Subdued Love — (Re)Discovering Bellingham’s Craft Beer Culture

On the drive up I-5, it suddenly materializes, emerging from white mists that cling like spiderwebs to the towering, emerald-black Chuckanut Mountains. Surrounded by pristine wilderness and situated between two global cities—two hours south to Seattle or north to Vancouver, Canada—Bellingham, Washington is a place best known for its proximity to other places, loved as much for what it’s not as what it is. It is the “City of Subdued Excitement,” where everything changes and everything stays the same, just like every cell in your body is replaced every seven years. It’s also the place where I first fell for another person—and craft beer.

The land was chosen in 1852 as a lumber-mill site by Californian loggers for its proximity to the forests they’d fell, streams to transport logs, and a harbor for shipping to San Francisco, where wood was in-demand after a fire. By the time the mill was completed, that city was rebuilt, so the lumber flowed north to Vancouver instead. The next decades brought miners, railroad builders, and cannery workers from up and down the North American coast to displace the Lummi tribe and extract from the environment. 

This town forged by taking away now seems defined by giving back, drawing skiers, hikers, and mountain bikers with its natural bounty. Progressive students flock to Western Washington University; some of the nation’s lushest agricultural regions are directly east and south, attracting producers and consumers who value locality and sustainability. Industrial space is being reclaimed for food, beverage, and community, such as a massive project at the former mill site that includes affordable housing. Old shipping containers on the newly rehabilitated waterfront sell ice cream and beer next to an all-ages skate park. 

Today’s Bellingham is big enough to draw crowds, but small enough not to get lost in them. The beer culture is unusually collegial, even for a college town, mirroring its folksy character and the easy pace of its people. Everything is slower, softer, and quieter here; people come to escape, then blink and find they’re rooted.  

THE GIGGLING WEIRDO

At least, some people do. I found myself in Bellingham by accident as an 18-year-old student, and at first, I hated it. 

A socially anxious, closeted queer, I dreamed of leaving rainy Seattle to study film in sunny California, but at the last minute, I got scared. Acting too cool to admit it, I didn’t apply to any of the schools I longed to attend. When my mom convinced me to at least try, Western Washington University was the only deadline I hadn’t missed. 

As soon as I arrived, I felt I’d made a huge mistake. Seattle wasn’t exactly New York City, but compared to Bellingham in 2003, it might as well have been. The town was all of a few blocks’ radius; everything closed early; the most happening bar was often The Horseshoe, a greasy-spoon dive where aspirations came to die. It was even colder and rainier here, frigid winds that whipped wet drops in your face and tore umbrellas inside out.

Deep in my overcompensating femme/goth phase, I clomped miserably around campus in black platform heels and knee-high stockings, clove cigarette clamped between blood-red lips, planning my escape. And then I wandered into my suitemate’s room and saw him sitting on the floor, all right angles and lefty angst, swimming in a cable-knit sweater and strumming a guitar. 

I fell for a lot of things that year: Neutral Milk Hotel and Naomi Klein; salt bagels with scallion cream cheese at The Bagelry; the way the quiet dawn crept over the Cascades when I coasted my bike down the street that bore my name for the 3 a.m. shift at the coffee shop. I wasn’t old enough to drink in public when I lived here two decades ago and Boundary Bay Brewery & Bistro was the only craft brewer in town, but in dorm rooms and first apartments, I sipped Rogue Brewing Company’s Dead Guy Ale and Stone Brewing Company’s Arrogant Bastard, clutching my dark brown bombers a little too proudly while my peers crushed cases of Olympia Beer.

Freed from my repressive upbringing and within a relationship where we could each explore, I began to discover who I was. There were games of spin-the-bottle at the queer party house and breathless bathroom encounters; I began rediscovering my more androgynous roots, shoving my black lace to the back of the closet and buzzing my hair. But society was still so binary back then, and as boundaries blurred like the gray horizon washed into the bay, things got complicated, so we left. 

In the ensuing two decades, Bellingham has managed to grow while retaining most of the positive parts of its small-town culture, all while developing a distinct personality. Jack Lamb, co-founder and CEO of Aslan Brewing Company, describes it as “the giggling weirdo, so happy to be itself.” As the tech boom slowly suffocated Seattle, that city’s fading alt-culture found new form here; that brooding, gloom-glam fascination with the dark, weird, and wonderful.

