Jones Creek Brewing: A Disturbance in The Force

Just a few weeks ago, I wrote a thing in The Pour Fool about seeking out smaller, less celebrated (or even downright obscure) breweries, wineries, and distilleries in your own area. Around the Seattle/Tacoma area, names like Top Down Brewing Company in Sumner, Olalla Vineyard & Winery, off state route 16, Wind Rose Cellars, in Sequim, Old Soldier Distillery of Tacoma, and Yoked Farmhouse & Brewery, in Purdy, come to mind.

Many producers like these are punished because they have sinned: they have the audacity to start a business outside the Cluster and breweries and wineries BOTH cluster like mad. There is, for lack of a better term, a Force at work in this. This Force repels people away from the very real fact that, given all the remote breweries being built and started, every year, a few WILL, inevitably, be objectively better than the buzz-worthy ones that inhabit those urban Clusters. It doesn’t happen frequently but it does happen. Breweries in Washington that are not in Seattle suffer tangibly because they are Over There. Some overcome that. Bale Breaker Brewing Company, Iron Horse Brewery, Dwinell Country Ales, and Echoes Brewing of Poulsbo are just a few of my own local examples.

It takes conscious will and no small effort to get Outside the Box of clusters like Seattle and Portland but, IMO, people who like to think of themselves as savvy beer fans CANNOT make that claim if they only look around in those and other Clusters. There is already a LOT outside Seattle, Portland, San Diego, SF, etc., and there are more all the time as the general acumen about making craft beer continues to penetrate the collective consciousness.

It was all smaller state roads that looked like a spastic scribble on Google Maps, but, for reasons I didn’t quite understand at the time (I like to think it’s intuition but it was probably just thirst), I said, “Yeah, let’s stop by.”

And, man, am I glad we did.

Tim and Mirinda Moriarty, a young couple from San Francisco, were given a homebrewing kit by Tim’s parents, one fateful Christmas, and Tim Got Religion. Soon, he was brewing stuff that people drank and liked. A Lot. Tim’s parents also had what they called “a project farm” near the TINY Washington town of Pe Ell and they wanted some kind of use out of it, so they offered to pay for a brewery where Tim could hone his newfound passion, IF Tim would come up and build the thing. (Hard not to suspect some sorta, uh, parental…Plot, here) Never mind that Tim had no construction chops at all. He said, “Why the hell not?“, traveled to the End of The Earth (not quite but you can see it from Pe Ell), and built it.

They opened in 2017…to one of the smallest customer bases ANY brewery in the US (unless there’s one I don’t know about in Death Valley) lays claim to. And, not for nothing, about the time any new brewery is just really hitting its stride, say about Year 2 – 3…along came a global pandemic…

It was a struggle but, here we come in late spring of ’23 and we actually find Jones Creek Brewing (no small trick, that) quite clearly Open and get a 4-beer sampler which knocked us both sideways.

First came a Kolsch and a story, while Tim was pouring it, of an early German settler named Herman Klaber, who bought up 360 acres and planted, in nearby Boisfort, what was, at that time, the largest hops field IN THE WORLD! Klaber died aboard the Titanic(!) in 1919 and his fields, unworked, went fallow. Today, Tim and others from the valley pick those Hallertau hops wild and Tim uses them to make an absolutely PERFECT Kolsch. It was flavorful and aromatic and silken on the tongue, pure lager pleasure to drink.

Each successive one was well up to that standard. His flagship ale is S’Mores Stout, which he also makes in a whiskey-barreled version. It was viscous and intensely flavorful and packed with roasty, chocolaty Stout notes. Each element of the S’Mores – graham crackers, marshmallow, and chocolate – was clearly expressed. Then a FINE Irish Red, a rib-stickin’ Barleywine, a STELLAR Gose with deft additions of blood orange, nectarine, cinnamon, and Himalayan pink salt, a 3.8% English Pub ale (EASILY the most flavorful ultra-low ABV ale I have tasted yet), and the biggest shock of them all…a big Double IPA, “WWBD” (What Would Bigfoot Drink?”) finished with spruce tips(!) that smelled and tasted like no other of the ten billion American IPAs I’ve tasted so far. WWBD managed to convey actual IPA bitterness, “dankness”, without resorting to the pine sap and grapefruit and savory herbs character that we have all come to identify with “dank”. It’s built around a backbone of velvety malts and a faint, lurking sweetness that never intrudes. We NEVER bring home growlers of IPAs, any more, because what for? There are a zillion ones available in any store of any type, anywhere. This one we did bring back and it was just as delicious and startling here as it was in Pe Ell.

So, once again, the mission, should you choose to actually earn your Beer Wings, rather than just check right around you and call it good, is to find, try, and support your region’s Small Independent Breweries, ’cause, if it’s not true where you are right at this very minute, it almost certainly will be before too long. And here is the latest Quest for Washingtonian beer wannabes who fancy themselves well-traveled: Go to Centralia and turn right off of I-5. Follow some very wind-y roads for 22 miles, read signs VERY carefully, hang a left onto Beam Road, and prepare to have your paradigm shift.

The Truth is Out There…in beer terms, as far out as Pe Ell, Washington. GO. SOON.