Burlington, WA 6/25/2024
This Saturday, June 29th, Garden Path Fermentation will release The Sun Beams ! Our newest beer is a dry hopped summer crusher which we previewed at last weekend’s Washington Brewers Fest and will soon have available on draft at both of our locations–our Skagit Valley tasting room at 11653 Higgins Airport Way in Burlington, and at The Great Northern Bottle Shop & Lounge, at 1319 Commercial St. in downtown Bellingham.
We wanted to make the perfect beer for that magical time in the PNW when the sun finally emerges from behind the clouds. This is a dry-hopped 4.4% ABV bière de coupage–that is, a blend of relatively young beer and older, barrel-aged beer. It’s delicate, bright, easy-drinking, and a wonderful way to salute the sun.
The base for The Sun Beams. was brewed last summer, using yeast we cultivated from bottles of Our First Take Time.–the first beer we brewed at Garden Path Fermentation. The grain bill was a 50/50 mix of Skagit Valley Malting Talisman True British barley and malted wheat, with Sterling hops added in the whirlpool. Fermentation took place in an open foudre, with an extended secondary fermentation in stainless. In April of this year, we added a portion of older beer from one of our horizontal foudres to give it a touch of acidity and added depth, dry-hopped it with Loral for an herbal, crisp finish, and keg-conditioned it with local blackberry honey. The end result is an easy-drinking salute to the sunshine with notes of lemon balm, citrus pith, dried herbs, and marigold.
The Sun Beams. is a draft only release and will be available for offsite distribution in 30L and 1/6bbl kegs starting next Wednesday, July 3rd.
Art by Cass Graybeal Brown. Photo by Chris Carley.
About Garden Path Fermentation
Located in the beautiful Skagit Valley in Northwest Washington, with its uniquely fertile soils and cool, temperate climate, Garden Path Fermentation is one of very few producers in the world that’s able to make beer, wine, cider, and mead, all using ingredients sourced from our own backyard, and may be the only one to do so using only native yeast fermentation.
Our production process draws on old-world brewing and winemaking techniques from a variety of traditions, which we reinterpret and adapt to take advantage of our abundant local resources, including Skagit-grown and locally-malted grain, Skagit-grown fruit, much of which we tend to ourselves, locally-cultivated honey, and organic hops from our friends’ nearby farm. Fermentation takes places in oak barrels of varying sizes, including a large, open-top foudre, and each unique batch is hand-blended to taste and is a singular expression of time and place that we can never recreate.
A garden path is a beautiful way to get somewhere you may not have expected to go. Our products–the results of careful selection, blending, aging and curation–will take you on what may be an unanticipated journey that we hope you enjoy!
Visit gardenpathwa.com for more information or follow us on Instagram and Facebook @gardenpathwa.
Please let us know if you are interested in republishing this release, require any additional materials or have any questions.