When Prodigy Brewing opens in June, in a 122-year-old building in Logan’s downtown, it will not just be the first brewery in Logan, but the first in Cache County.
In June, it will also be exactly 10 years since Jason and Kristin Smith moved to Utah from Kentucky.
“It was the first time that we’ve lived in a community the size of Logan where there’s not been a brewpub,” Kristin Smith said.
The Smiths co-own Prodigy — at 25 W. Center St., Logan — along with Jason’s friend Rob Paul (the two have known each other since kindergarten) and Matt Cliburn.
Fifteen years ago, Kristin Smith said, “Jason started homebrewing, and Rob started homebrewing. And then in Kentucky, we met Matt. So he’s been homebrewing for a really long time, and had just gotten pretty good at it.”
The friends heard “a lot of rumblings over time about getting a brewpub started in Logan,” she said. “As it turned out, they were all urban legends or misinformation. The city’s been super great and welcoming to us.”
What wasn’t super great was COVID-19, which slowed construction and added delays to sourcing brewery equipment. Now, they are set to open the doors in a few weeks.
The brewpub, located at 25 W. Center St., will be similar to such Salt Lake City establishments as Squatters, which brews and serves beer but can serve food to anyone in its restaurant. Kristin Smith said Prodigy is intentionally family-friendly, and wants anyone in Logan to be able to visit. With hours stretching to midnight on weekends, the brewpub will also offer one of the few late-night food options in the city.
The beers, she said, will be mostly — but not entirely — traditional.
“We acquired some German lagering equipment, so we’re going to do some traditional German-style beers, very traditional IPAs and stouts and porters, and all of that good stuff,” she said. “Our assistant brewer is really extremely creative, so he has so many ideas. He’s been tinkering with his homebrew system and has done a number of really cool things. Once we get our stake down in these traditional beers, we’re super excited to unleash him and see what happens and have some interesting things, too.”
The menu, created by executive chef Dustin Kirby, is upscale pub fare, with wood-fired pizzas, burgers and more. “The Prodigy supreme burger has what feels like every ingredient under the sun,” she said. The beer cheese recipe, she said, is one passed down through generations in Jason’s family in Kentucky.
“We took it to our chef and we were like, ‘OK, so this is what we’d like you to do — deal with it as you want. This is the vision and the inspiration,’” Kristin Smith said. “He said, ‘This is absolutely perfect the way it is.’ So we’ll have the beer cheese, not only for things like pretzels and French fries and things, but we’ll do nachos as well.”
Prodigy will also serve Sunday brunch, she said, with a menu that includes breakfast pizzas and other brunch-specific dishes.
Smith said she and the other co-owners have found the Utah brewing community to be welcoming, and that their support has been invaluable as they’ve worked to get the brewery open.
“I can’t tell you the number of breweries we reached out to when we were purchasing our brewery equipment, just to get a better idea of what would really fit us best,” she said. “We’ve made such great relationships with a number of different breweries just by asking questions — did you have this problem, or was this something you ran into? How did you navigate this? How did you find this ingredient, or this piece of equipment, or cans, or whatever it may be? Everyone’s just been great.”
Hours — once Prodigy opens — will be 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday through Wednesday, 11 a.m. to midnight Thursday through Saturday, and 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday.
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