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The Twisted Branch Out & Ron’s Not Bitter release

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Garden Path Fermentation is excited to announce the official release of our newest edition of Ron’s Not Bitter. and our second edition of The Twisted Branch Out.–our take on a modern IPA!

Ron’s Not Bitter. is our riff on a classic English bitter, based on the recipe for one of Ron’s all-time favorite beers. But, instead of British malt and hops, mineral-rich water, and traditional English ale yeast, our version uses all locally grown ingredients, soft Skagit Valley water, and our house native yeast culture. So it’s very much like a bitter–except with totally different malt, hops, water, and yeast! This fourth edition is our favorite to date: smooth and crisp on the palate, with a complex body that belies its 4.2% ABV, perfect for a long pub session!

The Twisted Branch Out. is Garden Path’s take on a refreshing, intriguing modern-ish IPA. It was brewed on a crisp base of pilsner malt with a small portion of raw and malted wheat with late additions of Cascade and Cashmere pellets in the kettle and whirlpool, and fermented with our house native yeast culture. We then dry-hopped early in active fermentation to showcase the fruitier, tropical side of Yakima Valley whole leaf Cashmere and Cascade hops. This beer jumps out of the glass with aromas of peach, melon, mandarin orange, an unexpected yet familiar Garden Path grisette-like yeast character, and effervescent carbonation that brings you back for more.

Both beers are available this weekend at the Garden Path Fermentation tasting room, The Great Northern Bottle Shop & Lounge, and our online store, as well as through Walden Selections. We can’t wait to share them with you.

Art for Ron’s Not Bitter and The Twisted Branch Out is by Cass Graybeal Brown. Layout/design is by Paul Marko. Photo by Katie Cochrane.

The Garden Paths Led to Flowered & The Wet Hopped Ship release

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Garden Path Fermentation is excited to announce the official release of The Garden Paths Led to Flowered. (8th edition) and The Wet Hopped Ship. (5th Edition).

The Garden Paths Led to Flowered. may be the closest thing we have to a house beer. It was the first beer we ever released (on Friday, July 13th 2018), and–besides The Easygoing Drink.–the beer we’ve brewed the most. Every edition of Flowered is a hoppy foudre-fermented golden ale, a tribute to some of our favorite Belgian beers, and this 8th edition was dry-hopped with pelletized Saaz from Yakima and whole flower Saaz grown down the road at Hop Skagit.

Some of our native yeast culture, which we began cultivating in 2017, has been banked at Imperial Yeast in Oregon since 2018, and this batch of Flowered was fermented using a pitch from that original culture. It is also our first beer brewed using a majority of LINC malt from Spokane, WA, after the closure of our local maltster Skagit Valley Malting.

The beer is bright, crisp, refreshing, with a clean Saison nose, plenty of hops on the nose and palate, and just the slightest hint of tropical tartness. It’s exceptionally easy to drink, especially for a 7%+ beer, and probably our favorite edition yet!

The Wet Hopped Ship. is our 2023 fresh hop beer. We hand-harvested Perle, Willamette, and Mt. Rainier hops with our friends at Hop Skagit on 9/15/2023, added them to hot wort in our coolship that night, pitched our house yeast in the other half of the batch in an open foudre, combined them the next morning, and after primary fermentation in the foudre, aged the beer in oak until it was dry-hopped with the same whole-flower hops and packaged almost a year later on 9/23/2024.

Our process for The Wet Hopped Ship. may be unconventional–the hops are as fresh as possible, going into the wort within an hour of harvest, but the beer takes quite a bit of time to age and develop a rounded flavor profile. The end result is a smooth beer with a floral, herbal nose and a refershing, lightly tart, citrusy palate. It may not be the same as other fresh hop beers on the market, but it is uniquely a Garden Path product.

Both beers are now available at the Garden Path Fermentation tasting room, The Great Northern Bottle Shop & Lounge, and our online store, as well as through Walden Selections. We can’t wait to share them with you.

Art for The Garden Paths Led to Flowered is by Scout Caldwell, and art for The Wet Hopped Ship is by Cass Graybeal Brown. Layout/design is by Paul Marko. Photo by Chris Carley.

The Sun Beams! A Garden Path Fermentation Release

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Burlington, Washington – June 25, 2024 – By Garden Path Fermentation

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.