But one of the biggest and most visible shifts has been in the city’s beer offerings. In the last 15 years, the number of local breweries has jumped from 1 to 14, each with its own character. Returning after two decades away, I found that Bellingham had quietly birthed one of the nation’s most vibrant beer scenes. As I visited them, and quickly discovered new favorites, I found each reflected a piece of my own story.

NOT ALL WHO WANDER ARE LOST

I stayed for subdued love, but I was always meant to roam. When I first got to Bellingham, I looked into studying abroad. Today, I live as a digital nomad. Naturally, Wander Brewing was one of the breweries that captivated me when I returned last fall. 

Husband-and-wife team Chad and Colleen Kuehl are native Midwesterners whose shared love for fermentation and travel shaped their life. Living in San Francisco, they planned to start a small winery until a friend introduced them to homebrewing. They brewed their first batch in 2006, but decided they’d rather leave home than start a business right away. Partially inspired by Colleen’s work with international nonprofits, the Kuehls began a 17-leg trek across Europe to the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and South America. They wrote the business plan for Wander on planes and trains, hurtling across time zones.

“Everything in here is Washington-made with stainless steel. If we’re gonna challenge people to buy and support local, we wanted to get our fabrication done as close to home as we could.”

After returning to the States for brewing school, Chad and Colleen were ready to open their own place—and after all that wandering, not just anywhere would do. “We knew we were in love with Washington,” Chad recalls, thinking, “Where do we [like] that could use more breweries?” They searched from Walla Walla to the San Juans, but “we kept coming back to Bellingham.”

The couple ended up with a 100-year-old converted warehouse, a cathedral-like space with 33-foot ceilings. A garage that once accommodated boat repairs now opens to the patio in the summer. There is no separation between production and service; the tables wedged between barrels are often full of neighborhood locals and industry folks, with the Kuehls’ young girls frequently tottering in-between.

Their Midwestern earnestness seems to seep into the atmosphere, creating a coziness despite the industrial setting. What they built is woven from resonant fibers of what they encountered all over the world, and one of their goals is creating a space where strangers can get to know each other. “We want [to be] that conduit for folks,” Chad says. “There’s not a lot of distractions here. It’s all about the beer and the personal interaction between our staff and customers, and customers and each other.” As a result, they have few events, but on Community Tuesdays donate $1 of every pint to a different charity. 

Nine years ago, Wander was the fourth Bellingham brewery to open, starting with a 20-BBL brewhouse. It has intentionally stayed small since then, only upgrading from 20- to 40-BBL tanks and adding two horizontal lagering tanks. What growth the Kuehls did pursue came through opening ROAM, a coffee house and beer bar where anyone can order either beverage at any time of day without judgment. It’s one of Bellingham’s few double-duty spaces (and pretty much the only coffee shop open past 3 p.m.). 

Despite its global perspective, the brewery’s design was hyper-local. “Everything in here is Washington-made with stainless steel,” Chad says. “If we’re gonna challenge people to buy and support local, we wanted to get our fabrication done as close to home as we could.” 

The beer is different. Initially, the couple focused on Belgian styles and California Commons; now, they make Lagers and IPAs, maintain two foeders, and age small-batch sours in red and white wine barrels. “We don’t like to put boundaries on what we brew,” Chad says. “It’s a balance between what motivates our brewers and what the market will support.” Wander recently released a smoked Helles, while the roasty, chocolate-bittersweet Correspondent Export Stout is a multi-award-winner. 

My favorite was the Flanders Red: funky and effervescent, vinegary in character but with just enough supple sweetness. I told them it’s how I want every beer to taste forever, and isn’t that always the way? We want to drink the same beverage at the same bar, to stay young and fresh-faced, but the keg eventually kicks, and we move on.

Fearing that change is natural, but we don’t have to. The new life I was trying on in college didn’t quite fit, but it was so close, and moving towards it was the right answer. Change has widened and broadened Bellingham, too: from its very first brewery, which attracted early craft beer drinkers, to the new beer businesses and perspectives that have followed in its wake. 

