Chainline Brewing Co.

A few months ago I was looking around for local breweries to check out. Some friends of mine and I had visited Black Raven, Bushnell, and HiFi in Redmond, and I wanted to see if there was anything closer to home, here in Kirkland. Two things came up. The first was Flycaster, up near Totem Lake. The second was Chainline Brewing Company, which was... wait a minute... right on my walk to work? The following Monday, on my walk to work, I peered into the address where this brewery supposedly was located, but there wasn't really anything going on. It just looked like an empty building. I did some more searching around online, and they were still trying to get the required licenses and so forth to start building out their brewery. It turned out that the ballet school next door was putting up a big fuss about it, thinking that basically a bar was moving in next door. I made sure to write my local representatives and express my support. I mean, a brewery blocks from work? How awesome would that be?

Scott with a hydrometer up on the main brew rig.

As months went by, I started to see a little more activity. Then suddenly, one day, a huge garage door was open on the property and all sorts of work was going on inside. The floor was being torn up, concrete was being poured, walls were being torn down. Things were happening. Eventually I worked up the nerve to send an email introducing myself. I pointed out that I was a homebrewer, that I'd been watching things develop for a while, and that if it were cool, I'd be interested in coming by to chat and take a look around. As it turned out, they thought that sounded great!

Flat-bottomed fermenters!

A few days later I wound up walking over and meeting Scott and Aaron, the owner and head brewer, respectively. We talked a bit about what sorts of beers they have planned, the challenges they were facing in building out their brewery, and what they planned to do with all the beer they were going to brew. It turns out that they are planning on selling most of it on site (pints and growlers), and maybe distributing some nearby. We wound up hanging out on their back deck that they successfully Kickstarted at the end of last year. They've got some pretty cool swag for the Kickstarter backers. I've seen it!

All metric, all the time.

I got a tour of the brewhouse as it was, which included an all-copper brewing system Scott sourced from Japan, which had originally been built in the Czech Republic in the late 90's. Everything is in metric, and there are even notes jotted on the equipment itself in Czech and Japanese. They had the main rig set up, although all the plumbing hadn't been done, and the boiler wasn't there yet. The fermenters had been installed, and there are a lot of them, though interestingly none of them are conicals. They're all named after Transformers.

Scott was still working on the serving area for the tap room, building the bar himself. His background is in mechanical engineering (in his previous life he worked with prostheses), so he was pretty up to the task. I noticed a lot of really nice touches, including lights on the wall made from beer bottles that have a very steampunk feel to them.

The completed tap room.

One thing we talked about was having a group of interested Googlers stop by. Both Scott and Aaron were excited at the idea, so I told them I'd try to arrange something when I got back into town this January. After touching base with them, I sent out some emails and managed to get a group of 35 or 40 folks to head down there a couple weeks ago and see all the progress they've been making. They have a boiler now, lots of crazy plumbing, kegs, barrels for barrel aging, a full giant walk-in refrigerator, and a completed tap room, which looks fantastic. There's even custom art on the wall by a local muralist. Scott explained his rationale for getting into the brewing business, why he was so happy with the location, and what he hoped to do. Aaron gave a quick overview of how the beer system works, what his background is, and what he had in store, beer-wise. The few of us who stayed after got a couple of samples of the upcoming product, including a pale ale and a stout. Both were excellent. The pale ale was quite refreshing and brightly hoppy without being overly bitter. It had very nice balance to it. The stout was a deceptively drinkable 8% ABV that I could see getting a lot of folks into trouble. Not too sweet, and also not bracingly roasty. I'm really excited for what these guys have in store.

I also stopped by one evening to share some of my homebrew and get some impressions. I brought the Speckled Heifer, milk chocolate stout, and my honey lavender Belgian tripel (I'll do some tasting notes at some point and include the recipe). We didn't get around to the stout, but Aaron seemed to enjoy both of the other beers. I've been asked to bring more stuff by, so I'll take that as a compliment. It's great to have more local brewing and I'm excited that it is so walkable from my house. Or maybe I should say I'm excited that my house is so walkable from it.