Mont Blanc, Meet the Rockies: Outer Range’s Hazies Summit Two of the Highest Peaks.

In front of me, a rising crag of a mountain covered in trees, visible through long, almost floor-to-ceiling glass windows.

Behind me, mountains of red, blue, purple, and teal, a colorful compilation of hand-painted peaks and valleys.

To my left and right, a warm glow filled the cavernous space. While outside, a drizzle and wispy fog covered up something so imposing. Something we couldn’t see hidden just beyond the veil (the pale ale 🤷‍♀️).

To my left, mountains.
To my right, mountains.
In front of me, mountains.
Behind me, mountains.

Seven years ago, my partner and I rented a V6 Kia Sorrento (an upgrade the rental car clerk suggested for us after we told him we were traveling up into the mountains), and drove the twisty, winding mountain roads to Outer Range Brewing Co. in Frisco, CO.

One month ago, Hop Culture Social Media Manager Magic Muncie and I met Outer Range Brewing Co. French Alps General Manager, Elise Mucke, at the Geneva Airport, driving an hour through the French Alps to the brewery’s newest location.

A distance of 5,187 miles apart, Outer Range Colorado Rockies and Outer Range French Alps aren’t that different. Sure, the language spoken isn’t the same. Sure, the culture is a bit different. But at its foundation, at the base of the peak, these are breweries born of the mountains. Born of the idea to Leave the Life Below, a motto Outer Range Brewing Co. Founders Emily and Lee Cleghorn borrowed from one of Emily’s favorite movies, Jeremiah Johnson. “It’s Robert Redford in his prime,” Emily told me when I visited the Colorado location seven years ago. As the film opens, the narrator explains that Robert Redford’s eponymous character has chosen to leave the life below for the outdoor life in the mountains. “He gave up his comfortable city life to come embrace the mountain culture,” said Emily.

Sallanches is a surprisingly upbeat little town in the French mountains, approximately 27.4 km south of Chamonix, which is known for inventing après-ski culture.

“They wanted something similar to Frisco near a resort but not at a resort,” explains Mucke. “And they fell in love with the view.”

On a clear day, you’re able to see Mont Blanc. When we visited on a dreary Monday afternoon, the mountain hid herself.

At first.

But as we sipped halfway through our In the Steep HyberBoost, a glammed-up version of the brewery’s iconic hazy IPA using one hundred percent Citra HyperBoost, something changed.

“Oh, it’s there!” Mucke gasped in admiration as we finally caught a glimpse of the glorious peak through the clouds.

“In the winter, when it’s sunny, it’s the most gorgeous,” she continued. “I could spend hours sitting on a chair and looking at that.”

It’s true. Mont Blanc is absolutely magnificent. Ironically, speechless was the only word that came out of my mouth.

“I always get goosebumps when I see Mont Blanc out here,” says Outer Range’s Director of Brewery Operations Kilian Heinzmann. “Like, holy sh**.”

After peeking at the peak ourselves, it’s easy to see why the view captured the Cleghorns. And why they considered opening up a second taproom on a different continent.

From the Colorado Rockies to the French Alps, Outer Range proves that no matter the continent, mountain culture and world-class beer know no borders.

Mountain Culture With No Borders

Photography courtesy of Magic Muncie, Social Media Manager Untappd and Hop Culture

It’s probably been a little over half a decade since I’ve spent time with Emily and Lee. But they’re like old neighbors; when you see them again for the first time, it feels like coming home.

Despite being in the middle of changing their kitchen concept and a flat tire that left them stranded on the way home from enjoying an F1 race in Milan, the Cleghorns found a way to hang out with me in the taproom.

Between bites of ahi tuna while taste-testing a new bowl on the menu, we chat about their life in the French Alps.

We pick things back up effortlessly. If I didn’t hear French spoken around me, I could have been back in Colorado seven years ago, sitting outside with 360-degree views of the Rockies.

Lee still speaks softly. His Santa-esque beard—brown instead of white—almost muffles his words. Behind gold-rimmed glasses, his kind eyes sparkle like Kris Kringle.

Emily bounces around as brightly as I remember, speaking excitedly about why they chose to relocate from Frisco to France.

When Outer Range celebrated its fifth anniversary in 2022, the Cleghorns found themselves at a crossroads. They wanted to open up a new location, but they didn’t want to fall into a trap.

“When you first open up, you’re the shiny new toy,” says Emily. But after a while, Americans tend to look for the next bright thing. Although the safe choice would have been to open up another taproom in Colorado, “How would that resonate with our fans?” Emily says they asked themselves. “How would that perpetuate our brand?”

