The 14th annual Washington State Brewers Festival is a couple of weeks away, and Southwest Washington is expected to have a strong presence at the Seattle-area event thanks to a record number of Clark County breweries that have signed up to participate.
Clark County brewers have been included in the festival lineup since at least 2014, but half of this year’s six local participants are making the trip for the first time, in what many local brewers see as a sign of the growth of Vancouver’s craft beer scene.
“It’s still a small community, and we want to make people realize that we’re down here,” says Charles Vandeventer, sales manager at 54-40 Brewing in Washougal.
This year’s Clark County contingent consists of 54-40, Brothers Cascadia Brewing, Fortside Brewing Company, Heathen Brewing, The Heavy Metal Brewing Co. and Trap Door Brewing.
Teams of anywhere from two to 10 people from each brewery will make the trek up to Marymoor Park in Redmond for the Father’s Day weekend event, joining a statewide lineup of 110 breweries pouring more than 500 craft beers.
“It’s the biggest (craft beer) festival in Washington, and I think one of the most popular ones,” says Trap Door Brewing co-owner Zane Singleton.
The participating breweries have to staff their own booths on all three days, so for the Vancouver brewery crews it’s a long drive and a tiring weekend — but the attendees say it’s worth it to represent Southwest Washington on the statewide stage.
“When you go to get a beer, you’re actually talking to the brewery representatives,” says David Miner, co-founder of Heavy Metal Brewing.
All six of the Clark County participants are members of the North Bank Brewers Alliance, a local nonprofit that aims to promote high-quality craft beer in Southwest Washington.
Another six alliance members — Grains of Wrath, Loowit Brewing, Trusty Brewing, Victor 23 Brewing, Ghost Runners Brewing and Hopworks Urban Brewery Vancouver — are among the entrants in this year’s Washington Beer Awards, a separate annual event held in early June.
The award winners are announced at the Brewers Festival, and last year Alliance members took home more than two dozen medals — more per capita than any other region of the state, according to Fortside co-owner Mike DeFabio.
“We hope to do that again (this year),” he says.
Clark County roster
There isn’t enough space for every applicant, so each year’s brewery lineup is chosen through a lottery system. Trap Door’s lottery number initially put it on the waiting list, Singleton said, but it got pushed up the list when enough other breweries dropped out, allowing Trap Door to make its debut this year.
Singleton says the brewery’s pouring lineup will include a new Brett Saison and some barrel-aged brews — some of which will only be familiar to Vancouver-area residents.
“We sell most of it here, so it’ll be cool for the Seattle market to see that side of our beer lineup,” he said.
Heathen is one of the longest-running Vancouver participants, and Sunny Parsons says he loves the festival atmosphere and the competitive drive to try to produce the most exotic and memorable brews.
“Something that just really fools people — ‘this is beer?’ — the one that gets that second look is the one they haven’t had before,” he says.
Heathen’s commitment to the festival has grown each year, he says, and this year they’ll be serving more than a dozen brews — the largest lineup among the Clark County participants, with some brews that will be exclusive to specific days.
Miner says Heavy Metal has focused on local events until now, but he and his team decided to aim for the Brewers Festival last year. They didn’t score high enough in the lottery the first time, but that meant they got a higher priority slot this time around.
“Of course we jumped on it once we were notified we could go,” he says.
The brewery’s debut lineup emphasizes Heavy Metal’s affinity for fruit-centric beers, Miner says, including its mango hazy IPA and honey malt blackberry pale ale.
This year’s festival will be the fourth for Fortside Brewing, and DeFabio says it’s the brewery’s biggest event of the year, with more beer served than at any other gathering. DeFabio also serves on the festival’s organizing committee, and he says the scale of the gathering makes it worth the trip.
“It’s definitely a festival to travel to and check out,” he says.
The brewery’s beer lineup includes nine brews, but DeFabio says there will be more that didn’t make the official list including a new Norwegian hazy IPA that began brewing last week.
Staff at Brothers Cascadia will be in for an exceptionally busy weekend, according to head brewer Jason Bos, because the local brewpub will be celebrating its two year anniversary and making its Brewers Festival debut at the same time.
“We’re taking a few of our flagship beers, like our pilsner, and we’re taking up some new beers as well that we’re releasing up there,” he says.
For its third year at the festival, 54-40’s Vandeventer says the brewery is sending up a mix of flagship and seasonal brews, including a Mexican lager that won a gold medal in last year’s Beer Awards but hasn’t yet been served to the public at the festival.
Brothers Cascadia took home three medals at last year’s Beer Awards, and Bos says the Clark County brewers’ success in the competition points to the growth of the local craft brew industry.
“The beer scene in Clark County is growing, not just in number but quality as well,” he says.
Parsons agrees, and says the best measurement of local success is the number of medals the Alliance members collectively bring home from the Beer Awards each year.
“For us the scoreboard is the medal count,” he says.
