Garden Path Fermentation celebrates three years of beautiful beers.
A few years ago we learned that two employees were leaving Jester King Brewery, an esteemed farmhouse-style brewery in Austin, Texas. The news was relevant to us because the couple planned to move north and open a brewery in Washington.
Ron Extact and Amber Watts aimed to bring their beers (including wild, mixed-culture, and spontaneously fermented beers) to the Skagit Valley, taking advantage of the region’s rich and diverse bounty. The Skagit Valley is exceptionally fertile and the couple realized it would be a fabulous location for the kind of brewery they imagined. Beyond the harvest, the Skagit air is thick with all sorts of lovely microbial goodness.
As we reported here, when Garden Path Fermentation opened in 2018, they brewed the beer at Chuckanut Brewery’s nearby South Nut location in Burlington. The unfermented wort was transported a couple blocks up the street to Garden Path’s facility where it was fermented and aged in a coolship, in foeders, and in oak barrels. This process continues today but Garden Path recently announced that it will soon take delivery of its own brewhouse.
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Meanwhile, back to 2018… These kinds of beers take time and it was a while before Garden Path’s beers began to roll out in earnest, but once they did… holy crap! Worth the wait. The best place to experience the beers is at the brewery and tasting room near the Skagit Regional Airport in Burlington.
Here is the announcement from Garden Path Fermentation, including the introduction of two new beers to celebrate the occasion.
From the brewery:
Garden Path Fermentation in Skagit Valley, WA is celebrating three years of native yeast fermentation with the release of two special beers. The first, 3 Orbits Around the Sun, is their anniversary beer, which is a modest 4.4% lightly smoked ale refermented with Skagit tayberries. A natural complement to food, this beer has a rich, savory character with deep red berry notes.
Their second release is The Spontaneous Ferment: Boysenberries, the second fruited variant in their Spontaneous series. This beer is a blend of spontaneously fermented beers inoculated overnight in a coolship in 2019 and 2020, fermented and aged in oak, and refermented with local boysenberries in 2020.
Both of these beers will be available for sale at Garden Path’s taproom beginning Friday, April 9, as well as throughout the region and beyond. Please visit our online store at http://shop.gardenpathwa.com for local pickup, regional delivery, and in-state shipping or email us to inquire about availability in your area.
thanks for this