Yakima Craft Brewing: history lesson

   From Buckley I drove over White Pass the next day to Yakima, to enjoy the new taproom at Yakima Craft Brewing Co.  They had changed from a production brewery only to on-premise consumption just a month or so before. 

The space has room for maybe a dozen to fifteen beer lovers--no food service, although peanuts and pretzels are provided.  The crowd was convivial on a Friday evening and the various distinctive brews each had partisans. There were two IPAs and two "monkeys"--Good Monkey, a Belgian-style golden and Bad Monkey, a Belgian dark ale. Their amber is called "1982", an homage to Bert Grant, a colorful Scot who came to this hops-growing center in the 70s after years working in brewing back east.  Grant started one of the first micros in the northwest, which is the same as saying one of the first micros period, in 1982. He sold his business some years later and this brewery started up recently after Yakima was without its own beer for a while. Some of Grant's original equipment is in use here.

The two fermentation tanks and the copper-clad mash tun are originals, says chief brewer Chris Swedin, who worked at Grant's before it closed in 2005.
(Visited 2/10/11)

Elk Head: good times in Buckley

   The first time I looked up Buckley, Wash. on the map was to find the spot where country music singer Blaine Larsen came from, after I heard him play at the State Fair in Monroe.  It was way back in Pierce County, where the eastbound roads dead end (in the winter) into Mt. Rainier.  The second time was to find the Elk Head Brewery.  It's in a business park on the way into town, open afternoons Tuesday through Saturday. The tap room area is framed by a fine collection of other brewers' growlers.

 At 157 displayed growlers, they haven't caught up with the collection at Birdsview Brewing in Concrete, but they may be gaining. The tap room was a snug little space in one corner, about to get bigger as soon as the state LCB inspector approves the expansion. For now, plastic sheeting covered one wall and Al, tending the bar, said the inspector should be by in the next few days.  Al was busy pulling pints for the regulars and samples for the uncertain.  They made most of the standard beers, named for the mountain and the wildlife (Glacier Pale, White Out Winter Ale, Black Stag Stout, Lone Bull Porter) and some downright exotic stuff:
Blast Zone is an ale superheated with five different peppers (Habanero, Jalapeno, Poblano, Ceranos, and Hungarian Waxed).  Chantrale sounds like a French perfume but is actually a strong (8.5%) ale with a bunch of chanterelle mushrooms added to the boil.
  Another impressive collection, coasters, lines the walls of the loo.

Al said most of the sales here are pints and growler fills; they have taps in three or four restaurants in Buckley and Wilkerson.  The owner, Rich, was away running kegs down to Ocean Shores, by Grays Harbor, where Elk Head also has a pub.
   Conversation was good here, and also at the Firehouse Pub downtown, a friendly spot with long tables, communal dining, and two Elk Head taps among the bar's array. A thoroughly enjoyable stop.
(Visited 2/09/11)

Puyallup's Powerhouse: electrifying !

  Here's a fun stop in Puyallup, a few miles out of Tacoma: the Powerhouse Restaurant and Brewery.  The red brick building started out as a substation to step down the voltage from a hydroelectric plant on a side of Mt. Rainier to a current the trolley system could use.

The history notes in the menu say that the station converted to serving the residential and business customers after the auto replaced the trolley, and did so until 1957, then was used for storage by P.S.E. until the late 60s.  Rescued and rehabbed by the current owners, parts of the interior are a sort of museum of electricity.

Old glass insulating posts, shown in the lower picture, run along the booth dividers throughout the restaurant area.  This is one of the best microbrewery adaptations of a historic building to interpret its past.
   Oh, they do beer here, too.  I saw seven regular taps and three seasonals.  A couple of electrical names, Powerhouse Pale and Amperage Amber, but they don't overdo it.  I tried the Pale and it was nicely done without any unusual wrinkles. The menu appeared to be pretty much pub fare, but with some steak, fish and chicken dishes that could be tasty.
(Visited 1/28/11)

Trade Route; clever marketing

  Trade Route started out in south Seattle and has moved to a spot behind a truck service business in Pacific; just over the line into Pierce County.

Several items they brewed in the old spot are still here: Mango Weizen (150 lbs of pureed mangoes tossed into a 15 barrel batch) and Ginger Pale (who knew that before hops brewers added ginger for tartness? The result is really an alcoholic ginger ale.)  The amber they used to label as Chieftain had just been renamed 253 Amber Ale, with the outline of a telephone (B.C. phone, before cells) to drive home that yes, this brewery names a beer after their area code. I tried the Midnight Ale, which does have an interesting nutty taste (they say on the website that palm sugar does this). They were bottling their stout, which they call Sumatran Coffee Stout.  Everything else off premise to consumers was growler or half-growler sales.  They cook a pub food menu after 4 pm, just brats before that.
   Their marketing wrinkle is package deals, done up in bags.  One bag is called Beer for a Year: a t-shirt, a growler, and a punch card good for one growler fill a month for twelve months. That goes for $100.  A growler refill is $10 here, and the gear would go for over $20, so this is a good deal for people who live near enough to stop in monthly.  For the less frequent visitor they can sell a t shirt, growler bottle and a single fill of the growler for $25 per the website--my notes indicate that this was listing for $20 last week.  Another option was t shirt and one or two bottles of the stout.
(Visited 1/28/11)

