Dave Lund has worked the taproom at Bayern Brewing long enough that he knows which regulars take their Pilsner in a proper pint glass and which ones will argue with you about it. He’s the kind of bartender who remembers what you ordered last March, asks about your dog by name, and doesn’t do small talk so much as he does real talk. He is, in short, the reason a lot of people end up staying for a second beer they hadn’t planned on.
Bayern is Montana’s oldest craft brewery, which is a fact the people who work there will mention if you bring it up and not otherwise. It opened in 1987 under Jürgen Knoller, a Bavarian-born brewer who had opinions about German purity law and was not shy about sharing them. More than three decades later, Bayern still brews under the Reinheitsgebot — water, hops, malt, yeast, full stop — which means no adjuncts, no fruit additions, no seasonal gimmicks involving candy corn. If you find that boring, Bayern is not going to try to talk you out of it.
The taproom sits along the Clark Fork on South Third Street West, a low-key stretch of Missoula that doesn’t compete for attention. The space is unpretentious to a fault — exposed brewery equipment, a few picnic tables, a row of bar stools, and a wall of awards that Bayern stopped making a fuss about somewhere around the late nineties. In summer, the patio out back faces the river and catches enough afternoon light to make you forget you had somewhere to be.
The beer list is shorter than you’d expect from a place with this much history. That’s the point. Bayern makes a German-style Pilsner, a dark lager, an amber, a pale, and a handful of rotating seasonals, none of which involve haze or triple dry-hopping. The Pilsner is the one to start with if you’ve never been — it’s crisp, clean, and properly bitter without being aggressive, the kind of lager that tastes better after you’ve been hiking than after you’ve been sitting indoors reading about craft beer. The dark lager, called Bayern Dark, gets overlooked in favor of trendier options around town, which is a mistake. It drinks easier than it has any right to.
If you go on a weekday afternoon, you might catch the taproom nearly empty, which has its own particular appeal. Dave, or whoever’s working, will actually talk to you. Ask about the brewing process and you’ll get a real answer, not a laminated FAQ. Ask about the history and you might end up staying until dinner.
Pints run around six dollars, which in 2024 feels almost quaint. Bayern also sells growlers and has its beer distributed across Montana, but drinking it in the taproom with the river close enough to hear on a quiet day is a different thing entirely from pulling a can out of a gas station cooler in Billings.
Bayern doesn’t have a loyalty app or a themed merchandise line. It has Dave, and a Pilsner that’s been made the same way since before most of Missoula’s current crop of breweries existed, and a patio that asks nothing of you except to sit down and stay a while.
