Ferda, a West Coast–style double IPA, is the top seller—because people love IPA and because it’s delicious. (Our blind review panel scored it 97/100 last year.) But its popularity might also have something to do with the beer’s 8.2 percent ABV. Other core beers include Albion Trippel at 10.2 percent ABV and Delmar Imperial Stout at 11.5 percent—both canned, both popular. The brewery also releases an annual barrel-aged stout of 13 percent ABV, aged in High West casks.
It’s a situation that worries Britt. Templin’s cans are all 16 ounces in volume, so a customer who orders one is getting the whole thing. “I think it’s really scary for me to serve a 16-ounce can of a 12-percent beer,” she says.
Because it’s a safety issue, the state’s Division of Alcohol and Beverage Control is pushing for changes that would allow stronger beers on draft—and then they could serve smaller pours. In the meantime, “it doesn’t make any sense,” Britt says. “But that’s just how Utah does it.”
The sheer volume of cans they empty is a daily frustration; Templin Family sells about 70 percent of its beer on site. “It’s such a waste,” Kevin says. “I’ve got a 20-cent label on here. I’ve got a 30-cent can. I’ve got a five-cent lid on it, and I got labor to [fill] it. And I’m going to open it up, pour it in a glass, and throw it away. … What a waste of time, and resources, and energy, and CO2, and everything. We could beat that horse for years, but hopefully it’ll change one day.”
Virtually all the beer that leaves the brewery is also canned, but for a different reason—the Templins are proudly fussy about how their draft beer ought to be poured, and they don’t let just anyone do it. For now, they have only two regular draft accounts—Copper Common and the Pearl, both in Salt Lake City, both bars tended by mixologists who care about details.
“We bring their managers in—we train them how to pour, how to clean the glassware,” Kevin says. “We pull their draft lines and replace them, brand new. There’s a lot that goes behind it, and if they don’t want to commit to that, then we just choose not to distribute draft to them.”
Photos: Nicole Cordingley
Lagers, Details, and Quality
Even if Utah changes its laws, Kevin says, they won’t change the ABVs on their lagers. He likes them the way they are—“user-friendly,” as he puts it. “When the brass tacks fall, people want to consume beer,” he says. “They want to be able to consume it, and they want to consume several—and feel great the next morning, snap out of bed at six in the morning, rinse and repeat.”
Their brewery has 13 taps; at least eight are always pouring lagers. They sell plenty of München Helles, but Granary Kellerbier is the top-selling draft. “It’s a workhorse beer for us,” Kevin says.
Their other lagers—including the helles, Czech-style pilsner, and rice lager—spend at least five weeks conditioning in horizontal tanks. The kellerbier is what Kevin calls “a barely cellared lager beer,” and it typically gets just a couple of weeks. “We still want that fresh yeast content in there to add to the beer,” he says. “It’s just a fresh, raw, refreshing, spritzy lager beer. People embrace it. I mean, we sell a shitload of it.”
Granary gets Weyermann malts and a “cool, thin, soupy” single-infusion mash at 147°F (64°C). After a 90-minute boil with aroma hits of Mittelfrüh and Saaz, Granary ferments at a chilly 47°F (8°C) before a diacetyl rest.
“We spund off all our lager beers for natural carbonation,” Kevin says, “so the micron size of the bubbles is so small, the mousse-like density of the head is super attractive. All of our glassware is custom-made by Sahm, and all have nucleation points, so it promotes positive foam stability throughout the drinking process.”
Canning is clearly important to the business, too, and the brewery’s success at competition speaks to its focus on shelf life. The production team emphasizes keeping dissolved-oxygen levels as low as possible. “Obviously, we’re always driving our guys that work on the canning line,” Kevin says. “I challenge them. … If we’re at 15 ppb, let’s get to 12 ppb on everything, and then we’re going to lunch.”
Whether it’s expensive ingredients, meticulous pours, or spotless floors, the Templin approach isn’t easy, and it isn’t cheap. But it is how they win.
“That’s our philosophy—everything has to be pristine,” Kevin says. “Fresh ingredients, fresh hops, everything needs to be perfect. Because if everything’s perfect to start with, it’s just going to translate in the long run through the product to the customer.”
Welcome to the Family
The brewery has about 30 to 35 employees, total, depending on the season. It starts with “the boss right here,” Kevin says, referring to Britt. “She runs everything—from every single number, every single dollar, all the bills, all the invoices, all that, all the legal. So, she’s got the hard job. I have the easy job—I just run the brewery, you know?”
The production team is seven, including Kevin. It also includes Porter—remember the baby on stage in 2003?—who was not named after the beer style, by the way, but after Britt’s maiden name. Kevin’s nephew Emmett is a brewer, too, while his brother Chris and niece Jessi work front-of-house. “Even my 85-year-old dad comes by every so often, and he’ll pour beers for like an hour,” Kevin says. “And everybody gets excited when they see those guys pouring beer because they know they’re part of the family.”
Their daughter Haile is 18; when she turns 21, she can work in the brewery, too. “The whole object, one day, is that we sail off into the sunset,” Kevin says. Then they can say to their kids, “OK,, here it is. Here’s the family business, and when you guys have kids … they’ll have something that they can lean on, and maybe give to their kids, too.”
Ultimately, of course, that will be up to the kids.
“I’ve never pressured them into, say, ‘You have to work at the brewery,’” Kevin says. “They can do whatever they want. I’ll support them in anything they want to do, you know? But I say, ‘Hey, I’ve been doing it for like 25 years, it’s a pretty fun job to have. You’re going to make a decent living, you’re going to have fun, you’re going to travel the world.’”
At this point, Britt says, the kids have grown up around brewing. “I think they’ve really enjoyed being—you know, everyone knows who they are. They tell their friends about it. And you know what? Porter turned 21 last year, and it wasn’t very cool until he was 21. And now, he gets it, you know?”
Still, they wanted to be sure. Kevin wondered: “Is this going to stick?” So, they sent Porter and Emmett to a three-week brewing course at the VLB in Berlin. “I really wanted to immerse them in the smells and the taste and the language, and [let them] see the families that’ve owned breweries for 500, 600 years. It turned out better than I thought it was going to turn out because they came back completely full of wind. ... They were like, ‘This is it, let’s go!’”
For the Templins, meanwhile, owning and running their own brewery meant more than having tight control over slow pours and clean floors. “I really wanted to take care of the employees like family,” Kevin says. “I mean, they’re all my kids.”
In August 2020, the brewery released its version of the All Together collab, launched by New York’s Other Half to support the hospitality industry. At the outset, the brewery told its customers that all proceeds would go to its own staff.
The beer sold out, raising $15,000. “And I put it all in cash in envelopes and just handed it to the employees,” Kevin says. “I said, ‘Don’t worry about your rent. If you need medical stuff, if you need something for your dogs, if you need your car payment. Because I know that you’re going to stick around longer, and that’s going to make a more faithful, committed employee.’ They care about the place. They care about being part of the family.”
That sense of family extends further, but first: You should know that the brewery is about 10 minutes’ drive from Salt Lake City International Airport, and Kevin has been known to pick up fellow brewers who have layovers. “They have a couple beers, I shoot them back to the airport, and then they’re locked in—they know where they’re going, every time they come to town.”
Now you know.
“Everybody that comes in is part of the family,” Kevin says. “We want everyone just to be able to [feel like] this is their house that’s not connected to their house. … We have regulars that come every single day, almost. The bartenders are super friendly, 100 percent professional. They know most of our customers. Half the time, we don’t even ask what they want, we just pour their beer because we already know what they want.”
Adds Britt: “Our customers are awesome. We couldn’t be luckier.”