Hop is my copilot

There are eight aircraft, ranging from a Cirrus SR22 to a Cessna 185C Skywagon, flying with pilots who range from FlyteCo brewing company owners to Southwest Airline pilots and instructors and corporate pilots. We are a motley crew of all ages who share a passion for aviation and beer. The Pied Piper of this adventure is smiling Eric Serani (left with Billy Goat Hop Farm owner Audrey Gehlhausen), an enthusiastic former aerospace engineer turned entrepreneur who says this annual trek is his “favorite day of the year.”

The mission

Serani grew up in an aviation family. His grandfather was his inspiration, and Serani flew with him in the family 1946 Aeronca Champ in Chicago and then all over Colorado when the family moved there in 1992. At 16 he soloed, but before his seventeenth birthday, his grandfather passed away. The aviation community his grandfather had been such a major part of rallied behind him, the Experimental Aircraft Association chapter raising money for a scholarship so the young man could finish his pilot certificate. “Ever since that moment, I have felt compelled to give back to the aviation community,” Serani said.

The brewery he and two friends started has a big sign across the bar that reads, “10 percent of our profits are returned to the aviation community.” FlyteCo donates to scholarships and youth engagement programs. “One of my main motivations for an engineer wanting to start a brewery was there had to be something else behind it, a mission behind it.”

He worked for Boeing in Seattle for awhile before feeling the need to return to Colorado. He tried several ventures that didn’t work out—“I think you learn way more from, let’s call it, failures, than you do from going out and being immediately successful,” he says. But all the while, he and his friend Jason Slingsby were brewing beer. Slingsby is a chemical engineer. “He’s got the processes, and beer recipes really interested him, while I am more of a systems engineer and I would build contraptions to perfect our process,” Serani says. “When I moved back to Denver I moved next door to Morgan O’Sullivan. We decided we were going to be good friends, so we cut a hole in the fence and put a gate in. We started having big barbeques. Morgan was in the restaurant industry. We’d get chefs to cater these parties, and Jason and I would brew beer. Our friends started telling us we should do this professionally. And one thing led to another.”

The three men started FlyteCo in 2019 in northwest Denver on a site that had been a power plant in the 1890s and which Serani heard was also the site of the first balloon launch in Colorado.

“The goal was to be a gathering space for the aviation community. It really took off. People loved it,” he said. In 2022, the company expanded to open a family fun center in the old Stapleton Airport control tower. Visitors have three floors of entertainment and food and drink options, including the rapidly expanding beer selection. Serani will take guests up to the top floor to see the incredible views from the tower overlooking Denver. But the elevator only goes up three stories, so the hike up the 14 flights of stairs is not for the faint-hearted and tough on visitors from lower elevations.

The flight

Serani has a surplus of friends. It’s not surprising, as he is a gregarious, eternally optimistic guy. One of those friends, another brewer, told him about a hop farm in Paonia, Colorado. There was an airport there, and his friend suggested they fly there to pick up fresh hops. “We got a few more pilots involved and found a few other brewery owners who were pilots. I asked if they wanted to tag along, and it turned into more of a fly-in. I like it because it’s flying with a purpose,” he says.

The hop farm in Paonia closed, so the group found Billy Goat Hop Farm near Montrose Regional Airport (MTJ), an hour or so flight from Erie Municipal Airport (EIK) where Serani bases his RV–10. Billy Goat Hop Farm is owned by Chris Della Bianca and Audrey Gehlhausen, an enterprising couple who share the same enthusiastic spirit as Serani. They open their 32-acre farm to the pilot group and supply 60-pound bags of fresh hops—a Cascade and Chinook variety—to FlyteCo for brewing. They also are suppliers for the dried hops most beers are made from; fresh hop beer is unusual and delicate to make.

“They are picking the hops as we’re flying up there. They’ll have it ready to go when we get there. We’ll put it in the airplane and come right back to Denver and drive it to the brewery. The brew kettle will be ready for it, and we’ll just dump it right in,” says Serani.

We meet at 6:30 a.m., and some aircraft are already in position while others are flying in from other locations. The aircraft will take off from Erie in a sequence based on each aircraft’s speed. A Cirrus SR22 leads the pack followed by Serani in his RV–10, a V-tail Bonanza, a Swift, RV–4, a Cessna 180, 182, and the 185. We’re taking the northern route over the Rocky Mountains. Rollins Pass is at an elevation of 11,676 feet and the view is amazing. We’re traveling the northern route in the morning and taking the shorter southern route with lower elevation back because the heat of the day will build bumps and allows for better avoidance of wildfire smoke. It’s an easy, bouncy flight in the Cirrus but a moderately uncomfortable one in the smaller aircraft. But these Colorado pilots are unfazed.

Serani gave a detailed briefing reminding the participating pilots of their strategies for flying over the mountains: “Mountain flying requires a lot of special strategies. For example, when we cross a ridgeline like the passes in the Divide, we approach it at a 45-degree angle. That way, if we encounter strong turbulence over the ridge, bailing out is only a 90-degree turn. We also fly a route that has plenty of flat land below in the event of an engine failure. When flying between mountains, we are very aware of the winds and always fly on the upwind side of a valley so that wind lifts the aircraft. Flying on the opposite side you would encounter winds that push the aircraft downward toward the terrain.

“We all talk to each other on an air-to-air frequency so we can know where we’re at and give position reports,” Serani says. “We’re flying over the Continental Divide, over Rollins Pass. There’s a ski area underneath it. Then Winter Park. We fly past Granby and Grand Lake, the biggest lakes in the mountains of Colorado. Then another mountain pass, McClure Pass to get on the other side of the mountains.

“We’re back on the ground in Erie by 1 p.m. and drive the short distance back into Denver to deliver the hops to the brewery at FlyteCo’s Tennyson Street location.

“It’s a fun day. You get to visit a hop farm, and at the end of the day when we’re done, we go back to FlyteCo and drink some beer while we watch Jason make the beer.”

The beer!

Generally, brewers can only make fresh hop beer once a year. The beer has a fresh, floral, almost grassy taste, much like the smell that permeates the aircraft carrying the bags of hops. The biodegradable bag is dropped into the boiling brew kettle filled with Vienna wheat grains that Slingsby has been preparing. Everyone in the group gets an opportunity to put the hops into the kettles if they want.

“The earlier you throw in the hops, the more bitter flavors come out. If you wait until closer to the boil, you’ll get more of the aromas. There’s a science there where you play how much hops to add, and also the timing of when you add the hops gives different flavors and aromas,” says Serani.

Slingsby will take over from here, adding yeast and waiting until the sugars are converted into alcohol. FlyteCo will have a tasting party in a few weeks when the beer is ready. In the meantime, the pilots and passengers from the hop flight enjoy beer from one of the 20 taps on site. Flavors such as Fogged Out Hazy IPA, AeroMexico, and Unusual Attitude Amber constitute the selection.

“Before we opened, I was going to take my employees out to Erie Airport to go flying in my RV–10, and when we got to the airport it was just socked in with fog. We sat in the FBO waiting for the fog to clear, and after awhile, we just decided to call it quits, and Jason had brought this new IPA that needed a name, so we called it Fogged Out.”

Part of the group returned to Billy Goat Hop Farm the next week to get more hops (some fresh, some to be dried and preserved for traditional brewing). The beer was released at a tasting party later in the month. In a word, it was “hoppy.”

“Indeed, it is hoppy, but not in the way most people think of hoppy as overly bitter. I would say ‘aromatic and fresh,’” Serani said.

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