At the time, the Cleghorns had been monitoring the European craft beer market, shipping their product to various countries with positive feedback.

Emily says the market in Europe looks like it did in the U.S. fifteen years ago. “We saw that excitement around craft beer,” she explains. “We saw this energy around American-crafted IPAs in particular.”

Something Outer Range intimately knows how to make. And make very, very well.

Don’t be fooled by Lee’s soft-spokenness and carefree demeanor. Behind those gold-rimmed glasses, the former Special Forces Green Beret has a brain wired to brew incredible hoppy beers.

Within two years of opening Outer Range in 2017, the brewery earned a multitude of accolades, including the Second Best New Brewery in the U.S. by USA Today (2017) and a spot on our own list of “Top 15 Breweries in the U.S.,” and the brewery’s flagship hazy IPA, In the Steep IPA, earned a Top 5 Beers of the Year award from Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine (2018).

When I first explored visiting Outer Range in the French Alps, Outer Range Brewing Brand Manager Wyatt Holwagner sent me a care package of some Outer Range favorites and a few new lagers.

After tasting through everything, In the Steep still stood out as one of my favorite IPAs…ever.

“Wow,” I wrote in my notes. “That is so good; it tastes like a fresh pine forest after the rainfall. Crisp and clear like water from a mountain stream, I’m getting big notes of honey dew and kiwi along with morning dew.”

But the hype around IPAs was only one of the reasons Emily and Lee looked overseas.

“We’re a mountain lifestyle,” Emily reminds me, pointing out the window towards the mountains in front of us. “So of course, if we were going to do it, it would be in the Alps.”

Settling on Sallanches: Less Ski Resort, More Mountain Town

Photography courtesy of Magic Muncie, Social Media Manager Untappd and Hop Culture

Outer Range has a motto to live up to (get it?): Leave the Life Below. And they take those four words very seriously.

The Cleghorns knew their next taproom would need to embrace that phrase.

Sallanches fit the mold.

Walking into the center of town, you’ll find La Sallanche, a bubbling river cresting and peaking under bridges and over rocks. While not as ritzy as the nearby Chamonix, this commune often serves as a base for the area’s local guides and outfitters.

Like our Airbnb host, a native of the U.K. who moved to Sallanches to lead tours through the mountain.

He’s a big fan of Outer Range.

Chamonix, on the other hand, has a wilder reputation, known as an extreme sports destination with a huge nightclub culture.

That’s not something the Cleghorns wanted to compete with or attract.

“We knew this was really one of the pinnacle places in the world for outdoor culture,” Lee tells me. “The more time we spent here, [the more] we really felt like it had the same culture as Frisco.”

The similarities are striking. When you think of the best skiing in Colorado, your brain automatically goes to Steamboat Springs, Vail, Aspen, Breckenridge, and maybe even Copper Mountain. The latter two are near Frisco, the home of Outer Range’s original taproom.

But Frisco itself isn’t glamorously known as a resort town; it’s more like the locals’ spot on the periphery of the chaos.

Similar to Sallanches.

“It’s an authentic year-round community,” piggybacks Emily, noting that world-class ski resorts surround them. “It has that same homey feeling that we’ve built in Frisco.”

Striking Views in an Old Bowling Alley

Photography courtesy of Magic Muncie, Social Media Manager Untappd and Hop Culture

Photography courtesy of Magic Muncie, Social Media Manager Untappd and Hop Culture

Photography courtesy of Magic Muncie, Social Media Manager Untappd and Hop Culture

When Emily and Lee found the old Buffalo Grill location in Sallanches, they knew it was the place.

Somewhat coincidentally, the American-style French chain, known for its generously sized steak dishes, proved to be perfect for an American-style brewery.

In addition to the restaurant, the 20,000 sq ft location also featured bowling lanes, which now house the brewhouse, and a laser tag area.

Where the cavernous taproom now exists, Emily says there used to be a giant disco ball, a feature of the nightclub part of the complex.

Fitting then, that the brewery, avoiding nightclub life in Chamonix, made its cozy home in an old nightclub space in Sallanches.

But the final vote of approval that sealed it?

The Cleghorn’s daughter, who was ten at the time. Emily told me that when they showed her the building with its bowling lanes and laser tag, she said this was something she could get behind.

“We had to clarify that the bowling and laser tag weren’t staying!” laughs Emily. “But we got her approval.”