THE DARK DON’T HIDE IT

There’s a reason Boundary Bay is an institution: It has been around since 1995, and for more than a decade, was the only brewery in town. Bellingham’s second brewery—local legend Chuckanut Brewing, which recently moved to the Skagit Valley—didn’t follow until 2008. Kulshan Brewing Co., with three Bellingham locations, opened in 2012. By 2014, the number of local breweries had doubled. 

Today’s brewery owners are quick to pay homage to these early founders, and even to tap them as a valuable resource. James Alexander, founder of Structures Brewing, hired Bryan Cardwell (now co-owner), Chuckanut’s former head brewer; recently, they opened a second location in its vacated space. 

Structures is a true beer nerd’s brewery, revered throughout the region, its tiny space like a ski lodge mashed up with a metal club. Creativity fuels Alexander’s team, which also includes head brewer Patrick Langdon and operations head Jonny Wilkerson. Alexander’s background is in IPA and Stout; Cardwell’s in Lager. 

Last time I came, they were pouring a vertical of their anniversary Imperial Stout; today, it’s all Lagers, IPAs, and Smoothie Sours. But it’s those Stouts that first made me swoon for Structures, so we open a bottle that’s so good it almost makes me cry. It’s velvety-smooth; roasty with alcoholic warmth and notes of molasses; and subtly flavored with Ecuadorian cacao, Madagascar vanilla, and a hint of coconut.

“The base beer is the starting point, and we put a lot of emphasis on building something that can stand a barrel for at least 16 months,” Alexander says, which means high gravity and ample bitterness going into the barrel to pass the test of time. From there, they can play. The fifth-anniversary beer was billed as a Barleywine and Stout hybrid featuring vanilla. “Why not? We’d never done it before,” Alexander smiles.

Their inspiration often comes from other foods and beverages, like an affogato or chocolate-raspberry bar. There are more types of coconut than people realize, Alexander says, while vanilla boasts a range of flavors and origins just like chocolate. “We get more excitement making interesting things for [customers] than serving our own needs,” Alexander says.

Their culinary fascination meant adding a restaurant was always part of the dream, and the brewery’s new space will feature drive-in-style burgers with house-made potato chips. Largely built by the owners themselves, it’s 10 times the size of the original location: seating 250 versus 26, including an expansive patio and yard and an all-ages policy. “It will allow us to be a keystone in the community, which we’ve always wanted to be,” Alexander says.

The old space will get a remodel, but retain its adults-only, Northwest-punk vibe. After all, you need to know that when you come back, there is a place where you can find your people. I know Structures will always have something big, bold, and dark for the times when nothing else will do. 

COME BACK NEW

The sense memory washes over me when I walk down Railroad Avenue: the sounds in the air the same, as local band Death Cab for Cutie proclaimed; the familiar fragrances of coffee and fresh-baked bread. The Horseshoe still stands, encased in fryer grease like amber; the Bagelry slings the same glutinous pleasures, every stick of furniture unchanged; Mallard’s Ice Cream still serves basil ice cream in the summer, despite its outward makeover. 

Yet a city needs new blood. Ponderosa Beer and Books isn’t a brewery, but the sunny, plant-filled space on a newly opened portion of the waterfront instantly became one of my favorite haunts. It’s a woman-owned taproom that doubles as a beer and fermentation bookstore, with a focus on titles from underrepresented authors. 

“There are phenomenal breweries here that no matter where I was in the world, I’d want to have on tap. But [I also serve] beer you aren’t going to see anywhere else [in town].”

Owner Jessie Polin left a career in classical flute to open her own taproom in July 2022, motivated by the desire to create a unique beer space. “I wanted a different aesthetic that was going to be appealing to people who might not otherwise think craft beer was for them,” Polin says. Books are also a big part of her life, and selling them is “a way to stand out while engaging with something I care about a lot.”

Bellinghamsters are uniquely, fiercely loyal to local breweries, she says. Other taprooms focus exclusively on local offerings, but her goal is broadening minds. “There are phenomenal breweries here that no matter where I was in the world, I’d want to have on tap,” she says. “But [I also serve] beer you aren’t going to see anywhere else [in town].”

To me, there’s always something new and exciting to try. I eagerly anticipate each time I blow in with the wind off the Bay to see what’s on the handwritten menu above the bar. “Another niche I’m trying to fill is an intentional focus on European beer styles: Lager, Saison, funkier things like mixed-fermentation,” she says. “I was nervous that people were going to be cranky … because there wasn’t enough IPA, but that hasn’t been the case. [People are excited] that there are different things.”  

