Basalt Brewing to open in old Vancouver Fire Department stationSubscriber Exclusive

The former Vancouver Fire Department station near the Main Street Safeway in Vancouver’s Shumway neighborhood will be transformed into a new brewery and taproom called Basalt Brewing.

Co-owner Joshua Pritchett, former head brewer at Backwoods Brewing and co-owner of Gossip in the Grain Taphouse east of Orchards, said that the brewery will open in about a year, in summer 2022. But it depends on a number of unknown factors with renovating the fire station, including contracting the interior work.

The brewery, at 400 E. 37th St., will be about 13,000 square feet, and the owners envision having a few food trucks in the parking lot. There are no additions planned for the building, but the interior will undergo a large renovation; the owners hired SUM Design Studio based in Portland.

Basalt Brewing will be largely an experimental type of brewery, with rotating types of beer, Pritchett said. For example, their IPA will start with a No. 1 after its name and go through multiple interactions until it gets dialed in, he said.

Beers after work

Pritchett and his business partner, Mike Hannan, met while working for Child Protective Services in Gresham, Ore., where they’d meet after work for beers on occasion. It sparked their idea of the two opening up a brewery one day.