Washington’s new Outskirts Brewing has outsized debut
One of our most anticipated new and upcoming Washington breweries of 2023 has won their first prestigious award less than 5 months after opening. Yakima, Washington based The Outskirts Brewing made an immediate impression when we first heard about them, even before they opened and we had a chance to visit. Luckily for us, we made a visit in September just before they picked up a coveted Best in Show Fresh Hop award for their Fresh Hop Pale Ale at the 2023 Yakima Fresh Hop Festival on October 7th.
From the early renderings of a restored barn turned brewery, restaurant, and concert venue it was apparent that Outskirts Brewing 3-acres was going to be an impressive and expensive project. But sometimes those early visualizations don’t translate as well in person as they do on a screen, and even when they do, sometimes the actual beer is not as impressive. So it was with a measure of optimistic skepticism that we entered Outskirts Brewing at 11am on a Saturday, before the first customer had walked in the door. To begin with, the 6,200 sq. ft. building space both exterior and interior does indeed live up to the renderings.
Outskirts Brewing was founded by longtime friends Cody Beebe and Joe Catron, with partners Josh Johnson, Chase Webster, and Patrick Gasseling. The first seed was planted in Beebe’s head to open a brewery shortly out of college, when he and his buddies Ty Paxton and Joe Catron joined his band for their first tour.
“On that tour in 2008, we started tasting IPAs and fell in love with the culture. We vowed to one day start a brewery in our hometown when we were settled with families,” recalls Beebe.
Ty Paxton had the first opportunity to do so, and he opened the now very well known Yakima brewery Single Hill in 2018. Joe Catron has been working for Yakima Chief Ranches and Yakima Chief Hops for about 10 years now, and then started looking at opening his own brewery in Selah. And Beebe had given up on his dream to be in the brewery business as he now has a successful career running both a music booking company and as a musician himself with his own band Cody Beebe & The Crooks.
Joe Catron spent years of searching for a location for a brewery in the Yakima Valley, and he really wanted it to be in the Yakima city neighboring town of Selah specifically and when he did Beebe was back in on the dreams of opening a brewery. Beebe describes Selah as the bedroom community of Yakima, where most of the jobs in the area are in the fruit industry or in adjacent support industries. But it’s difficult to see any difference between Selah and Yakima as they are just minutes apart from the downtown center.
“4 of the 5 owners of The Outskirts are originally from Selah and we felt the need to try to bring something back to the town that would improve the offerings for the community,” says Beebe. And boy did they luck out, “In a stroke of luck, we were able to purchase literally the first piece of property you see as you enter the town from a family who had lived there a few generations. Although they were reluctant to let it go, they saw the vision and we were able to purchase it.”
Urban development has now encroached on the Selah farm property where Outskirts Brewing has been built, the 3 acres of land still feels semi-remote even though it is located just of highway I-82 on Selah Road, and with homes and other businesses nearby. The land still had sat untouched for years, with an old turn-of-the-century monitor barn alongside a three-bay shop when the Outskirts partners purchased it. Instead of knocking down the creaky old structure that was already falling down, they kept the frame and the primary structure and restored it into a building that looks both new and old at the same time. The first task was painstakingly straightening out the old barn which had begun to wobble, and then connected it to the bay shop, and managed to keep the majority of the hundred-year-old wood in place.
“We literally had to tear the whole barn down to the studs and then use turnbuckles to slowly crank the barn into plum so that it was all level and straight,” says Beebe of the herculean effort it took to restore it. “In order to preserve the historic wood on the inside, we opted to use structural insulation panels (SIPs) to insulate the outside of the building while also providing structural support. Honestly, it'd have cost a fraction if we would have just knocked it down and started over, but I'm so happy we did it the way we did. It'll be a preserved piece of history and with the upgrades we did, it's unlike anything you've ever seen.”
The effort seems to have paid off. The old delapitated barn is now Outskirts Brewing’s full restaurant and cocktail bar with high ceilings and salvaged beams, with new rustic/industrial accents and vintage leather couches, hanging circular chandeliers, an indoor stage, with a merchandise corner, a waiting area, and a fireplace to cozy up around. The kitchen features hearty country fare like steaks, salmon, halibut, bison burgers, quality ingredients prepared by the in-house chef with something for everyone. Their tagline "first class for the working class."
Through a small walkway for restrooms and a merch station, the former detached workshop building is now a secondary more intimate bar with windows into the brewery operations. This back bar is sort of the informal brewery tasting room with exclusively their beers, it’s also more of an adults-only lounge like experience with lots of country-western/outdoors decor like a bear skin, mounted stag head, and a big American flag.
Both interior bars open up onto a stone top backyard patio that is steps above a grassy lawn that butts up against a creek. The back patio also has it’s own outdoor bar, designed to service private events and concerts from a rock lined stage built into the back of the grassy lawn. Beebe is utilizing his extensive experience as a touring musician, and founding and running the Chinook Fest since 2012. Outskirts as a venue will be a year-round opportunity for him to bring the many acts he has worked with and met over the years to play their stage, and the brewery has already hosted many sold out shows in the brief time they have been open.
The brewing operations are similarly a salvaged reconstruction project with old acquired equipment and brand new elements, but you’d never know it was used before to look at it. The brewhouse is one of the smallest parts of the entire operation at 10bbls, large enough to supply the brewpub and minor local distribution. It came from The Ram restaurant and brewery in U Village after it closed in 2020. The rest of the brewhouse and fermentation takes were acquired from Snipes Mountain brewing in Sunnyside. They have also installed a slick 1bbl Spike pilot system to keep test beers, one-offs, and experiments on the rotating side of the taplist.
Joe Catron has been brewing quite a bit and knows his way around hops from his experience at Yakima Chief (YCH), he developed many of Outskirts Brewing’s initial beers. Another brewery co-owner, Patrick Gasseling, is a local hop grower. And they habe brought on Yakima Chief Hops colleague JT Wattenberg to be the official head brewer, he has been the head brewer for YCH’s internal pilot brewery and hop testing grounds for quite some time. So to say that they know their way around hops and hoppy beers is an understatement. That said, they will also keep regular pilsners and light lagers in the lineup.
Outskirts Brewing had only released around 6 different beers since opening when they won first place in the Pale Ale category at the Yakima Fresh Hop Festival. That beer was Fresh Hop Country Pale, a clean S.M.a.S.H. pale ale (Single Malt and Single Hop) designed to let fresh Simcoe hops from Gasseling Ranches shine. All the beers we tried so far were simple and clean and well executed out of the gate; a fruity and slightly dank and strong Cold IPA, a woody flagship west coast IPA called Barn Burner, and a pungent fresh hopped Citra IPA with huge hop flavors and aromatics. As the brewing operation heats up and dials in, Outskirts Brewing could become a new must-visit destination in the budding Yakima Valley agriculture and beer tourism industry.
The name "Outskirts" refers to the fact that the property is on the edge of Selah, as well as he edge of Yakima, right between the two. Outskirts hopes to be a welcome mat to the town of Selah and to help shine a light on the area as a whole.
Outskirts Brewing Co.
707 Test Drive Lane, Selah, WA 98942