Although operating on a budget, Emily wouldn’t compromise on one thing: windows.

Now the focal point of the taproom, the almost floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook the French Alps didn’t exist when the Cleghorns first bought the space.

Since the taproom area was a nightclub, everything was sealed.

“They had no windows,” says Emily, who refused to give up on her “floor-to-ceiling window budget.” “You have to feel like you’re in the mountains.”

A Bold Move for a Bold Brewery

Outer Range Brewing Co-Founders Emily and Lee Cleghorn | Photography courtesy of Magic Muncie, Social Media Manager Untappd and Hop Culture

“It was such a bold move,” Emily quietly admits to me as I sip on a glass of Expedition, the brewery’s juicy XPA.

Imagine picking up your whole life, moving to a new country, trying to learn a new language, and opening up a business in a place where the rules are different, the “red tape” is different, and the legalities are all new.

The Cleghorns didn’t take the green circle down the mountain, we’ll say that.

Instead, they choose the double black diamond on the backside of the mountain, a place you could probably only get to by helicopter. (We think you get the analogy.)

“It was like drinking from a fire hose,” admits Emily. Already-mountainous tasks that would have been hard even in an English-speaking state like Colorado became almost insurmountable in a new country.

But if there’s one thing you’ll learn about Outer Range, it’s that impossible isn’t a word in their vocabulary.

To help, Emily and Lee turned to their friends Kate and Charles Saksik, a French couple they’d met at Columbia Business School in the early 2010s.

“We could not have done this without them,” says Emily, noting Charles’ background in finance was “crucial in navigating the French banking landscape,” and Kate’s experience in branding was “instrumental in helping us communicate our brand to a European audience.”

Beyond the language barrier, Emily says administratively, everything in France was done differently than what they were used to in the States.

For instance, the Cleghorns needed to secure loans from three banks, and a build-out that they thought would take six months ended up taking two years.

Emily and Lee are not strangers to bootstrapping; they opened their original Frisco brewery on a small business loan and military life savings.

In many ways, they approached the Sallanches taproom in the same way.

“We just elbow-greased our way through as much as we could,” Lee says quietly.

With every obstacle, Lee would constantly say, “We’re going to figure it out.”

And they did.

Outer Range French Alps officially opened its doors on April 20, 2024.

“It was shoulder to shoulder in here,” beams Emily, admitting she didn’t know if anyone would show up. “I felt so seen and welcomed by the local community that I think I was crying harder than when we opened Outer Range in the U.S.”

Two Breweries, Two Continents, One Beer

Photography courtesy of Magic Muncie, Social Media Manager Untappd and Hop Culture

Operating two taprooms in the same state is challenging, managing multiple breweries across multiple states is complex, but directing two businesses across continents is a whole other paradox.

Initially, Lee says he imagined they’d need to brew more European styles—saisons, dubbels, and so on.

“Instead, we couldn’t keep up with IPA,” Lee laughs. “People wanted a lot of IPAs.”

It’s a lesson Emily says they learned a bit of the hard way.

“When we first moved here, all of my experience told me to double down on our authenticity,” she explains. “But I still got in my head.”

While Outer Range opened with new beers named in French, they quickly learned those didn’t sell well. People didn’t understand the storyline.

“I realized we had to own that we’re an American craft brewery,” she says. “When we doubled down on what got us here…then we started seeing the momentum drive us.”

And what got Outer Range over five thousand miles away across an ocean was mainly one thing: their incredible IPAs.

Now, when you walk into Outer Range, the taplist on the board behind the bar reflects that. Of the fourteen beers on tap, ten are IPAs of some sort—double, hazy, double hazy.

Heinzmann points to the board, “We have West Coast, West Coast, extra hazy, hazy, hazy, hazy, hazy, hazy, hazy, and hazy.”

Photography courtesy of Magic Muncie, Social Media Manager Untappd and Hop Culture

You’ll also see the words “Colorado Rockies” and “French Alps” plastered right under the Outer Range sign above the tap list. And Emily says they consciously post signs in both French and American.

“We’re an American brewery,” says Emily. “And we own that.”

She continues, “We’re not trying to be French. We’re not trying to be anything other than who we are.”

And that has resonated.

Even outside of the taproom, Lee says, through wholesale in Europe, they’re moving a third more than in the U.S., and their global IPAs are primarily driving this growth.

“That’s what we’re known for, right?” Emily reminds us.

Their best-selling beer is currently In the Steep.