Sometimes I go specifically for a certain beer, but more often, it’s because I want to linger in the space. Ponderosa feels approachable and bright, more like a coffee shop or yoga studio than a bar. Most importantly, the Progress Pride flag in the doorway is backed with action; it’s a place where my pronouns are respected and staff are allies for the underrepresented. 

Solopreneurship is hard work, but Polin is supported by loyal staff and regulars, while representatives of the Pacific Northwest beverage scene always seem to be dropping by. Near-weekly events bring new energy, from a clothing drive with an Otherlands gravity keg to weekly cribbage and a rollicking tasting night with Finnriver Cider. In December, a holiday market packed 16 vendors into every available corner, offering handmade art, goods, snacks—and even a lush wall of plants. 

I wasn’t going to be in Bellingham long enough to nurture a living thing, I thought, but was drawn by a feathery-fronded palm. Aslan’s head brewer, Austin Umbenetti-Hutton, offered to foster it for me after I left. Eventually, he said, I’d be back. 

MISSION-DRIVEN OR DIE TRYING

When Aslan Brewing Company first opened, nobody liked them. 

At least, that’s how it seemed. Today, the certified-organic and B-Corporation brewery and restaurant is a Bellingham fixture and Pacific Northwest institution, one with exacting standards of quality and sustainability. The fifth brewery to open in Bellingham, it now employs over 100 people across two local establishments and one Seattle outpost. 

But they had to earn it. In 2012, Lamb and homebrewer Frank Trosset were trying to find a way to stay in town, a common post-college tale that keeps jobs scarce; the only option was to create their own. In the flush of youthful optimism, their mission was commensurately idealistic, with certification the plan from day one. 

“We wanted to make organic cool,” Lamb says; at the time, it was the purview of hippies and grandmas. Sustainability meant repurposing everything, including space; with limited funds, they did most of the work themselves, recruiting Trosset’s brother, Boe, and beertender Pat Haynes, who both became owners. “The tables were made out of the racks our fermenters came on,” Lamb recalls. “The subway tiles on the walls were made from old office flooring.” 

Aslan started construction in 2013, before Wander, but the onerous standards for sustainability delayed their opening to May 2014, when demand for quality local beer had reached a fever pitch. There was a line around the block from the beginning, Lamb says, but for six months, all the reviews were either five stars or one. Some people were almost singularly loyal to Boundary Bay; others saw the sleek aesthetics and wrote them off. “People didn’t realize we built this place ourselves,” Lamb says. “Frank and Boe were on food stamps.”  

Lamb grants the first beers needed work—Trosset had never brewed on a commercial system before—but found the feedback excessively harsh. The local paper’s crime writer started moonlighting as its beer writer, and left a scathing review. “He said he’d rather drink the ketchup on the table than Disco Lemonade [IPA],” Lamb says. Even after that beer advanced to the medal round at GABF, he wouldn’t rate it above a D.

So they tried harder. By the 15th batch of IPA, they finally got it right. In defiance of the IBU arms race and homage to simpler times, Trosset made dry beer with no caramel malt. The founders invested in a whirlpool for late-addition hops to boost effervescence and aroma and dry-hopped rather than filtered, effectively making Bellingham’s first Hazy IPA; Lamb recalls bars calling confused that they’d poured through two pitchers and it was still cloudy.

By 2018, the beers had gained recognition, but Aslan’s reputation still needed a boost. The owners doubled down, repurposing the old downtown public station into the Aslan Depot, bringing not just wine and spirits but beers from the likes of Heater Allen Brewing and Holy Mountain Brewing Co. to prove theirs could stand up to the best, sometimes handing out samples side by side. 

This demanded impeccable quality, so they invested in a lab that today is one of the state’s biggest, buying equipment cheap at university auctions. They also invested in people with chemistry backgrounds, including Umbinetti-Hutton, formerly of New Belgium Brewing Co., the only one with brewing experience when hired eight years ago. His vision aligned with the founders’ preference for traditional styles with a twist; beer as science and art that comes second to carbon impact scores. My favorite was Petrichor, a collab his team made with North Bend’s Dru Bru: a Cascadian Dark Ale, rare and quintessentially Northwest; hoppy yet malty, dark but light.

