Obec (O-Betz) Brewing: As In Seattle, so in YOUR Hometown

SO…take a city – any city, these days – in which craft brewing has taken hold…which is most American cities not in Dead-Red, tractor-pull, dishwater lager-addicted Middle America. I checked google maps on three random cities, this morning, to test this Point. Chattanooga, Tennessee: 16 breweries. Lincoln, Nebraska: 11 breweries. Fargo, North Dakota: 8 breweries. These were chosen by closing my eyes and laying my finger on the screen. In each case, I limited the search to just that city. Expanding that out, I found between three and six more breweries near each city. The Point here is that craft beer has a solid toehold on the sheer face of American retail and is no longer a “fad”. (as Anheuser Busch insisted, until it became obvious that that statement was more wishful thinking than accurate assessment) And, because the beer culture is – as with wine and spirits – notoriously trend-following and Shiny New Bauble-oriented, you can define a cluster of a dozen breweries, even in a market large enough to easily support them all, and you will find Haves and Have Nots. Every time. Some with enough buzz to drown out an acre of beehives. Some which require a GPS and two bloodhounds to find.

That dynamic is a bit different for locals, especially given how many genuine contrarians you’ll find in the craft brewing culture, and all of them will have some core of regulars, the only difference being simple numbers. Example: on a recent trip to Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood, arguably Washington state’s most beer-centric destination, we visited five breweries within an area four blocks long by two blocks wide, where there is a cluster of NINE breweries. Out of that number, ONE was crammed to capacity with happy beer fans enjoying the (momentary, shocking) lack of rain. At the other four we visited, we were able to get seated and served within five minutes. At that One, it was going to be at least forty minutes, so sayeth the door person.

We skipped that One.

And wound up next door, at a place I had vaguely heard of but hadn’t even really thought about visiting.

Owners Wayne and Stacey Jehlik were both doing Other Things with their lives and noticed that their house had become a de facto community center for their circle of friends and family. Stacey once joked that they needed a bigger house or at least a bigger living room. Wayne’s family is mostly Czech Republic and he knew brewing from that lager-focused background, so continued discussions about life and hopes led to a sorta gloomy old concrete building in Ballard and a brewery everybody mispronounces.

Just to avoid straying too awfully far from The Point, let me just say that Obec and Wayne and Stacy’s roster of choices struck me in exactly the same way as their neighbor’s taplist on that red-letter day in 2012 when I first sat before a taster at Reuben’s Brews. Like Reuben’s, the Obec beers – six lagers, two IPAs, a dazzling Saison, and an English Porter – were just as seamless and assured as what I found at Reuben’s, which has since become the most successful craft brewery in Washington history. It’s wickedly hard to explain but there is a tangible difference in quality, in balance and depth and unblemished flavor, between the best breweries and all those which exist in that continuum of Merely Good. Obec has that…Thing, and it gave me, a devoutly ale-biased drinker, one of my best lager experiences ever. We’re blessed, up thisaway, with some exceptional lager brewers and a few of them have no name at all. Ever heard of Headless Mumby Brewing? Unless you’re a rabid lager geek and live somewhere fairly near Olympia, Washington, probably not. But Headless is a rock-solid maker of almost exclusively lagers and is even making a name for themselves in a way that, in WA state, ONLY the legendary Chuckanut Brewery and its semi-mythical owner/brewmaster, Will Kemper, has ever achieved.

And in a place in which so many breweries thrive and the public’s beer acumen is as high as anywhere in the West, this gem-like, Euro-leaning place, with its dark, almost industrial ambience but startling intimacy and hominess, was EMPTY when we walked in. A dozen or so folks wandered in after us but it wasn’t even 10% of the mob scene next door. No criticism of that brewery is intended. They are, in fact, one of my favorite makers of the British ale tradition in all of Seattle. But, as Will Kemper once told me, “Lagers are a hard sell, in Washington.” MAYBE that is a few millimeters less true, now, given the current Lager Boom, but it’s a plain fact that most beer geeks still prefer an IPA over any lager, no matter how well made.

Vesna is plausibly Monk’s’ teenage cousin, a lively, spicy, modestly hoppy gem that was amply matched by our other beer, the “Granat” Czech Amber Lager, a coppery mouthful of nutty caramels and toasted grains that is rarely seen outside the Czech Republic. The Porter was stunning. The Triple IPA was a hoppy but graceful behemoth. And the Czech Pils was perfect.

So, when I titled this “…In YOUR Hometown”, what was that about?

In your hometown or in that town near you in which you have several choices for where to have beers and Hang Out, there will – so sayeth the Law of Averages – be a brewery that openly does not have “buzz” or a reputation or a name that comes readily to mind.

It would be a great mistake for you to think that the lack of word-of-mouth or Must-See notices in the press or online indicates any lack of substance or quality. It also does not mean that review you may read that treated that brewery with a ho-hum dismissiveness was not written by some dunce who knows nothing at all about craft beer or even beer in general.

The hard fact is that there remains ONE and one ONLY way to find out if a brewery – or restaurant or pizza joint or anything else that exists on subjective judgement – is something YOU will enjoy: go there and try it. GO – that’s the message here. If you live in or near Seattle and you make trips into the big city to visit Reuben’s Brews or Holy Mountain or Standard Brewing or Georgetown Brewing or Urban Family or Fremont – all of those buzz-worthy Names, take a swing by Obec and/or any other brewery you have not tried. I, for example, have a hard time working up enthusiasm for lager-dominant breweries. I spend a lot of time in Olympia and it still took me a year and three months (and brow-beating by two brewer friends) to get me in the taproom after Headless Mumby opened their doors. Inexcusable, for me, who is at least marginally involved with the craft beer culture.

DO NOT, I BESEECH YOU, fall into this juvenile trap of deciding what to like or where to go and explore based on Yelp reviews or even word-of-mouth. There is no guarantee that your casual friend who is “into craft beer” is not a hopeless doofus who drinks ONLY IPAs and wouldn’t know a Czech lager if it sat on his face.

TRY EVERYBODY. Not that, as I have heard people suggest, you “owe” it to the breweries or even your local economy. No such obligation exists. But you DO owe it to yourself, if you value having those beer choices because the more of these small, independent businesses fail, the fewer choices YOU have. One visit. They get ONE chance to make a first impression. Let ’em do it. CHALLENGE them to do it. As with all businesses, if they know they have to be on top of their game at all times, the better the likelihood that they will be. Which benefits us all.

Where is YOUR Obec? It’s Out There. Look around…