Nestled on a hill overlooking the Thompson River Valley, lies a brewery housed in what was once an aircraft hangar. Built through hard work and passion, Lang Creek Brewery has been part of Montana since 1993. The founder, John Campbell took a leap of faith and decided to combine his two passions, flying and brewing into the first aviation themed brewery. He set out to produce flight themed quality hand crafted ales. If by chance you are lucky enough to meet John, you will understand his reasoning for creating America’s most remote brewery.

John and Sandy Campbell have been living in the Thompson River Valley since 1973. The Thompson River Valley is a breathtaking forty mile stretch of land along the Thompson River between Highway’s 2 and 200 in the Northwestern corner of Montana. Virtually untouched over the years, the Thompson River Valley holds that special something that is hard to find in most places, a sort of magic that is the draw of the west… There are several pieces to the Lang Creek Brewery puzzle and the beauty of valley is the very first piece, John’s love of airplanes is the second piece.

In 1989 John pursued getting his private pilot’s license and along with that purchased his first airplane, a Cessna 182 Skylane. The only problem was that there wasn’t an airport nearby to house his plane or a landing strip, but there was a ton of space. So, John decided to build both an airplane hangar and a landing strip. John put a front end loader on his tractor, leveled the pastures on his land, put up a windsock in the middle and built a hangar on the one end; voila, he had himself an airport! John is also lucky enough to have extensive experience as both a draftsman and an independent contractor, which made the job a lot easier.

The third piece of the puzzle is John’s garage hobby of brewing beer. He fashioned a home brewing system to resemble the workings of a brew house on a smaller scale. He used a couple of stainless steel kegs, chopped the tops off and created false bottoms, complete with drains and a cooling system. From this system he tweaked an amber recipe until he got it just right. One night he decided to have a couple of friends, self proclaimed beer connoisseurs from Kalispell, out to the ranch for some beer tasting. During that tasting a suggestion was made to contact Fun Beverage Distributing in Kalispell and have them out for a tasting. Fun Beverage was invited out for a tasting and they put the itch in John to start a brewery. Thus the idea for Lang Creek Brewery was born. What better place to start it than here where the idea was born.

Soon thereafter John drafted plans for converting the hangar that housed his airplane into a brewery. Carl Liebig, from down the valley came up to help John build. Carl did the welding and John did the building. Together they created the building we brew beer in right now. The first beer to hit distribution was Tri Motor Amber and it’s still in production today! The rest is Montana history…