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Chuckanut Brewery Events this Summer

Chuckanut Brewery’s locations will be hosting a slew of events in June and July. If you’re looking for a fun way to spend in the Skagit Valley make your way over to South Nut Tap Room. Events include food trucks (every other Thursday at South Nut), dog fest, crafts market (June 26 and July 17 at South Nut), and oyster pop-ups (at South Nut).

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At the Artist Market Series during the summer you might find a different selection of jewelry, linens, musical items, art, paper items, food vendors and more. The Artist Market pop-ups run noon-5 pm at South Nut in Skagit and include all local artists selling their creations. Also at South Nut Stella Sopra Italian Food truck stops in every other Thursday 2-7 pm.

 

Don’t forget to bring your best friend over on July 2 to South Nut and P. Nut for a visit. Join us for a pawfect afternoon of clean pups and clean beers! Both of our locations will have mobile groomers on-site to give your best friend a relaxing spa day while you snag a beer. Discounts on beer, select merchandise, and raffle prizes! Sweet P’s Dog Grooming truck will be on-site noon-5 pm at South Nut and You Dirty Dog at P. Nut, no appointments are necessary. A series of Oyster Pop-Ups will take place all summer long at South Nut too. Dates to be determined but we’ll have fresh oysters and someone to shuck them for you all day. At all of these special events, you’ll be able to sip on your favorite Chuckanut beer and enjoy the activities.  

Chuckanut Brewery Awarded World Beer Cup Medal

The Brewers Association announced the results of the largest international commercial beer competition, the 2022 World Beer Cup on May 5. The awards were presented in a ceremony at the conclusion of the Craft Beer Conference in Minneapolis. Chuckanut Brewery was awarded a Bronze medal for Chuckanut’s Bohemian Style Pilsner. There were over 170 entries in the Bohemian Pilsner category that Chuckanut won.

 

The World Beer Cup 2022 was the largest competition to date with 10,542 entries from 2,493 breweries representing 57 countries! It is always a huge accomplishment to receive any award from this competition. The last time it was held, in 2018, Chuckanut Bohemian Pilsner and Chuckanut Kolsch both won Gold medals!

 

Chuckanut Pilsner is a traditional Bohemian-style Pilsner lager with a noble hop aroma, bright golden color and white pillowy head. It’s a great mouthwatering, award-winning, deeply satisfying, and refreshing brew. Great with oysters, seafood or really any kind of food, it’s also great just by itself!

Chuckanut Brewery Celebrates May Day 2022

Many European cultures have their own May Day or spring festival every May 1st. Chuckanut Brewery will have their celebration of May Day (May first) by highlighting Morris dancers and Maibock beer. Sound and Fury Morris Dancers from Seattle will be at South Nut in Skagit Valley at the Port of Skagit dancing up the sun from 1-3 pm, and at P.Nut in Portland, OR, Bridgetown Morris Dancers will make their appearance 2-3 pm.

Celebrating May in Germany is the release of Maibock (German for May bock) every spring. This year both Chuckanut locations will be tapping aged Maibock 2021 and Maibock 2022. Lots of other special activities will be added in during the day including special tappings, beer garden games, food trucks and more. Return of the popular food truck Poblano Pepper will be parked at P.Nut for hungry celebrators!

Maibock is often represented by the goat and has a long tradition in Bavaria for its strong rich flavors. This golden lager is usually released in May in Bavaria. It has a moderate bitterness that balances out the slightly sweet, full-bodied palate packed with rich, ripe fruit aromas. A lengthy lagering period of over 3 months smooths out the Maibock’s malty, high alcohol strength with a clean smooth finish. Maibock received a Gold Medal from GABF (Great American Beer Fest) 2020 and is a great match with any rich foods or desserts. The 2021 Maibock is very limited and you’ll find even smoother than 2022 Maibock. You won’t find this beer on tap for long so if you see it, try it, you won’t be disappointed!

Maibock will be available on draft in selected accounts around Puget Sound and the Portland area. Bottles of Maibock are only available at the Chuckanut P. Nut (Portland) Beer Hall and South Nut (Skagit Valley) Tap Room. Wherever you find bottles get some as supplies won’t last long! And you can easily age this beer for a smoother finish.

Chuckanut Brewery Smoke Fest on March 5

Historically all beers were smoky due to the fires on which they were brewed as well as smoking the malt as it dried during the malting process. Now smoke beers are a rare, special treat and hard to find at that, but Chuckanut Brewery is celebrating these delicious beers with a Smoke Fest!

Chuckanut’s P. Nut Beer Hall in Portland and South Nut Brewery & Tap Room will be hosting Smoke Fest on March 5 in celebration of smoke lagers! Both locations will have three smoke beers on tap: Grodziskie Polish Lager, Rauch Marzen Lager and Rauch Helles Lager. All three beers use a different variation of smoke malts and are unique in color and flavor.

