A garden path is a beautiful way to get somewhere you may not have expected to go.
Located in the beautiful rural Skagit Valley in Northwest Washington, Garden Path Fermentation makes hyperlocal beer, mead, cider, and wine only using ingredients sourced from their own backyard or to be accurate their ‘Valley’. Exclusively using Skagit-grown grain, local fruit and honey, Pacific Northwest hops, all of Garden Path’s beers are fermented in oak with 100% native Skagit yeast.
Run by ex-Jester King alumni Ron Extract and Amber Watts, Garden Path’s process draws on old-world brewing and winemaking techniques from a variety of traditions.
Which they reinterpret and adapt to take maximum advantage of the Skagit Valley’s abundant resources and temperate climate. The beers are a result of careful curation, ageing, and blending with a focus on softness, balance, and nuance.
‘Our process begins with selecting the best seasonal and local products. The Skagit Valley is incredibly fruitful in its offerings and we strive to work with small family farms and producers. It’s important that we are as connected as possible to our sources. Our malt is grown in the valley and malted just down the road at Skagit Valley Malting. Our house yeast is incredibly important to our overall process. 100% natively cultured and isolated from the valley air itself, we work to make sure our yeast is happy and healthy.
We utilize a lot of wood in our fermentation and ageing process, including large-format foudres as well as second and third-use oak barrels. Wood allows for a graceful maturation of our products over time. We sample and taste carefully throughout, and let our products tell us when they are ready, not the other way around.
Blending is an art that involves a lot of care and thoughtful consideration. Not all of our products are blended, but for those that are, we take our time to ensure that we’re creating a thing of beauty out of the parts we have at hand. Every one of our carbonated products is naturally conditioned with locally-produced honey. This completes the circle of production and ingredients for us and lets the products maintain their own unique identity instead of forcibly carbonating them. When you’re drinking your next Garden Path bottle, thank the bees for the bubbles!’
Buy Garden Path Beer from Distant Lands