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Stoup’s custom snack machine.
Breweries » FROM PAGE 15
SEATTLE WEEKLY • FEBRUARY 5 — 11, 2014
Yet Ballard brewers, neither on the record nor off, won’t give any hint that they are in any kind of fierce competition with the guys down the block. Not only that, but the breweries are likely to pour their competitors’ (if you can call them that) beer on one of the guest taps that are common in these parts. Indeed, you might think the guys at Bad Jimmy’s—the last of this bunch to enter the fray, in December—would be feeling the pressure most of all. Yet co-owner Seth Mashni insists it isn’t like that. “The way we look at it is everyone’s part of a family, and it’s a good family to be a part of,” he says. “We don’t look at it as competition. It’s more on the line of, ‘What can we bring to the table and how can we help each other?’ ” When a brewer comes up short on hops, it has the others to call. Same goes for parts and advice. And from an economic point of view, it’s conceivable that when a critical mass of breweries is reached—and if Ballard’s mass isn’t critical, I don’t know what is—they as a group will begin to draw more customers. “Chateau Ste. Michelle is a perfect example,” says David Mickelson, a founder of Redhook Brewery, referring to the first of the thriving
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The seventh brewery to join the club.
clutch of winemakers north of Seattle. “They haven’t fought any of the wineries around them. They knew that the Washington wine market had to grow for them to be successful.” It was easy to see this dynamic on display on a recent tour of the Ballard breweries; not only was every place packed—the rare January blue skies and warm air allowed the breweries to throw open their garage doors for overflow crowds— but faces started to become familiar toward the end: There’s the couple from Populuxe. There’s that funny-looking kid from Stoup. “That’s their saving grace, those folks walking the neighborhood buying beer,” says Mike Hale of Hale’s Ales, who explains that selling a keg’s worth of beer on site, one $4 pint at a time, can bring a brewer $400, whereas selling a keg to a wholesale distributor might bring only $60, and selling straight to a bar or restaurant, $110. Kurt Stream, a local beer historian and author of Brewing in Seattle, says that as much as a third of small breweries’ sales happen in the tasting room. Yet Stream—echoed by Mickelson—warns that a market correction could happen: if not in Ballard, then somewhere among Seattle’s 30-plus craft breweries. “Will the craft-brew bubble burst in Seattle and the Ballard area anytime soon? It’s possible,” he says. “The local market is now becoming crowded with the sheer number of