Wildfire Relief Donations

To help our communities in wildfire relief Chuckanut will be donating $1 of each smoke beer sold at both locations on March 5 to Direct Relief an organization that supports firemen and people who have been affected by wildfires. The festivities will include a brewery Open House at South Nut with free brewery tours from 12-4 pm and food pairings ordered from local Skagit Valley Provisions and Skagit Landing Restaurant. At P. Nut in Portland Poblano Pepper Food Truck will be on site as well as Sip & Knit with its first meet up (no charge) for those that want to knit while they sip their beers!

The Beer Styles

Grodziskie is an old Polish style beer sometimes referred to as “Polish Champagne” that’s brewed with oak smoked wheat malt. It has a subtle smoky flavor and finishes dry as a bone due to the use of the wheat malt. Grodziskie has mineral notes on the nose and great back-end vanilla on the palate. Weighing in at a whopping 3% ABV this beer is extremely crushable.

On the other hand, Rauch Marzen Lager is a more medium bodied amber colored beer. Known as the beer from Bamberg, every brewery in Bamberg, Germany where this style continues to be brewed, makes their own rendition of a Beechwood smoked malt lager. The complicated malt bill used in a Rauch Marzen rewards one with a balanced malt/hop combination covered in smokiness! Chuckanut Rauch Marzen Lager is modeled after the style Spezial Brewery in Bamberg makes.

And last but not least, the Rauch Helles Lager also uses Beechwood smoked malt but in the body of a Helles (light colored) beer. This rauch bier has the body of a Marzen but the color and lightness of a Helles Lager. With its well-developed bready flavors and elegant maltiness Rauch Helles has an added layer of smokiness too!

Mexican Food Truck

All smoke beers are great food beers and Chuckanut would like you to experience the possibilities with the presence of a Mexican food truck in Portland and two different pairings created by local food purveyors in Skagit Valley. Make sure to visit Chuckanut’s P. Nut Beer Hall and the South Nut Tap Room for some new smoky beer fun on March 5! See you there!

Skagit Valley & Portland

Chuckanut Brewery’s P Nut Beer Hall is located at 920 SE Caruthers St, Portland, OR 97214. Chuckanut Brewery & Tap Room is located in the heart of Skagit Valley at 11937 Higgins Airport Way, Burlington, WA at the Port of Skagit. Chuckanut has won multiple awards from the GABF, World Beer Cup and WA Beer Awards. Both locations welcome guests of all ages!

Check out additional information about Chuckanut http://www.chuckanutbrewery.com/

 

Chuckanut Brewery Wins Large Brewery at WA Beer Awards 2021

On November 5th the WA Beer Awards announced the winners of the WA Beer Awards competition amongst 142 WA state breweries. In a blind tasting format over 1,100 beers were evaluated using the Brewers Association Beer Style guidelines and Chuckanut Brewery won a total of seven Gold and Silver medals for their lager-style beers. Chuckanut Old Fest (Marzen style lager), Asian Style Lager, Rye Lager, Rauch Helles Lager each won Gold medals; Chuckanut Dunkel Lager, Chuck Light and Maibock each received a Silver medal. Winning four gold medals and three silver medals gave Chuckanut Brewery the title of Large Brewery of the Year 2021. This is the third year Chuckanut has won large brewery of the year since the WA Beer Awards competition was created in 2013.

Chuckanut Brewery’s Old Fest is a Marzen Lager, amber beer with a complicated and tantalizing mix of malts finished with enough hops to help create a dry spicy finish. The Asian Style Lager is a year-round Chuckanut beer that was created for the Din Tai Fung Dumpling Houses around Seattle and Portland, OR. It’s a refreshing golden-colored beer that makes a great accompaniment to Asian-style foods. Rye Lager is amber-colored and made unique due to the use of rye malts. A spicy rye bitterness is rounded out with a creamy finish for a smooth and easy-drinking beer. And the fourth Gold medal was awarded to Rauch Helles Lager, no stranger to awards. This delicately smoked Helles-style lager beer has won many Gold medals from multiple competitions over the years. Rauch Helles is a beer with a deep malty flavor spiked with mild smoky overtones due to the use of beechwood smoked malted barley.

The Silver medal awards included Chuckanut Dunkel Lager, a Munich style dark lager with a typical Chuckanut dry finish. Dunkel Lager is a balanced smooth beer with toffee & chocolate notes due to the use of Munich malts. Chuck Light is a light beer with a low ABV and fresh malty notes. This 3.8% ABV lager has only 103 calories per 12 oz pour! Surprisingly flavorful for a straw-colored beer it’s easy to drink! Chuckanut’s Maibock is on the other side of the ABV spectrum but easy to drink non the less. It is a big beer that’s full and malty but golden in color with a 7.4%ABV and aged over 3 months for a smooth rich finish.