Airways: a unique experience in Kent

   The north end of Kent, WA lies across I-5 from Sea-Tac, and Boeing has a fair-sized plant in the city.  But Airways Brewing celebrates the theme of the commercial flying experience not because of its neighbors but because it was founded by Alex Dittmar, who is a total aviation enthusiast.  While Flyers up in Oak Harbor dips a wing to military aviation's propeller-driven origins, Airways is all about the contemporary passenger's travels and travails in the wide bodied jets. Alex is a pilot but works for Alaska Airlines as a website designer. His brewing operation is in a business park.

When you enter the taproom, the first thing you notice may be the tap handles.

These are actual door handles off a 747 (that is Robbie tending the bar on a Saturday afternoon; Alex was not in town that day).  Alternatively, your eye may be caught by the brewery's icon, the Sky Hag.  Here she is on the classic poster:

 She also graces the t-shirt with the same scowl and the words, "Sit down and drink your beer."  The brewing apparatus in the back sits under a nose cone Alex scavenged from some Boeing jet.

The fun just keeps flying around.  Even the unisex restroom has all the familiar signs from the airplane loos.
    There were about a dozen people there on a rainy Saturday afternoon and the atmosphere was jovial.  Robbie and his wife Debbie were hosting and doing a fine job explaining the various brews.  Interest was high in  Layover in Brussels, a variation on the Sky Hag IPA with a Belgian yeast instead of the regular British yeast.  You would have to taste it to believe what a difference the yeast makes.  Evidently this batch had all the hops of the regular Sky Hag, enough to kick the IBU north of 99, but the yeast let the maltiness come through much better.
     Debbie said an expansion of the brewing space here and a regular brewpub elsewhere in Kent are both in the works.  One can only anticipate how much more airline fun will be unveiled then.
(Visited 1/29/11)

M.T. Head brews in empty corner of Pierce Co.

    Out where the Puyallup River comes tumbling off Mt. Rainier and first reaches the flats south of Orting, one comes across the M. T. Head Brewery in the garage of a country residence.  If you arrive during business hours (3 to 7 Thurs-Fri-Sat), brewer/owner Tim Rocker will buzz you through a gate and welcome you to his lair. He has a two-barrel system with connections made by his wife Renee (a certified welder; what a great spousal qualification for a brewer!)

Tim just brews the styles he most enjoys tasting.  Hence no barleywine (an acquired taste I, like Tim, have yet to acquire) and no entries in a number of popular categories.   In addition to the No Brainer Pale and Bonehead Brown shown on the website, he was sampling out a golden ale, an IPA (Twisted Head) and a rich, tart Cascadian Dark Ale he calls Dark Marc. This latter uses Simcoe, Amarillo, and Cascade hops in the brewing and another 3 pounds dry-hopped at the end.
   Tim made about 38 barrels of beer last year sold the better part as growler fills.  Lately, draft sales to taverns has been picking up and he self-distributes kegs to several accounts between Tacoma and Enumclaw. The new plastic keg, about half the weight of a metal keg, is an innovation he appreciates.

(Visited 1/28/11)

Two Beers Brewing--more southside suds

  Posting more notes from my expedition last August into the SODO warehouse district. Two Beers Brewing was throwing a party to celebrate their first full year in the neighborhood.  It was a dandy shindig, right out on a loading dock.

I was really impressed by the one-man bluegrass band.  He had taps on his shoes and a mic picked up the beat as he sang or played.

They were rightly busy inside, pouring from half a dozen kegs, so I didn't get a chance to inquire into the origins of their name.  The only real two-beers breweries I have found so far are the one in Roslyn and our Frank-n-Stein in Ferndale (and the latter usually has a couple of Boundary Bay kegs hooked up to the third and fourth taps). 
   I next caught up with Two Beers at the Winter Beerfest at Hale's last month.  There, I sampled their 20-20 Blonde, which had really been jazzed up for the party.  On top of the regular ingredients  they had added lavender, rose petals, elderberry, and dried currants. If Tolkien's elves had any beer in Rivendell for transient dwarves like Gimli, I think it would have been something like this.  Again, I forgot to ask about the name.
    Brewmaster Joel VandenBrink was good enough to answer my email inquiries and assure me that yes, the normal 20-20 is brewed without the elvish additions.  He got the name from a saying he either found or originated, that "life is a little more honest after two beers."  Cheers, Joel.
(Visited 8/28/10, 12/10)