“Which is cool because that’s the first beer we ever packaged,” says Emily.

While Lee says the brewing schedules between Frisco and Sallanches are independent, they do make a lot of the same beers. Not all, but most are the same.

That’s where Heinzmann comes in. It’s his job to make sure Outer Range in Frisco and Sallanches talk to each other.

Where the Mountain Magic Happens

Outer Range Brewing Director of Brewing Operations Killian Heinzmann (top left), Aerial (top right), and the brewhouse (bottom) | Photography courtesy of Magic Muncie, Social Media Manager Untappd and Hop Culture

We’re standing on the brew deck with Heinzmann, who joined Outer Range after working at larger 600,000-hectoliter German breweries. The Bavarian-born director of operations grew up close to the Austrian border, where he was “always surrounded by beer.”

After apprenticing at Ayinger, he earned his Master’s Degree in Brewing in Munich before moving to Toronto, where he began his career as a senior brewer at Brunswick Bierworks. Heinzmann never planned on moving to France because “it’s wine country,” he says. But one of his contacts at the Italian food and beverage equipment manufacturer TMCI, who implemented Outer Range’s brewhouse in Frisco, thought the open position at Outer Range would be a perfect fit.

“I didn’t really know anything about the craft beer industry,” he admits. However, at 5 a.m. Toronto time, he met with Lee online. “We just chatted about beer for an hour,” Heinzmann recalls. What was supposed to be a six-month temporary position has turned into a year-long permanent job.

Heinzmann travels back and forth, spending about forty to fifty percent of his time in the States.

The brewhouse is his domain. “Where the magic happens,” he jokes with us.

Built by the same manufacturer as the one in Frisco, the TMCI Outer Range French Alps brewhouse is slightly larger. Whereas the Frisco brewery has a twenty-hectoliter (15-bbl), two-vessel system, the Sallanches location features a thirty-hectoliter (20-bbl), three-vessel system.

It’s about ninety percent the same, according to Heinzmann, who points out that they have the same keg filler but a different canning line that runs about six thousand cans a hour (actually a little big for the French Alps location at the moment).

Heinzmann is the devil in the details. Several times during our conversation, he passionately takes tangents, honing in on one tiny detail. “I’m losing myself,” he says with a smile as he launches into a soliloquy on solving a problem Outer Range had with getting darker colors in their beer.

Long story short: They were putting too much grist into the tank, which caused longer extraction times (eight hours), which caused a darker color in the beer.

“Now I’m getting detailed, but I think it’s interesting,” Heinzmann admits to me before continuing. He’s so passionate that, although my eyes are glazing a bit, I can’t help but try to listen and understand more closely.

By tweaking the ratio in their grist, Heinzmann helped reduce the grain’s time in the tank from eight hours to two hours.

This is part of what has kept the beers so dialed-in at Outer Range in both Frisco and Sallanches.

I ask Heinzmann how he manages brewing at two locations across two continents.

“We keep it easy, simple, but very efficient,” responds Heinzmann, who often references a risk equation when making choices in the brewhouse.

“We come up with an idea, then brainstorm what is my expected output? What is my potential risk?” says Heinzmann, noting that when the risk is obviously lower than the output, they can move forward with a new concept.

I’m unsurprised to find out that Heinzmann holds a green belt in Lean Six Sigma, a certification that’s akin to a black belt in management. A Japanese model, Lean Six Sigma, teaches tactics for optimizing production facilities and companies.

With a very technical background, Heinzmann is an excellent foil to Lee’s creative side.

Heinzmann admits that Lee is the mastermind behind Outer Range’s hazies. “He has this more creative, American approach,” he says. “But I come with a very structured German approach.” While the third piece of the team, Outer Range Head Brewer Luke Wortendyke, brings experience with West Coast beers.

Heinzmann considers them all an excellent team. “I bring the box,” he shares, and Lee and Wortendyke get creative within that box, with Heinzmann more experienced with lagers, Wortendyke with West Coast IPAs, and Lee with hazies.

“Obviously, we always want to have fun,” says the perennial adventurer who had just returned from a two-week trek up Mount Kilimanjaro. “But when we get back to business, it’s about getting the best quality out of the [beer] and giving customers the best mountain experience.”

Summits, Skis, and Shared Pints

Photography courtesy of Magic Muncie, Social Media Manager Untappd and Hop Culture

Photography courtesy of Magic Muncie, Social Media Manager Untappd and Hop Culture

Beyond the beer, the mountain stands front and center at Outer Range.