For some producers, says Umbinetti-Hutton, “organic” is just a tick-box exercise. “I want to work with farmers who actually care,” he says, which means organic and salmon-safe, a regional certification that promotes water quality and watershed health. Aslan works closely with the slowly growing number of organic local hop and malt producers to drive quality and expansion. 

Organic compliance is incredibly onerous: ingredients are expensive and limited; they can’t use anti-foaming or binding agents, nor make substitutions, since recipes and packaging must be finalized eight weeks in advance by the state agriculture department. Inspections can take months. But it’s worth it, Lamb says, “to show people that it is possible to run a sustainable and successful business.”

Today, Aslan does feel slick, but it’s Bellingham slick. The all-ages taproom is always packed with a cross-section of the town, open daily and late. The Depot is a grown-up oasis in the college scene, dim-lit and cozy, a place to sip natural wine and listen to live jazz. The beer is well-loved, award-winning, and among the state’s most widely distributed. 

It’s hard to undo those early wounds, the ones where you’re always the bad guy; I can relate. But intention matters. “I’m just happy to be part of this town,” Lamb says. “My goal now is to be in the top 90th percentile when people come to visit Beerland, Washington, which is Bellingham.”

YOUR OTHER HOME

If Bellingham is the mystical city emerging from the woods, Otherlands Beer is an enchanted forest with a really good beer garden brought indoors. Founders Karolina Lobrow and Ben Howe meant it that way. 

“Imagine you’re walking into your favorite novel and you find a magical little pub in the middle of a village,” Lobrow says. “You’re cozy and warm; food is served at the table. The beer’s excellent, but you don’t have to talk about it, so you’re engaged with the people around you.” 

Midnight-blue walls and warm wood paneling surround a glorious bronze-colored bar, strung with fairy lights and dotted with mushrooms that peer from walls and under the bar, sprouting in the bathroom and dangling from the ceiling; apparently, the hand-carved, mushroom-shaped tap handles came to the artist in a dream. In the summer, the outdoor patio spills over with greenery, and woodland figurines hide among the tables. 

On any given day, you’ll find regulars from the surrounding Sunnyland neighborhood, beer nerds and brewery owners, and industrial workers sprinkled with cement powder like fairy dust. When they opened in 2020, Otherlands was the only brewery besides Boundary Bay with a full-service kitchen, and the vibe is as comfortable as your best friend’s house. 

That’s intentional, too: Howe did a brewing internship in Franconia, Germany at a family-run brewpub where not only was the beer delicious, “they sat down and talked with everyone,” Lobrow says. “It was like being in their home, and that’s what we want it to feel like when people come here.”

The couple met while working at Boston’s Cambridge Beer Company, also inspired by that brewery’s familial atmosphere. Like Colleen Kuehl, Lobrow had an international nonprofit background; she and Howe also scoured the West Coast for the perfect place to open their European-style microbrewery and café. Portland was too cool, California too hot. “We talked to brewers and business owners about whether our concept would fit into the tapestry of Bellingham,” Lobrow says, and found it just right. 

It’s important to the couple that the space expresses their values. They don’t can their beer, for instance. It’s costly, both in terms of dollars and real estate. Besides, “We think our beer is better represented in glass or growler packaging,” Lobrow says. 

“It feels like as it’s growing, it’s becoming more balanced, which not every town can say. It’s economically stable, but has depth. … The community is super unique in all the right ways.”

They also don’t serve meat, but in Bellingham style, they don’t draw attention to it, and many don’t even notice. Calling it “elevated pub food” might be the closest description, but that seems to cheapen it. There are seasonal house-made quiches; a towering beet Reuben dripping with sauerkraut and mustard, the brainchild of head chef Noël Keyes; pillowy pierogies piled with sauteed mushrooms and onion or swimming in a rich yet delicate curry sauce; thick-cut Belgian frites in multiple flavors (curry is my favorite). It’s comfort European street cuisine, evoking Lobrow’s ancestry and the couple’s travels in Germany, Denmark, and France, reflected in the small but robust bottle list.

