POULSBO — With the coming of Rainy Daze Brewing Co., Poulsbo will be No. 1 in the USA in terms of number of breweries per capita.
Really.
That’s according to Dave Lambert, who keeps track of such things. He is head brewer and owner of Slippery Pig Brewery.
Poulsbo has one brewery for every 2,300 residents:
— Sound Brewery’s brewery and tasting room on two sites on Viking Avenue.
— Rainy Daze’s brewery and tasting room on Bovela Lane off Viking Avenue.
— Slippery Pig’s brewpub in downtown Poulsbo.
— Valhöll Brewing’s brewery and tasting room on 3rd Street, near City Hall.
The nearest city to come close, according to Lambert, is Bend, Oregon, with one brewery for every 3,333 people.
Far from seeing Rainy Daze as competition, Lambert and owners of the other two Poulsbo breweries are completely supportive. They and their staff think more breweries will be good for their own business and for Poulsbo.
“It makes Poulsbo a destination port,” Lambert said. “Beer tourism is a coming thing.”
“Definitely. Definitely bringing tourists,” echoed Jared Snyder, the production manager at Valhöll Brewing.
Poulsbo’s first brewery, Valhöll opened in 2012. “We’re seeing a lot of out-of-staters coming and doing the beer tours in Kitsap County.”
Interviewed by phone, Mark Hood, production manager and founder of Sound Brewery, said he, too, sees more breweries bringing in more people from Seattle and Kitsap for beer tours and to shop.
“It’s taking [Poulsbo] from a Norwegian fishing town to a go-to hot spot,” Valholl Brewing co-owner Katie Holcomb said. She sees breweries invigorating Poulsbo’s diversity. “We’ve got water, mountains, hotels, restaurants, arts and crafts, breweries — we’ve got everything” she said.
Slippery Pig customers sang the praises of local breweries and craft beers.
“People converse more at brewpubs than they do in bars,” said one customer who asked not to be named. “They’re trying different beers, comparing different beers. Different breweries make different things.”
Lambert, from behind the bar, agreed. “People ask me, ‘What can you tell me about this beer?’ Nobody’s ever going to ask that about Coors Lite.”
Stephanie Borke, the Slippery Pig’s bartender, observed that craft brewery customers are “not rowdy like [in] a bar. People are polite, laid back. They’re here for the experience and not just to get drunk.”
When asked about the lack of rowdiness, Hood at Sound Brewery explained, “Microbreweries have traditionally been age agnostic. One of the real beauties [of a brewpub] is that it blends the generations together. You see people in their 20s talking to people in their 60s and 70s.”
He added, “More breweries are 100 percent to everyone’s benefit.”
The Slippery Pig, on the Poulsbo waterfront, offers food with its beer and entertainment seven nights a week.
Valhöll Brewing has a tasting room by City Hall that encourages customers to “BYOF” (bring your own food) to nibble on while you sample their brews. It hosts a Books ’n’ Beer group that gathers once a month for those who like to mix their libations with good reading.
In June, when Sound Brewery opens a tasting room in what is now Campana’s Restaurant on Viking Avenue, it will offer food. (The brewery is down the street.)
“I don’t plan any major changes to the building [which is a local landmark],” Hood said. “We’ll put up some signs and offer a simple menu. It’s really more just a really good place to move our tasting room to.”
Rainy Daze owner Mike Manford was not available for comment March 30. However, Hood said Rainy Daze will be moving from Silverdale into Sound Brewery’s old brewery and tasting room on Bovela Lane.
At one time, all of the brewery owners have either worked for, or with, one another. And they all learned to brew beer the old-fashioned way: in their garages.
“I started making beer in my garage and pretty soon people said, ‘Dave, you should sell this,’ so I got a license and jumped in,” Lambert said.
“We talk to each other all of the time. There are only two hundred-ish microbreweries in Washington, so we’re a tight group.”
Holcomb agreed, “We are all pretty tight. “The beer nerds — we call them that — over at Sound Brewery are especially helpful.”
Sound Brewery is the largest brewery in Poulsbo. Besides advice, Sound Brewery washes kegs for Slippery Pig and Rainy Daze. It also has the only mash press in Washington
“It’s a completely different way to brew beer,” Hood explained. “It’s faster and more efficient and uses less water [and] energy and 15 percent less grain. Mash presses have been used in Belgium since 1974 and that’s where ours came from. But they’re only now being adopted over here.”
BREW TOWN USA
When it comes to America’s best brew towns, everybody, it seems, has their own opinion.
CNN for example, provides its choice of the eight best beer towns in the U.S. Then there’s Brew Town USA on Twitter. GQ got into the game in 2012 with an article on “The 5 Best Beer Cities in America.” USA Today did a 2016 readers’ choice “10 Best Beer Towns in the USA.”
But who wants to listen to biased opinions when you can fall back on statistics? Poulsbo is numero uno — nummer én — in the USA because we have more breweries per capita than anybody else.
At least until a town like Marblemount (pop. 203) opens a brewery.
Poulsbo has one brewery for every 2,300 residents. The nearest city to come close, according to Dave Lambert of Slippery Pig Brewery, is Bend, Oregon, with one brewery for every 3,333 people. Map: Terryl Asla / Herald