Some of these award-winning beers are currently on tap at Chuckanut’s South Nut Tap Room in the heart of Skagit County and at selected accounts around the Sound and Oregon. When you get the opportunity to try a Chuckanut beer please enjoy yourself, prost!

Chuckanut Utilizes Sustainable Practices to Save Water

Chuckanut brewery understands what a special resource water is and has been using many sustainable practices for years.  In fact, they started even before they opened Chuckanut Brewery. “Our brewmaster Will Kemper is a brewing and chemical engineer and designs breweries all over the US and the world, and this is a practice he has used since time began,” says Mari Kemper.

Mari describes the water-saving activities at Chuckanut: During the brewing process, the wort (or beginning liquid of beer) goes through a heat exchanger to cool down. Cold water runs in one direction in piping around another pipe which has the very hot wort running to the fermentation tanks. The cold water picks up the heat that comes off the wort and the wort picks up the cold from the water. The wort gets into the fermentation tank at a cooler temperature to be ready for the yeast (it would kill the yeast if it went into the wort at the temp it comes out of the kettle). The water, having picked up the heat, is put into the hot liquor tank to start the next batch of beer. It takes less energy that way to heat the water and the water is not just thrown out after cooling the wort! Way more sustainable to work with water this way.

Chuckanut at Port of Skagit Doubling in Size

Award-winning Chuckanut Brewery has big expansion and contraction changes in store for the rest of 2021 and into 2022. The brewery in Burlington at the Port of Skagit in the heart of Skagit Valley will be more than doubling its size. This expansion will set the brewery up to get deeper into the field of bottling and canning its superb ales and lagers.

At the same time Chuckanut will be opening its P Nut Chuckanut Beer Hall at 920 SE Caruthers St, in Portland OR. This SE Division district beer hall and garden will have indoor and outside seating with beer, cider and sodas by the glass and the option to purchase packaged Chuckanut beers for off premise including party kegs! The contraction part of the equation is that the building in Bellingham where Chuckanut started has been sold and the new ownership wishes to use the building for their own project. Chuckanut will be leaving Bellingham for the time being, but always on the look-out for another good location. With two big projects to work on through 2022 Chuckanut will be busy! The last day the Bellingham site will be open for food and beer will be mid October. If you are looking to visit Chuckanut after mid October make sure to go to either the Port of Skagit South Nut or the new Portland, OR locations (Portland will open sometime in November).

Chuckanut dabbled in packaging their fine beers in bottles and then cans for a short period in 2020 and 2021. It became clear that fans wanted to see more cans and bottles in their neighborhood bottle shops and grocery stores. Because of this request plans were started on how packaging of Chuckanut beers could be accomplished. The Port of Skagit, in support of Chuckanut, will prepare a pad ready area for the expansion of the building at the South Nut production facility. The small batch brewery that was in Bellingham will then be moved and housed in the expanded brewery building which will also hold a packaging house, truck loading docks and staging area as well as a large storage area for cans, bottles and finished brewery product.

Day One Distribution, who handles Chuckanut beers in Oregon, offered a portion of their building to Chuckanut for a beer hall. Because of its great location Chuckanut agreed and has started renovations to have a 76 seat beer hall and additional outdoor beer garden in the location at 920 SE Caruthers St. Chuckanut intends to have visiting food trucks parked adjacent to the beer garden and hall to offer beer drinkers food to accompany their choice of beverages. The P Nut (as it is affectionately called) will offer beer to-go including growler fills, kegs, bottles and cans. Of course, official Chuckanut shwag will be available as well as pre-packaged snacks, cider and sodas. The official opening of the hall will be sometime in November, watch social media for updates.

Meanwhile all of Chuckanut friends in Bellingham are encouraged to come in and say goodby to the outstanding Chuckanut front and back house team in before the closing. The 601 W Holly St in Bellingham was Chuckanut’s original location and opened in 2008, its been a long run of over 13 years! When you visit South Nut the same fabulous brewers will all be working at the Skagit Valley location along with the small team of front house employees. It’s time for big changes for Chuckanut, and the continued support by drinking some of the best craft beers in America and the world is very much appreciated!

