Popular Fly Llama Lager returning to MS Coast as downtown Biloxi brewery doubles in size

Fly Llama Brewing in Biloxi is expanding and bringing back the Fly Llager that was among its most popular brews.

A ribbon cutting at 4 p.m. on July 17 will celebrate the expansion and the launch, but the party could start a little before that.

Owner and brewmaster David Reese is checking the Fly Llama tanks regularly, and said this first batch of lager should be ready a few days before then.

“It’s getting close,” he said. The lager will be the new flagship beer of Fly Llama. “It’s a proven brand. We know it works,” he said.

The popularity of the lager is why it was discontinued. “Lagers take a lot longer to brew,” he said — 60 days compared to 10-12 days for ales — and he was committed to keeping a big selection of beers and seltzers on tap.

“I couldn’t do the brand justice,” he said, so he stopped brewing the lager and a year and a half into the business, he realized he needed to expand his brewing capacity.

“I doubled the space,” he said.

And he’s got plans to expand again.

Starting small

Fly Llama opened in January 2021 with 14 different beers and three ciders.

Dave and Kara Reese said their goal was creating a neighborhood taproom at 186 Bohn St., close to the entertainment district and the Biloxi Shuckers’ stadium.

“Nothing went as planned,” he said, but the business thrived.

“We’ve seen some great growth since then,” he said, going from basically a one-man operation to close to 30 employees now.

He’s more than doubled his draft lines to 32, with non-alcoholic root beer and hopped tea among them.

He jokes that he makes half the brews for him, half for everyone else, giving them names like Me Llamo Llamo Mexican lager and Shamus Irish nitro stout.

“I knew I was going to make seltzer,” he said, “I didn’t know how big it would be.” His pineapple satsuma, blackberry and other “super Fly” seltzers look more like beer and are full of fruit. Llets Go Shuckers is a mango seltzer in support of the home baseball team.

Best in the world

When he opened, Reese was one of the only Advanced Cicerone-certified beer professionals in Mississippi, and one of only 139 worldwide who had that level of “expert knowledge of beer and excellent tasting ability.”

Reese, who got his brewing degree at the Siebel Institute of Technology in Chicago, wanted to go all the way and pursued a Master Cicerone designation.

The two-day test required 70 pages of written essays plus oral exams with “some of my heroes in the industry,” he said. The pass rate is less than 5%.

“I took it three times — and I wasn’t going to take it a fourth,” he said. The third time was the charm and Reese became the only Master Cicerone in Mississippi and one of just 28 worldwide.

“I was able to do that because of the people around me,” he said. While he studied 4-5 hours a day, his wife Kara, who is director of marketing for Fly Llama, along with Miles Harris, director of brewing operations, and general manager Allie Black kept the business going.

Crafter of beer

Several of the other 27 Master Cicerones in the world work as consultants, while Reese puts his accomplishment to work for his customers in Biloxi.

They’ve brewed 400 to 500 unique beers since Fly Llama opened three and a half years ago, “And we’re not done,” Reese said. Having so many brews on tap, “Keeps us on our toes to develop and innovate,” he said. While Fly Llama has its core beers, regulars come in and ask “What’s new?”

This summer it’s the return of the lager, which he’s brewing to be even better than before.

The light craft beer is malt driven. “It’s perfect for our climate,” he said. Helles beer does better when brewed in German horizontal lager tanks, he said, but the industry standard changed during the industrial revolution to vertical tanks.

“We bought horizontal tanks,” he said.

He also invested in a new chiller that stores lager at temperatures down to 30 degrees to produce a crisp, clean product.

Fly Llama will have tasting events once the lager is ready and it will be available in cans. The distributors are very excited it’s back, he said. Of the 32 varieties, “Only five are for sale outside these walls,” he said. “That is going to change,” he said.

The brewery is somewhat like a chemistry lab, with different size tanks, which allows them to make a small batch of sweet potato lager for Thanksgiving along with big batches of their popular brews.

More big plans

“There’s so much room to grow,” Reese said, in both the brewery and community involvement.

He serves on the board of Biloxi Main Street and Fly Llama sponsors First Friday events and a couple of charitable events every year. This year Fly Llamapalooza will move to Oct. 26 and become a Halloween event, he said.

Fly Llama serves food out of the Hungry Llama food truck, which Reese says has become part of the business, and he has plans to move into a permanent location.

He acquired the distillery building across Kuhn Street and plans to open Copper Llama distillery and tasting room in about a year. He went to school for distilling and just as he did before opening the brewery, he will figure out the recipes and processes for making rum, bourbon and flavored vodkas and then create a team to help him make it.

They’re not trying to be the next regional brewery. “I don’t want to grow big,” he said, and his beers are sold mostly in Mississippi and Alabama, because he said going beyond that makes it hard to maintain the quality.

This year he flew to the provider to personally choose the hops that will go into his beer and selected a New Zealand hops for its very robust flavors.

He also named his first American rice lager for Louis Rash, who frequents Fly Llama.

“We wanted to honor him with a beer,” Reese said. After all, Rash connected him with a rice grower in the Mississippi Delta who supplies the rice for his lager and will provide more for the distilling of rice vodka when Fly Llama expands again.