Utara Brewing Co. expands downtown location, adds production facility on Boyer Ave.

By Ben Olson
Reader Staff

Ever since he poured the first pint at Utara Brewing Co. on Pine Street in downtown Sandpoint, owner and brewer Dave Kosiba always sought to keep his operation small and community oriented. Coming into his eighth year, Kosiba is still committed to that vision — even while adding a second production facility on North Boyer Avenue to alleviate space constraints at the downtown pub.

Operating a production facility, commercial kitchen, taps and seating space inside the cozy 2,000-square-foot former Lightning Lube location all these years has forced him to be creative with space.

“We had our brewery here on Pine Street since 2018, operating inside about 500 square feet in the building,” Kosiba told the Reader. “I was running out of space for production and running out of space here in the seating area even during shoulder season. Some nights, there’s just nowhere to sit. It just made sense to make this next step.”

The new facility at 2617 N. Boyer Ave. will house Utara’s production equipment, as well as a 200-square-foot public seating area for customers to enjoy a pint where it was brewed.

“We’re trying to differentiate between the two, so we’re calling them the Pub on Pine and the Brewery on Boyer,” Kosiba said.

The Brewery will be open from 5-8 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, but Kosiba said to keep an eye out for expanding hours of operation as the ski season gets into full swing.

“We’re not serving food out there at the brewery, but you can purchase snacks,” he said. “Kids and dogs are welcome out there.”

While the pub will continue to feature Indian-inspired food, Kosiba said he’s expanding into more shareables for his customers.

“We’re still featuring four traditional curries and other Indian-inspired dishes,” he said. “There have been two other Indian restaurants that have opened up recently, but we haven’t seen any bottom-line impact from that.”

The new facility gave Kosiba a chance to open up some new seating areas inside the pub, adding another 500 square feet for customers to congregate, as well as a large-screen TV, some chairs, couches and coffee tables to fill out the new arrangement.

“It’s personally one of my favorite spaces downtown,” he said. “I watched the whole World Series there.”

Kosiba is still committed to a smaller-scale brewery, despite his recent expansions.

“We’re just a small brewery and we can’t have our product everywhere,” he said. “We’re not going to have it everywhere, but in a couple of weeks, we’ll hopefully have a slightly largely wholesale footprint so we can offer it to a few different locations. We’re not getting into canning or bottling, though, and no distributor. It’s just Dave running around in a pickup truck.”

Check out Utara’s new brewery at 2617 N. Boyer Ave. or swing by the Pine Street pub at 214 Pine St. Visit utaraidaho.com for more information.