Members of the Northbank Brewers Alliance gathered recently at Trap Door Brewing in Vancouver. (Rachel Pinsky)Photo Gallery
About a year ago, craft beer brewers from Southwest Washington came together to form a nonprofit organization for the education and support of local craft breweries. Mike DiFabio (board president and owner of Fortside Brewing) explained the purpose of the Northbank Brewers Alliance (or guild) as “a more formal way for us to help each other.”
This group is open to brewers who brew less than 6 million barrels per year and are less than 25 percent controlled by a beverage industry member that’s not a craft brewer. The brewery must be located in Southwest Washington, from Seaview in the west to Goldendale in the east.
Erik Svendsen, owner of North Jetty Brewing in Seaview, is the board’s treasurer.
“The Vancouver group could have easily made this the Vancouver Brewers Association or the Vancouver Guild, but it meant a lot to us that they wanted to be inclusive of everyone on the north bank of the Columbia River,” he said. “They decided that they wanted to include this whole area. And we appreciate being included in this group.”
The alliance is less than a year old, and its officers and members are still working out their goals. At this time, its main purpose is to formalize the connections between member breweries, educate brewers and create a marketing campaign to draw attention to regional beer production.
Coming together allows brewers to share their experiences, learn from each other, and solve problems that arise at their breweries as a group. There has always been an easy relationship with this brotherhood of hops and malt.
“I’m never more than two phone calls away from anything — advice, direction, material, products,” Bryan Shull of Trap Door Brewing said.
Svendsen happened to be at Trap Door when I met with members of this group to get some kegs of a collaboration beer that North Jetty did with Trap Door.
The alliance will bring outside experts to its quarterly meetings to help members employ best practices.
“The most helpful thing (The Oregon Guild has) done is to have a big winter meeting,” said Bolt Minister, owner and brewer at 54?40′ Brewing in Washougal. “So we wanted something over here to have those educational pieces but do them more often.”
Minister wants to have question-and-answer sessions on topics such as malts, hops and distribution to help local craft brewers. Industry experts will make the presentations.
Svendsen believes the education piece, combined with group discussions of best practices, is important.
“Everyone that makes craft beer owes it to everyone else to make a good product,” he said. “We might lose that customer for the whole industry if we aren’t doing our best.”
The alliance plans a marketing campaign to educate the public about the exceptional craft beer brewed in Southwest Washington.
“We could’ve had a more loosely based group and not formed (a nonprofit trade association), but we wanted to promote beer in Southwest Washington, and one of the best ways to do that is a brewfest,” DiFabio of Fortside said. “And a brewfest is a lot easier if you’re a nonprofit organization because it’s a fundraising event.”
Svendsen added, “As a nonprofit, as long as we use the money to further our mission. Suppliers can donate things for the event and get a tax write-off. And brewers can donate without having to sell (products) at cost to get it going. There’s also breaks on insurance for the event.”
Last year’s inaugural brewfest was called the Building Bridges Collaboration Beer Festival. Northbank brewers teamed up with Oregon brewers to create a regional collaboration festival. The event was well attended and brought in money for the alliance.
Sunny Parsons of Heathen Brewing is pleased with the uptick in Northwest beer tourism. But his big “pie in the sky dream” is using the brewfests and quarterly get-togethers to get large beer buyers to clear some shelf space for Northbank members.
The group’s website lists its 29 members. Many of their taprooms are in walking distance from each other, creating the perfect pub crawl. For local craft beer news, subscribe to the newsletter at NorthbankBrewers.com.
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