Chuckanut Brewery, currently located at both 601 West Holly St, Bellingham and 11937 Higgins Airport Way in Burlington, was awarded National Small Brewery/Brewer of the Year 2011 at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver, CO. Both South and North Nut offer on-site beverages, to-go beer and pick-up for kegs, growlers and bottles of Chuckanut beer. Guests of all ages are welcome at both locations. A full menu at North Nut can be had on site, to go or delivered. The South Nut Skagit Tap Room & Brewery in Burlington is located at the Port of Skagit and works with the Skagit Landing restaurant across the street to deliver food. Please check out additional information on Covid requirements and more about Chuckanut at www.chuckanutbrewery.com

Chuckanut Brewery Wins 3 Medals at GABF 2020

The Great American Beer Festival just announced that Chuckanut Brewery has won 3 medals for their lager beers in 2020. The virtual festival this year had over 8,800 beers entered and awarded 272 medals to 240 breweries across the country for the best beers in 91 categories covering 170 different styles of beers. “This year’s GABF competition may have looked a little different, but the beers entered into the competition were as impressive and innovative as ever,” said Chris Swersey, competition manager, Great American Beer Festival. “This has arguably been one of the most challenging years breweries have ever faced, so we hope these awards serve as a symbol not only of brewing excellence but also the resiliency of the craft brewing community as a whole.” . There were 115 judges from 21 states judging an average number of 97 beer per category! There were only four breweries who won three or more medals in the competition and Chuckanut was among them!

Chuckanut won Gold for it’s Maibock, a rich, higher ABV lager beer aged more than 3 months. This beer has won multiple medals from WA Beer Awards and North American Beer Awards but this is the first time it was entered in the GABF. Chuckanut’s spring Maibock is deep golden, rich and malty with a full body and easy finish. The new Chuck Light, 103 calories per 12 oz pour, is light and refreshing and it won a Silver medal this year. It’s sessionable toasty, lightly malty flavor is flavorful and surprisingly satisfying even with its low ABV. Chuckanut Rye Lager is a medium body, amber lager with a spicy finish due to the use of Rye malt. This northern inspired lager won Bronze at the GABF 2020 but has won multiple awards at the WA Beer Awards and the North American Beer Awards in the past. Chuckanut is happy to see all these beers recognized in the largest craft beer competition in the world!

 

Chuckanut Collaboration for SF2PFEST Now Available in Bottles

A new Chuckanut collaboration beer called 2 Amigos is now available in bottles around the Northwest. This great Mexican Style Dark Lager was brewed at South Nut with the help of the Skagit Valley College Brew  Program. Made with Skagit Valley Malt to showcase farmers and maltsters as well as the brew program at the county college, 2 Amigos follows a traditional Mexican-Style dark lager recipe. It’s an easy-drinking beer with smooth flavors and an effervescent light body despite its dark color. Great for a dark beer choice on a hot, beachy day!

 

The Skagit Valley College Brew Program is located in a nearby building to South Nut and is known as Cardinal Brewing. Our Operations Manager, Joe Heldt, was a graduate of their first graduating class and Chuckanut owners Mari and Will Kemper are on the steering committee for the program at the College. Skagit Valley Malt uses locally grown grains and malts them a block away from Chuckanut’s South Nut at the Port of Skagit. This friend centric beer celebrates all that’s local. Chuckanut’s 2 Amigos Mexican Style Dark lager celebrates all the friendships that have been developed over the years. Raise a pint to friends with Chuckanut’s 2 Amigos!

Chuckanut Beer Now in Bottles!

There’s always a silver lining to a storm cloud and lucky for Chuckanut beer fans, it’s coming in the form of bottled Chuckanut Beer! The Coronavirus has made us all more creative with how we get our great beer to those who want it, just not at a favorite restaurant or pub. Instead, it’s got to be in the form of beer to go. Chuckanut is now offering its world-famous, award-winning beers in half-liter bottles!

Chuckanut_Brewery_Kolsch_BottlesChuckanut bottled beer will be available from NW Beverages in Washington state, Day One Distributors in Oregon, Dickerson Distributing in northwest Puget Sound and West Craft in Vancouver, BC, Canada. Chuckanut beer in half-liter bottles can be found at Metropolitan Markets, PCC, Town & Country and smaller bottle shops in the Puget Sound region. In Portland Chuckanut bottles will be located at Market of Choice, New Seasons Markets and smaller bottle shops and in the northwest Puget Sound it is on the shelves of the Community Food Co-op, Elizabeth Station and other grocers.

The first to be distributed around the Puget Sound, Portland, OR and Vancouver, BC areas is Kolsch, the current Gold Medal World Beer Cup winner that is a light-bodied soft malt-flavored ale that gives way to a crisp finish. Kolsch German Style Ale has undergone cold conditioning resulting in a slightly fruity aroma, effervescent quality, and smooth, easy finish. Great with sandwiches, seafood and any spicy foods it is a winner of multiple awards at the Great American Beer Festival (4 medals), World Beer Cup (2 medals), North American Beer Awards (5 medals) and WA Beer Awards (4 medals) since 2011.

Watch for other bottled Chuckanut beers in the future as these will come on-line as time permits. Whenever you reach for a Chuckanut beer you will be glad you did, they are always elegant, delicious and easy to drink!