CRAFT by Under My Host® Issue No. 15 Classics | Page 163

This is part four of a series by Amber Watts and Ron Extract on the process of starting up
Garden Path Fermentation in Washington State
At a very young age, I came to love beer—not just the way that many young people love beer, but
also in much the same way that I love it today. I’d first encountered it in Munich, in the spring of
1985, on a trip that my high school German teacher had organized. I was fourteen. One of our
first official stops was the city’s famous Hofbräuhaus, where, so as to help familiarize us with the
local culture, our teacher attempted to buy us each a half liter. Unfortunately, they did not sell
half-liters, so we had to drink full ones. There, and at other beer locales we visited during the
course of the trip, I felt a connection to the world beyond the village where I’d grown up that I
hadn’t before. In retrospect, this was my first taste not only of beer, but also of gemütlichkeit—a
word the locals use to describe the special kind of congeniality one feels in these types of com-
munal gathering places. After that trip, my access to beer was limited for the next few years,
but when I did have the opportunity to have some, even low-quality domestic beer served as a
symbolic reminder of that initial experience.
College brought much easier access, which I
admittedly overcapitalized on at times. It also
offered opportunities, though, to expand and
challenge my palate along with my intellect. I
discovered flavors that I never knew existed in
beer, and began reading about the history and
production methods associated with differ-
ent types from different corners of the world.
I learned about the great personal contribu-
tions that some individual brewers had made
and about the corporate giants that were con-
tinuing to consume once-proud independents,
in pursuit of higher efficiencies and better
economies of scale. The summer between my
junior and senior year, I spent tending bar in a
traditional pub in London, followed by a brief
trip through many of Europe’s other great beer
cities. Afterwards, my roommates and I started
home-brewing in our dorm, even though doing
so meant having to drive to the next state for
supplies. I tried, much too eagerly at times, to
share my passion with anyone and everyone
around me, which is why, when Amber and I re-
turned to my alma mater for my 25th reunion
earlier this year, I didn’t expect any of my for-
mer classmates to be particularly surprised by
the path my life has taken. As it turns out, some
were, as not everyone, it seems, had chosen to
spend the entirety of their adult life relentlessly
pursuing youthful dreams.
It having been 25 years since college gradua-
tion is something that I still cannot fully accept.
The memories from that time, both experiential
and emotional, are far too vivid to have taken
place so long ago. In the weeks leading up to
the reunion, as much as I was looking forward to
returning to campus and seeing old friends, the
definitive marking of this impossible measure of
time had become a growing source of anxiety.
Further adding to it was the fact that, where-
as I’d previously thought Garden Path Fermen-
tation would be well into its build-out, if not
up and running, by the time the reunion rolled
around, Amber and I were instead back at what
felt essentially like our starting point, without a
definitive location or, for that matter, anything
particularly substantive to show for the last 10
months. This bothered me, not for fear of what
others might think, but because it left me ques-
tioning whether we were truly on the right path
and, in the context of the reunion, starting to
second guess other choices I’d made in life.
When we first visited Washington’s Skagit Val-
ley in the summer of 2016, it was with thoughts
of starting an estate brewery on a picturesque
farm. That vision quickly evolved, moving away
from the estate concept and instead seeking
to incorporate the abundant and highly di-
verse agricultural resources that already existed
throughout the valley and the surrounding re-
gion. Narrowing our focus also allowed us to
broaden it, giving us greater opportunities to
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