Craft brewpubs near Coffey Park get lift from fire-ravaged residents returning home

Aside from being the title of the flagship black lager at Moonlight Brewing Co. in Coffey Park, death and taxes are widely known as the only sure things in life.

But here is another: people are passionate about their corner bars, their neighborhood watering holes, the taverns and public houses where they find escape and community - where everyone knows their name.

As the population of Coffey Park goes up, so does attendance at the trio of craft brewpubs that serve as its local watering holes. While Moonlight is closest to Coffey Park, Plow Brewing Co. and Cooperage Brewing Co. are within a couple blocks of one another. They are not quite a half-mile northeast of the Santa Rosa neighborhood returning to life after being burned out during the October 2017 Tubbs fire.

On Thursday afternoon, Brian Hunt sat at a picnic table outside the recently remodeled taproom of Moonlight Brewing, which he founded in 1992 and nearly lost in the blaze.

The Tubbs fire that torched some 1,300 homes missed his business, just off Coffey Lane, by about 700 feet. A part-time firefighter while he was a student at UC, Davis in the late ’70s, he spent the morning after the fire extinguishing embers, shoveling dirt over hotspots.

Business at the taproom plummeted in the aftermath of the inferno. True, many of his Coffey Park regulars had been forced to relocate. But it was more than that, Hunt said.

Driving through the neighborhood, seeing the ruins was “gut-wrenching,” he said. “Sometimes when you go out for a beer, you don’t want to see things that are heavy. And this was heavy.”

“It was sobering,” he added, then smiled at his own bon mot.

Hunt also may have been smiling because business in his taproom is rebounding, as more and more regulars return to rebuilt homes in Coffey Park. As Moonlight’s Instagram account put it earlier this week, “Love seeing familiar faces, and delighted to welcome new ones to the neighborhood!”

“The fire kind of stopped and went around us,” said Tyler Smith, who owns nearby Cooperage on Airway Court, directly behind the 24-Hour Fitness. His fatigued appearance Thursday was not a vestige of the fire, but rather the result of his wife giving birth three days earlier.

While he wouldn’t describe the dip in post-fire business as a “nosedive,” Smith said that “we definitely felt it.”

“Our weekends were always pretty good,” he said, “but Monday through Wednesday, it got pretty quiet.”

The regulars, said Dan Hanes, sales manager at Cooperage, became less regular. “They’d still come back, but people who relocated to Rohnert Park - we’d see them once a month, or once every two months, instead of once a week,” Hanes said.

Holding down a barstool late Thursday afternoon at nearby Plow brewpub on Industrial Drive, Mike Deas recalled the void in his life, when that establishment closed after the fire.

“It was a tough time,” he said. How long had the pub been closed?

“A week,” he replied, drawing a gale of laughter from his drinking partner, Hans. Both men lost their homes on Santiago Drive. Deas has yet to move back in, but never stopped patronizing Plow.

Even though his son spent a decade as general manager of Russian River Brewing Co., Deas preferred Plow, not just for the quality of its beer - he and Hans were savoring pints of Halflinger Pale Ale - for the camaraderie.

“This is my Cheers bar,” Deas said.

“It’s true,” Hans said. “When he walks in, everyone says, ‘Hi Mike!’”

Over at Moonlight, Judy Dittmer and two friends blew off steam after punching the clock at St. Joseph Health in Santa Rosa.

Friday is their customary evening here, but after “an unusually stressful day,” Dittmer said, “someone said, ‘Who’s up for Moonlight?’”

While she enjoys the crisp tones of Reality Czech, Hunt’s highly regarded pilsner, that’s not why she’s a regular. With her house on Crestview Drive in Coffey Park not due to be finished until October, this is where she’s sure to encounter old neighbors and friends.

Atop the piano just inside Moonlight’s taproom entrance are three growlers, blackened and charred and presented to Hunt, who was happy to replace them with new ones.

He’s also happy to be providing customers with something - this may strike some hopheads as sacrilegious - more important than beer.

“Part of what makes us feel at home are routines, things you can count on,” Hunt said. “It’s nice for the people of Coffey Park to find a routine again.”

You can reach Staff Writer Austin Murphy at 707-521-5214 or austin.murphy@pressdemocrat.com.