They keep the tap list small, too, six to seven beers at a time, to focus on doing a few things well. But their signature is long, slow pours into 22oz glass steins that garnish their Lagers, Saisons, and Ales with thick, fluffy heads. They call them “three-pint” beers: balanced and flavorful, but lower-ABV, leaving you wanting more. Howe describes them as “more Impressionism than Realism,” made in the Franconian tradition: big and expressive with strong yeast character, as compared to Bavaria’s crisp, clean styles. “My goal is to coax more flavor out of our hops [and] grain, … and make them as three-dimensional as we can, while also keeping it simple,” he says.

I always resonated with the Impressionists who saw the world in quantum weirdness, as thousands of molecules vibrating in blurred view; with Cubist figures put together all wrong, jaws in their browlines, legs askew. Those early artists found strength in numbers, just like Bellingham’s brewers. Howe and Lobrow describe how owners of breweries from Aslan to Wander came to their aid during their opening. “It’s also a community that shares knowledge resources,” Lobrow says, “trusting that everyone’s going to do something creatively different.” 

Practical help breeds mutual inspiration, Chad affirms. “Borrowing a piece of equipment from Ben at Otherlands becomes a half-hour conversation about making a beer we’ve both been dreaming of for a decade. You don’t get that everywhere.”

But growing up has a way of changing things. As more people move to Bellingham and the number of breweries multiplies, can it retain its weird, collaborative charm?

“It feels like as it’s growing, it’s becoming more balanced, which not every town can say,” Lamb observes. “It’s economically stable, but has depth. … The community is super unique in all the right ways.” Besides, he adds, “There’s enough outdoors to dissipate everyone [and keep the town feeling] free, lighthearted, and healthy.” 

As for the beer community, there’s still competition, but “it takes a backseat to our friendships,” Chad says. “At beer festivals, people ask, ‘Do you really all get along?’ And we really do.” The original owners set the culture, he adds; they’re just reaping the rewards—and are eager to pay it forward to new arrivals. 

One of those new arrivals is El Sueñito Brewing Company, Washington’s first gay- and Latino-owned brewery. It wasn’t open yet when I was in town, launched in February 2023, but husband-and-husband team Osbaldo Hernández Sahagun and Dennis Ramey now serve beers inspired by Hernandez’s Mexican heritage and food from the couple’s Seattle-based tamale business. The brewery’s Instagram reflects a packed opening with a mariachi band; I can’t wait to see what new life their bright presence coaxes forth when I come back.

WHEREVER YOU GO, THERE YOU ARE

After all, for all Bellingham offers, it’s still decidedly white and straight. Some diversity comes through the student body, yet history includes dark chapters: seizing the land from the Coast Salish people; an instance where Asian and East Indian cannery and fishery workers were beaten and literally run out of town. It will take new faces and proactive effort for the community to even begin to address such wrongs. With education a focus—Bellingham’s Sehome High was the Northwest’s first high school; WWU started as a teacher training school—perhaps there is hope. 

And maybe we can only truly see who we are in relationship with others and the context of what surrounds us. The Buy Local campaign started early here; multiple organizations connect farms, tables, and brewhouses. Bellingham has its faults, but its people truly view themselves as embedded in ecosystems.  

The locals like to say that Bellingham will always be here. It’s the place I began realizing I wasn’t who I thought I was, and that scared me even more than being in love. I assumed coming back would remind me of all I had here once and still lacked, but sitting in the Aslan Depot behind a line of half-dead soldiers with my friend and photographer, sampling styles of beer I didn’t even know existed in 2003, I realized that in many ways, I had returned full circle, only wiser now.. I’d convinced myself that on some level, I was happier and more myself then, but all these years, I’ve been longing for a time when I was longing for something else. 

Bellingham is where everything changes, and everything stays the same. What changes are the circumstances, and what stays the same is the idea that your happiness lies somewhere outside yourself. You’ll always be who you were, but you won’t; you’ll always have what was, but it’s gone; you’ll always remember who you shared it with, but they aren’t that person anymore, and neither are you. 

Maybe it’s less thrilling than a tumultuous romance, but the city of subdued excitement reminds you that you already have everything you need, and that’s the kind of love that lasts. Whenever you realize it, Bellingham will be waiting, with a few new spots to grab a pint.

Words by Holly Regan
Photos by Dave Riddile