Investigation Finds Fly Tying Nights The Only Thing Keeping Microbreweries Open

Sorry, man bun, but it’s not the trivia, lobster roll truck, or your shift to terrible hard seltzers…

It was all an homage to Lemmy Kilmister. Since he was 15 years old, Mike Reardon idolized the gritty, brash bass player and front man of the legendary British metal band Motörhead. So, in 2018 when Reardon and three of his former bandmates decided to open a brewery in Poughkeepsie, New York, calling it Hellraiser Brewing after their favorite Motörhead track was a no-brainer.

They borrowed hundreds of thousands of dollars to turn a long-defunct Friendly’s into a faux Whiskey A Go Go complete with a stage, a juke box that spun vinyl and even a vintage cigarette machine. In the early days, the joint was packed with hotties, bikers, artists and preppy families with strollers letting their children run amok. Almost every Saturday by 6 p.m., they’d run out of their highly-praised Ace of Spades IPA, Orgasmatron IPA and God Was Never On Your Side Sour.

Eight years later, things are very different.

“Hey, bud, would you mind turning the music down a bit?” a bearded man in a Poncho Western Pearl Snap shirt shouts from across the room. He’s one of seven people at the longest table in the brewery tying flies. There are no other patrons at Hellraiser on the second Thursday of the month.

“Yeah, sure,” a dejected Reardon hollers back. He reaches for the volume knob on the surround sound control behind the bar and reduces Slayer’s “Raining Blood” to a whisper.

“Thanks,” the man replies. “I’m trying to explain how I tie the rubber legs into my articulated Mop Bugger so they’re extra bouncy and it’s just a little hard for everyone to hear.”

Reardon, now 43, just gives him a thumbs up. He looks back at me, closes his eyes and says, “I can’t stand these dorks, but they’re all I’ve got left.”

Little did I know how much those “dorks” need guys like Reardon as much as he needs them.

Off the Reservation

“The biggest mistake ever was Chevy’s Mexican Restaurant,” 34-year-old Tyler Beal tells me as we drive down Saginaw Street in Pontiac, Michigan. “I guess these chains don’t like when you take up a huge table but only want to order beers, so we got a bunch of apps and it was a total disaster. There were bucktail shavings all over the nachos, bits of marabou in the queso. It was a mess. We were asked to never come back.”

Beal, who is the founder and moderator of the 14-member Facebook group Pontiac Vise Squad, is desperate to find a new home for his tyers. Of the 47 microbreweries the city boasted in 2021, only two remain. The problem is neither can afford to be open on Thursday anymore (the mandatory day upon which all tying nights must be held), which leaves Beal in the lurch.

The two main points of a tying night, I learn from him, are to show everyone how much better of a tyer you are than them, and not be home with your wife and children for one night a month, so shifting the hang to someone’s house would be defeating the purpose. Pontiac Vise Squad tried setting up at a couple corner bars that are long-standing pillars of the community because they serve Coors on tap, brown liquor and chicken wings at reasonable prices, but that created too much tension.

“Unlike breweries, there are actually lots of people at regular bars,” Beal explained. “So, you feel a little in the way. But also, we just got tired of dealing with the regulars. The whole time it was, ‘What’s this? Girl Scouts arts and crafts night?’ Or they’d shout, ‘Hey, Sally, make me a dream catcher!’ And if the Red Wings were playing, forget it. You couldn’t hear yourself think, let alone palmer hackle.”

I’m accompanying Beal to Number 1 China Buffet on the outskirts of town. His final hope is that the owners agree to let him host his tying nights at their establishment, which is very similar to a microbrewery. Number 1 China sells terrible beer like Bud Light Lime nobody really wants to drink and, thanks to a 2.6-star Yelp rating, there’s never anyone in the place.

But when Beal tries to explain his plan to the hostess, the only word she seems to understand is “fish.” For a moment I thought Beal got through to her and she was walking us back to talk with the owner, but instead she led us to the buffet, pointed to the hotel pan of dry tilapia fillets smothered in burnt white cheese and scallions, and just said, “Fish?” Beal was utterly deflated.

Town to Town

The way Mike Reardon figures, Hellraiser Brewing only has a couple months left. He’s tried everything. Anymore, they only have two beers on tap as the rest of the kegs are loaded with overly sweet hard seltzer they outsourced in an attempt to keep up with the shifting demand. Reardon will essentially let anyone do anything they want at the brewery if it means selling a few pints.

“I just don’t care anymore,” he says. “You wanna play an acoustic set of Wayne Newtown covers? Go for it. You wanna read poetry about Star Wars? Be my guest. At least it gives me something to promote on social media.”

Unfortunately, Poughkeepsie isn’t exactly a “fly-fishing town.” Only one group ties at Hellraiser once a month, and while Reardon appreciates the business, it’s not enough to keep the lights on. Meanwhile, at Thunder Cloud Brewing in Bozeman, Montana, I find owner Lauren Reynolds making plans to open a second brewery because she simply can’t accommodate all the fly tying groups at her flagship location.

“To be honest, I can’t tell you the last time a regular person walked in here for a drink,” the fiery 38-year-old says as I take my first sip of Triple Haze Indicator Down IPA–her most popular beer. I try not to wince as I swallow but a grimace overtakes my face involuntarily.

“Shit’s horrible, isn’t it?,” she asks with a smile. “I’ll tell you a little secret. I fired the head brew master years ago, and I’m just kind of winging it. What I’ve learned is the cheaper you go, the more corners you cut and the more the beer hits like racoon piss and finishes like battery acid, the more these millennial fly bros like it.”

Thunder Cloud is open on Thursdays and Sundays from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m., and Fridays and Saturdays from 2 p.m. until 10 p.m. According to Reynolds, from open to close during business hours the place is jammed with tying groups. She says it’s not uncommon for other groups to be standing in the parking lot with arms full of vises, feathers and whip finish tools, praying a table becomes available.

“If you have a group of streamer tyers that can’t get a table because there are too many Euro nymph tyers in the joint, wooo buddy, that can get ugly!” Reynolds says with a laugh. “See, there’s always one guy in the group who thinks he’s a ‘celebrity’ tyer, right? He thinks all the other people in the group are there to oooh and aaah over his hoppers and droppers and learn from him. Thankfully, there are a lot of those guys in Bozeman and even more people that treat every single one of them like their personal Jesus. So, I say unto ye, disciples, ‘Worship on,’ because I’m selling a river of beer up in here!”

Closing the Book

Three months after Hellraiser Brewing closed its doors for good, I tracked down 33-year-old Blake Forrester, the man who spearheaded the Facebook group Hudson Valley Fly Tyers United, which was tying at Mike Reardon’s place when I first visited. So far, the group hadn’t settled on a new home base, though they had done a test run at one of the five new distilleries that opened in town in the last year. According to Forrester, however, the $25 lavender and rosemary mojitos were hard to swallow financially, and one group member swallowed so many she wound up snorting a huge line of synthetic dubbing on a dare.

When I met back up with Tyler Beal in Michigan, he had come to terms with the Pontiac Vise Squad likely remaining homeless.

“I went back to the China Buffet and used Google Translator,” he told me. “They finally agreed to let us tie there, but it didn’t really work out. They got mad about how often they had to replenish the crab rangoons and pizza, but they were really the only edible things in that place.”

Beal was okay with tying night being put on hiatus, though. He had shifted his energy to working on his first book of original egg, flea and sucker spawn patterns, which he hoped to publish within the year.

“I know how much joy, confidence and inspiration my tying brought to the group,” he said. “So, I figure it’s time to share my patterns and techniques with the world.”