Brewing From Hops and Heart

Logboat has found its flow.

Logboat Brewing Company began with three guys brewing beer and making music in their garage in 2010.

“We always said the beer was turning out better than the music, so that’s the avenue we pursued,” says cofounder of Logboat Brewing, Tyson Hunt, from Moberly.

Tyson became interested in craft beer while in Oregon. When he returned to Missouri in 2010, he brought his enthusiasm back with him to Columbia and spread it among his friends. Tyson, along with his future cofounders, Andrew Sharp, also from Moberly, and Judson Ball, from Rolla, spent their early days together experimenting with beer recipes and writing music in Tyson’s garage.

It was not long before they began to dream bigger. At the time, Judson worked at a local music venue where he noticed a consistent question from touring musicians: Where was the local beer?

Columbia, a college town with a strong community and plenty of live music, had no local craft beer distribution.

The trio soon became serious about the idea of opening their own brewery. They took a two-week trip to Montana, wanting to do research before diving into creating craft beer.

During their trip, they visited Bitter Root Brewing, whose owners generously opened their doors and shared their wealth of knowledge. They showed them their operation and walked through the logistics of statewide distribution.

Before they left, one of the Montana brewers told them, “If you guys don’t open a brewery in that town [Columbia], I will.” That encouragement was the spark that started the fire under the team.

Back in Missouri, the friends spent the next few years testing more home-brew recipes and refining their vision. After three years of business planning, financial meetings, and touring potential spaces for their operation, they found what they were looking for at an abandoned meatpacking plant on Fay Street in Columbia.

“It looked like the movie Saw was filmed in here,” Andrew says, “but for us, it was perfect.”

The space, which once processed 20,000 pounds of beef a day, was completely transformed after months of renovation. Logboat Brewing Company officially opened its doors in 2014.

Since then, the brewery has become a community fixture, known as much for its award-winning beer as for its welcoming backyard-style atmosphere. On any given Friday, visitors will find food trucks, dogs, families, music, and the clatter of cornhole bags hitting wood.

“Our team is a big part of who we are,” Tyson says. “It has continued to grow into a really wonderful group of human beings making exceptional beverages and creating a great atmosphere.”

The beer lineup is broad and creative, from citrus-forward pale ales to a ginger wheat beer, named Shiphead, brewed with Peruvian ginger, lemon, and coriander, which was one of their earliest garage experiments and remains a crowd favorite.

Most recently, Logboat launched a massive expansion. The process took a little over two years and increased the square footage of the building by almost double. The bar, taproom, brewing laboratories, brewing rooms, and tasting rooms were all renovated. Outdoors, the company added new bathrooms, a fenced-in yard, an elevator to quickly reach the upstairs bar, a large covered balcony, and a bar made from a large shipping container.

Despite the business’s exponential growth and new additions, the founders are still propelled forward by one thing: the same excitement for beer that they found a decade ago brewing in their garage.

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LogboatBrewing.com • 504 Fay Street, Columbia

The article was orginally published in the October 2025 issue of Missouri Life.