Larrabee Lager Comes To Tacoma Wednesday
Much like Post-It Notes and Play-Doh, lager’s origin was accidental. Reputedly, lager was discovered in Bavaria (or neighboring Bohemia, depending on what you read) in the 1500s when brewers stored their beer in cool caves to halt the fermentation process. Then, one day, the yeast strain loved the cold and continued to ferment, producing a cleaner, more refined beer. Quite the discovery, considering brewers back then weren’t even working with a thermometer. In Bavaria, brewing ordnance from 1516 (the famous “Reinheitsgebot”) permitted only bottom fermentation and brewing of “lager-style” beer. When these European brewers emigrated to the U.S. in the mid-19th century, they brought their prized possessions.
Jump ahead 160 years, and lager beer is roughly the same in practice, though vastly different in culture. Three of those immigrants mentioned above — Adolphus Busch, Adolph Coors, and Frederick Miller — went on to build beer empires, transforming American beer-drinking habits and making lager the most consumed beer style on the planet.
The Pacific Northwest is blessed with a few excellent breweries producing superb lagers: Chuckanut Brewery, Lowercase, Wayfinder, Heater Allen, Gold Dot, and, since 2023, Larrabee Lager Company in Bellingham, Washington. That’s the long route to announce Larrabee Lager will be the Grit & Grain Podcast at Peaks & Pints in Tacoma on Wednesday, Feb. 12, and the reason for a tap takeover the same night at the same place.
The Road To Larrabee
Founded in 2023 by Sam and Kate Milne, Larrabee was a 10-year dream come true. Like many brewers, Sam’s passion for beer and homebrewing came about while attending a university — in his case, Western Washington University in Bellingham. When that hobby became a passion, it began his long career path. His first professional gig was Pyramid Brewing in Seattle before moving to Bellingham, where he’d previously studied. He impressed Kulshan Brewing owner David Vitt there, and his keg wash gig became a head brewer position five years later.
His desire to go beyond boundaries seems deeply embedded in his DNA. Sam earned the 2018 Glen Hay Falconer Foundation Brewing Scholarship, which sent him to two prestigious brewing schools: The Siebel Institute in Chicago and Doemens Academy in Munich, Germany.
“The course was fantastic and was truly the opportunity of a lifetime to live and breathe all things beer, especially lagers,” says Sam Milne. “My time in Germany was a huge springboard for my career because it helped me further define my focus and refine my passions. As craft brewers, we sometimes try to create too many styles, and while creativity is fun and interesting, it can sometimes be distracting. In Germany, I learned to accept less is more, and a simplistic approach to raw materials and process techniques can sometimes create some of the most dynamic and complex beers. The best breweries in Germany are only brewing a handful of styles, which helped me realize that there is a distinct beauty in doing one thing very well, as opposed to trying to do too many things marginally.”
After graduating from the World Brewing Academy, he wanted to help build a brewery from the ground up. Brothers Matt and Ryan Goodwin, Joel, and Jordan Tampien were looking for a head brewer to help launch Brick West Brewing Company in Spokane. They hired him in December 2018 to help design, build, and operate the new brewery. He reworked how to convert the former 15,000 square foot Watts Automotive building into a 15-barrel brew on paper for months before moving his family to Spokane next April.
Then Bellingham came to a calling once again. After two years at Brick West, the Milnes returned to Bellingham in 2021 to follow their dream of opening their brewery. With Sam’s brewing background and training, they wanted to focus on creating world-class German lagers and name it after Larrabee State Park. In 1913, a local businessman named Charles Larrabee deeded a large tract of land along Chuckanut Drive to Washington State to create Washington’s first state park. Larrabee died before the plan came to fruition, but his widow ensured the vision came to life. In 1923, Chuckanut State Park was renamed Larrabee State Park in his honor.
Lagering Bellingham
Larrabee Lager brews primarily lagers. It makes sense. Sam studied German lagers during his time in Munich. Plus, with Chuckanut Brewery no longer in Bellingham, ales rule the city, leaving an opportunity to grab market share. They built a custom 20-barrel brewhouse and taproom to produce technically precise, clean, laudable lagers.
“Our brewery uses a dry version of 34/70,” explains Sam. “I like to keep the yeast as neutral as possible so that we can manipulate other raw materials for known flavor and aroma contributions. I opposed dry yeast for many years, but we have been using it at Larrabee since day one and have refined our process to gradually increase attenuation and flocculation, which are issues I’ve had with dry yeast in past usage. While some lager breweries encourage esters from their yeast for a depth of flavor, we do not and try to maintain a relatively clean and neutral fermentation. We knock out and ferment on the colder side, between 47-50 Fahrenheit.
In the 2024 Washington Beer Awards, Larrabee Lager earned three medals: a gold medal for its Light German-Style Lager, a silver medal for its German-Style Wheat Beer, and a bronze for its Kellerbier/Zwickelbier. On the strength of that performance, it also earned honors as the Small Brewery of the Year.
The Milnes time in Bavarian left an impression more than German-style lagers. Larrabee’s taproom sports 17 beer gardens, community-style tables for 200 drinkers surrounded by historic beer images, and Northwest nature photos with a kid’s corner and patio.
Wednesday Podcast and Tap Takeover
Even though Larrabee Lager opened in the summer of 2023, it’s still not widely known in the South Sound, as its self-distribution didn’t go beyond downtown Seattle. That’s changing. Larrabee recently signed a deal with Orcas Distributing, which distributes beer across Western Washington to markets up and down the I-5 corridor. While Sam is under the weather this week, Kate will sit with the Grit & Grain Podcast at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, February 12, in Peaks & Pints’ Events Room. Afterward, the party flows into Peaks’ main room for a Larrabee tap takeover. The Peaks’ Wednesday beer flight will also be Larrabee lagers.
“There are many things to be proud of, but I believe our adherence to tradition and maintaining our ethos of brewing lager beer in a highly reactive market to trendy hoppy beers is what I am most proud of,” says Sam. “As a craftsman, I am proud to brew slow, challenging, and refined beers that sometimes may lack trendy sex appeal but are incredibly satisfying to drink repeatedly. I am also proud that my wife and I have not divorced or murdered each other after working together for two straight years with very few days off.”
Stop by Peaks & Pints on Wednesday to get Kate’s side of their story.