Everyone who works at Outer Range embodies its motto: Leave the Life Below.

In addition to climbing Kilimanjaro, Heinzmann told us later that night, over a steaming pot of fondue, that he had plans for that weekend to go on a three-day, sixty-kilometer trek through the mountains with his friend.

Outer Range’s Manager of Events and Partnerships, Anaïs Seignobos, likes to paraglide on the weekends, a hobby she picked up from her father (despite his protests). Later in the day, she takes us to a lake with a little beach that paragliders can only land on once a year.

We also accompany her on a hike to a local waterfall to grab some shots of Outer Range’s Festbier and a new core hazy IPA, Summit Beer. We stand in the mist of the waterfall, the spray at our backs, while we crack cans and toast.

A slightly off-the-beaten-path trail takes us even higher. We skirt the cliff’s edge as we climb to a little ridge, big enough only for us to line up single file.

This is what Outer Range is all about.

Getting out onto the mountain, and when you come back down, whether that’s by a parachute, a hike, on a couple of skis, or what have you, you can sit down with an incredible beer, reliving the moments of the day.

Connecting Over Continents

Photography courtesy of Magic Muncie, Social Media Manager Untappd and Hop Culture

Two years since opening in the French Alps, the Cleghorns’ bold move seems to have moved mountains.

Well, not quite, but it has created an invisible thread between them.

The brewery constantly gets American visitors.

Although the Sallanches taproom isn’t as challenging to get to as the Frisco location, you still need to plan a few extra steps. Most people aren’t just passing through and happen upon Outer Range; they’re intentionally visiting, “which is really exciting to see people make that trip here,” says Emily. “It never gets old.”

For Mucke, she can always tell when Americans walk into the taproom. They’re the ones looking around in awe, snapping photos on their phones. She loves it.

“It’s actually surprising how many people come here from [the States],” says Heinzmann, noting it happens about once a week. “It’s amazing to see how stoked they are to come here.”

For those who are local, Outer Range remains open for most of the day.

We hung out in the taproom from the late morning until early evening. The crowd was mostly remote workers, banging away on computers and sipping coffee from the in-house Conflict Coffee, which roasts coffee sourced from current and former conflict zones, reinvesting profits into those regions.

By the early afternoon, a few groups ambled in for beers.

“It’s pretty quiet during the day,” says Emily, noting things pick up after seven o’clock, with the brewery often staying open until ten or eleven at night.

In Frisco, on the other hand, you’ll find people drinking as soon as the taproom opens at 11 a.m., with a bump from the après-ski crowd in the afternoon, before winding down around 8 p.m. as people head home.

A Mountainous Leap, A Legendary Legacy

Photography courtesy of Magic Muncie, Social Media Manager Untappd and Hop Culture

“It was a big leap,” says Emily of opening Outer Range in France.

But now that Outer Range has found its footing, the path, although rocky, seems traversable.

After just one year in Sallanches, France’s biggest beer magazine, aptly called Bier Magazine, named Outer Range French Alps one of the top ten breweries in France.

Last year, we named the new location one of our “Best New Breweries of 2024.”

“That was one of my proudest moments,” Elise tells me as she shows me the brewery’s “Wall to Fame,” a series of accolades printed off and simply framed in black that hang on the wall in front of the bathrooms.

“Hearing the feedback that we’re producing the best hazies in Europe right now,” says Heinzmann, “is amazing to hear. We feel proud. There’s a reason why we’re here, and we’re not just here to joke around. We’re serious.”

However, as mountain culture dictates, Outer Range also enjoys having fun.

Before we left, Heinzmann told us that he has plans next year with his mom to ski down Mont Blanc, a mountain he hasn’t tackled yet.

A thought that, after glimpsing Mont Blanc briefly in all her jagged glory, left our jaws on the floor.

Despite that early view of Mont Blanc the evening before, the mountain decides not to reveal itself to us today. The more we strain and hope, the more the fog and clouds stubbornly stay put.

But this is Outer Range, an absolute natural thing of beauty that chooses to reveal itself to those who make the climb, who leave the life below.

The best in the world, but only if you take the time to truly look and see.

If you have the patience and the fortitude, when Outer Range reveals itself to you, it will be breathtaking, whether you’re sitting on a patio with 360-degree views of the Rockies in Frisco, CO, or on a high-top seat facing Western Europe’s highest mountain.

With one of the world’s best hoppy beers in your hand, every sip feels like standing on the summit, and every mountain seems worth the climb.