We
are a small private company, located in historic downtown Snoqualmie,
Washington. Founders Pat Anderson, David McKibben, Dave
Eiffert, LeRoy Gmazel and Tom Antone did not have the sense to know
that you had to be crazy to start a brewery in 1997, when most of the
rest of the world thought the craft brewing industry was going down the
tube, so 10 years later, here we are.
We commenced brewing operations in
our new craft brewery near Snoqualmie Falls on December 20, 1997. Our
original beers were formulated by Pat, and the initial batch of each
was brewed
by David, with Pat's occasional assistance. Of Pat's original
beers, only Wildcat IPA remains today.
January 9, 1998,
Rande Reed, formerly head brewer of Thomas Kemper and Pyramid, became
head brewer at Snoqualmie Falls. Rande brought 12+ years of experience
to our brewery, and is responsible for the unfailingly
consistent high quality of our beer. Rande is ably
assisted with
production by Janelle Pritchard (AKA the Brewery
Goddess), Kevin Gesell and Dane Jack-Sands. David
Seigel is
our outside sales manager, and Jaime Casady manages our Taproom, opened
in April 2006. In 2008, Janelle was named
General Manager, in addition to her production responsibilities.
Our
original brewery equipment was a
7 bbl system. In September 2001, we purchased the former Lake
Tapps brewhouse, a 17.5 bbl system, which doubled our brewing capacity
upon its installation in November of 2004. We ferment in five 14 bbl
open fermenters and two 17 bbl conical fermenters, and condition beer
from the open fermenters in ten 7 bbl Grundies, with two
additional 7 bbl Grundies used as bright tanks. We are able to produce
up to 5,000 bbls a year on this equipment. At the start,
all product was draft for the local market. In June 2001, we acquired a
little 3 head bottle filler affectionately known as the "Little
Princess." It was slow and more manual than automatic, but it
let
us sell bottles as well as draft! In January 2008, we
acquired a
four head Meheen, which vastly increased our bottling capacity.
Our products are now available in 22 oz
bombers at the brewery and in an ever increasing number of stores
between Bellingham and Olympia, as well as in eastern Washington,
northern Idaho and Oregon. Our distributors are Columbia Distributing
Company of Seattle, Great Micros (Spokane), Lynch Distributing Company
(Yakima) and Point Blank Distributing Company (Oregon).
