By Ben Keene
November 2021 

It’s about 150 miles from Fremont to the Yakima Valley, North America’s largest hop growing region. To us, it’s a place that’s tantalizingly close and teeming with possibilities. Every year since 2010, just before the summer heat gives way to fall’s cooler temperatures, we’ve made the drive over the Cascades to walk the fields that contain the hops we use in Cowiche Canyon. Grown organically without pesticides on property owned by the Britt family, these climbing bines bring something truly special to our limited release fresh hop ale.

“The first time we went down there we had a picnic and hiked through the canyon,” says Matt Lincoln, director of brewery operations. “It’s a pretty magical spot. The canyon is maybe a quarter of a mile wide—it’s just this really beautiful area.”

That year, with help from Carpenter Ranches, roughly 150 pounds of organic Simcoe hops and organic Citra hops were harvested and hauled to our brewery within 24 hours to brew a 15-barrel batch of Cowiche Canyon Organic Fresh Hop Ale. It was our first fresh hop beer, and we tapped it at the Yakima Fresh Hop Ale Festival. Over time, the half acre field expanded to four acres, and the Britts added plots of Mosaic and Ekuanot next to the rows of Simcoe and Citra plants. In 2021, we trucked 5,500 pounds of fresh hops west over the mountains to brew more than 150 barrels of Cowiche Canyon as well as another 30 barrels of a hazy version for the Urban Beer Garden.

“We try to have the malt be there, but sort of take a back seat,” says Lincoln, explaining the current recipe. “And we definitely use more hops than we used to because we like a heavy, saturated hop character. For Cowiche we do use a few specialty malts like Munich and Carapils, but we keep them to a minimum.”

Pale amber in color with the captivating aroma of citrus, pine, fresh cut grass, and ripe tropical fruit, Cowiche Canyon is a hop-forward, moderately bitter beer built on a malt foundation that provides just enough sweetness to maintain balance. We think it’s delicious, but you don’t have to take our word for it—Men’s Journal called it one of the best beers in America.

Suffice it to say we’re immensely proud of Cowiche Canyon, the first Salmon Safe beer in the state, but even if it never receives another award or accolade, we’ll keep brewing this fresh hop favorite. For one thing, we love hops, and we’re grateful that the Britts and the Carpenters asked us to partner with them to showcase their organic varieties. Plus, we want to continue to help support the Cowiche Canyon Conservancy by donating a portion of all sales of the beer to their cause. Because conservation matters.

            “It’s been one of the most satisfying relationships for me personally and for the wider company, too,” says Lincoln. “Cowiche Canyon embodies what Fremont Brewing is all about and what we try to do.”

Our Barrel-Aged Program:

The Product of Patience

By Ben Keene
March 2021

It started with a dream and a handful of freshly emptied whiskey barrels. More than ten years ago, aspiring to brew something special for Seattle, co-founder Matt Lincecum and director of brewery operations Matt Lincoln put a batch of imperial winter ale into these American oak casks. Then they tucked them away in a corner of the brewery on North 34th Street. Both brewers were passionate about bourbon barrel-aged beers, and welcomed the challenge of creating their own.  

“It was one of the first things we talked about,” Lincecum says. “We’ve always liked that heavy, intense wood and vanilla character that comes from barrels. You can’t rush it, you can’t cut corners, and you’ve got to think long term. The wood really has to be ready.” 

“You start by writing a recipe for the barrel,” Lincecum continues, explaining that the goal was to make something that would be equally delicious fresh off the bottling line or after aging for up to a decade. “Don’t just put any beer in the barrel. How do you brew a beer that’s good in 10 years? That of course informs the recipe. The idea was that over time these beers will really come into their own.” 

But back to that imperial winter ale. When Lincecum and Lincoln sampled it about a year later, the taste was remarkable: toasted oak, bourbon, dark coffee, and leather mingled with sweeter notes of toffee, rich chocolate, dried fruit, and vanilla. Smooth and warming with enough bitterness to balance the pronounced sweetness, it was a beer to remember.

They decided to call it Bourbon Abominable.

Since then, Bourbon Abominable has become known as its affectionate nickname, B-Bomb, and our barrel program has slowly grown from a dozen or so Kentucky whiskey casks into a collection that now numbers over 1,400. Along the way, Lincecum and Lincoln have patiently pursued excellence, carefully selecting, filling, tasting, and blending barrels of 9, 12, and 24-month old beers into releases like B-BADS, a bourbon barrel-aged imperial oatmeal stout, and The Rusty Nail, an imperial stout made with brewer’s licorice and aged in bourbon barrels on cassia cinnamon chips. 

Each of these beers represents a different expression of the wood it has rested in, but they all have one thing in common. “Absolute quality throughout—that’s what really unites the barrel program,” Lincecum says. “And it’s pretty much a year-round process. It’s always barrel season at Fremont Brewing.”