New craft beer maker opening in Oakdale honors the Dying Breed of ranchers, farmers
A new craft brewery opening in Oakdale wants to be the Goldilocks of Central Valley beer — not too big and not too small, just right.
The three men behind the new Dying Breed Brewing want it to be big enough to crank out enough beer should demand spike, but also nimble enough to change course should tastes change. They also want the brewery-taproom, going up inside a new building in an industrial area on Oakdale’s southern edge, to become a local and tourist destination, with plans for a large interactive patio space.
The three partners in the enterprise — longtime friends Joe Novotny and Josh Malcom and construction company owner Dan Wood — mixed their aggressive out-of-the-gate vision with deep valley roots to create Dying Breed Brewing. The name is an homage to the city’s agricultural past and present — and that grow-it-yourself ranching and farming spirit.
“We were having dinner at a Mexican restaurant talking about my wife’s grandmother who had just passed away,” Novotny said. “She was truly a dying breed. She farmed everything herself. And the name has connected with our area’s old ranch and farm families as well.”
The name stuck, and is being paired with a playful logo of a long-haired Scottish Highlander cow. Already, the fledgling brewery has a slick, farm-industrial chic look and solid branding. They’re backing that up with a newly installed 15-barrel system that can crank out 930 gallons of beer a time. If the rest of construction goes smoothly, it should be opened this spring.
While Novotny and Malcom have been friends since their junior high days in Oakdale, Wood is the experienced brewer of the bunch. He started home brewing in the 1990s, and in 1999 launched his successful construction company. Last year, he moved its headquarters from Modesto to Oakdale, and during construction built in some extra space in the building for his longtime dream of having a brewery — just in case.
Malcom has worked for Wood for the last 14 years, and introduced him to Novotny. All three shared the same beer-making dream, and now together they had the space, vision and knowledge to make it happen, and relatively quickly, Novotny said.
Beer garden for live entertainment
After about a year of planning, their new 2,500-square-foot brewery-taproom space is almost complete. The brewery tanks sit on one wall, with a long bar facing a faux facade on another. The space has large garage doors that will roll up to a 7,500-square-foot patio.
The large outdoor beer garden will have converted shipping containers as seating and shade areas, as well as containers fashioned into a stage for live performers. There will also be plenty of space for interactive games like cornhole. Like many craft breweries in the area, Dying Breed has opted to bring in outside vendors for food instead of opening its own kitchen. So the patio will accommodate three to four food trucks at a time, which the men plan to bring in on a regular rotating basis.
The taproom should open with six to 10 of its beers on draft, and grow to fill all 20 total taps. Expect a wide range of styles to come out of its gleaming stainless steel tanks, including lagers and ambers and blondes and IPAs and hazes and bocks and porters and stouts and, well, you get the picture — a lot of beer.
“We want to make a little bit of everything and are trying to make something available for everyone’s taste,” Wood said.
Dying Breed’s brewing system is smaller than the valley’s most well-known craft brewer, Turlock’s Dust Bowl Brewing Co., which last year opened a third taproom in Monterey. But it will be larger than Modesto’s newest craft brewery, Contentment Brewing, which opened last year with a seven-barrel system. It’s about the same size as Ceres’ Blaker Brewing, which opened in January 2018.
But instead of seeing each other as the competition, Wood said, they’ve met and been supported by the other brewers, who are happy to share advice and expertise. That includes becoming friends with the folks at Last Call Brewing Co., Oakdale’s other craft brewery. In fact, the breweries are neighbors on Shepard Court, though about a year ago Last Call moved its taproom to downtown Oakdale.
“All of the local brewers support each other,” Wood said. “A lot of collaboration goes on, because we want to see all the local brewers flourish and keep big beer at bay. That’s something I’ve never seen before in other businesses.”
This story was originally published February 5, 2020 at 3:03 PM.
