Sovereign Brewing establishes a new Standard

No man or woman is an island, we all have our own wants and needs outside of our personal and business relationships that we would like to see flourish on their own. Inside the confines of a brand that has it’s own expectations both good and bad, it can be incredibly challenging for a creative entity to expand outside of their box into new avenues that may not be best represented in an existing structure.

A sovereign nation is a nation that has one centralized government that has the power to govern a specific geographic area. Under the definition set by international law, a sovereign nation has a defined territory with just one government.

One month ago Sovereign Brewing quietly opened in Seattle, Washington’s Atlantic neighborhood. But Sovereign had been in production as a barrel house for Standard Brewing for nearly three years before that. While both breweries share a unifying brewhouse at Standard and the same owner, each brewing company take a very different course in their independent brands. The Standard flair for American west coast flavors and consistency, versus Sovereign’s insistence on old world rustic methods and a more impressionistic approach to fermentation. The title of Sovereign Brewing says a lot about the beers as well as their maker.

“On a more personal level, if I were any more guided by self-determination, I’d probably be a hermit in the mountains. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is how my retirement years go. The name fits on a few levels,” says Justin Gerardy, the founder and head brewer of both Standard and Sovereign Brewing.

The name Sovereign Brewing was strongly in contention in 2013 before they settled on calling themselves Standard Brewing shortly before opening. But the Sovereign name was always in the back of Gerardy’s mind gestating and gaining strength. As any parent can tell you, the time of birth is never convenient, and no one would wish to debut in the middle of a global pandemic like Sovereign has.

“It reminds me of the teenage years, when you start to gain separation and confidence away from your parents … or maybe a little bit like a budding yeast cell, even. To me, it represents the relationship of this brewery to its more rigid and immutable parent,” says Gerardy. In any case, he says “It made more sense at this juncture than it ever did.”

When Standard Brewing found the building at 851 Rainier Ave S, Seattle, WA 98144 it was a massive project to overhaul and make it usable. Previously a recycling business, there was a massive pit where the bailer used to be, many of the windws were broken out, the electrical wiring was faulty, the garage doors were broken, and there was grime and dust clinging to every surface. It took quite a bit of time before Standard Brewing could establish it as even a cellaring warehouse where could store oak barrels and ambient conditioning beers. Gerardy’s original intention was to eventually open a Standard Brewing tasting room at the satellite location. But as the project slowly came together and they began transporting wort into the building, he realized there wasn’t actually a lot that tied it to the main brewery’s concept.

“When I spend the day pushing beer around at Sovereign, the intent and thought process is completely different. A lot of times it’s far more reactive. I’ll pull out some barrels and taste through them, completely changing the plan based on what it’s become with aging,” explains Gerardy.

The process begins at the Standard brewhouse where they brew the wort, but then immediately cool it down and fill it into a wine tote that they load into a van and make the 5 minute drive to Sovereign. There they push it out into an un-temperature regulated vessel, often a barrel, for extended aging where it sits on yeast or a wild mixed culture strain perhaps cultivated from somewhere in the neighborhood. Many times the wort is pumped directly onto fruit, or it sits in an open top coolship over night before being deposited into a cooled cellar. A fermentation that starts at 65 degrees may rise to 70 degrees in the winter, but it could get to as high as 90 degrees in a summer. This adds a seasonality to flavor development, and un-predictable quality that would be terrible for most standard ales or lagers.

“Almost everything at Sovereign spends time in oak at some point, going through secondary fermentation and development if it wasn’t actually fermented in oak. I don’t think there is a beer under the Sovereign brand right now that spent less than 6 months finding itself before keg or bottle conditioning. Many of these beers, actually most at the moment, spend time sitting on fruit.” says Gerardy.

Bar and foeder oak booths (left) at Sovereign Brewing

Wood is a major theme of the Sovereign Identity even separately from the beers. The bar inside the taproom is topped with diagonal wood similar to Standard Brewing’s, except Sovereign’s is salvaged from old barn wood that all of their beers come in contact with. Even the four booths indoors are made from two open top oak foeders that they originally intended to salvage for reuse, but now their customers will be able to sit on them instead of drink beer that was aged in them.

The vibe at Sovereign Brewing is like Standard’s turned on it’s head and somehow with more focus put on the beer as the showcase of the space. Both locations have “L” shaped bar tops, but at Sovereign’s the “L” is inverted. The careful design of the space each promotes a very different vibe from the other, but with connecting points inspired by their label artists Garek Druss’s work.

At some point Druss had the idea to change the tall blocky sans serif font in the Standard Brewing logo into an understated serif font on the bottled product in an effort to help delineate different kinds of beers. Gerardy loved the idea, and took it to heart when building out the Sovereign Brewing tap room. The same way the font was inverted, so is the bar, and so does the subtle-side shift of the Sovereign logo differentiate from the way Standard Brewing’s name appears on bottles. The idea was that if you swapped the two, it wouldn’t be strikingly different.

Each of the two taprooms is a product of it’s place, Standard has a full liquor bar and kitchen with natural light coming from windows with a view to the activity outdoors. The intention was more of a public house gathering space that would welcome the entire neighborhood, not just beer geeks. You wouldn’t even notice there was a brewery there, unless you were on the patio and they had the garage door open. The point was to intentionally discourage the fetishization of craft beer, even when its worthy of it as Standard’s is.

Sovereign Brewing’s taproom showcases the oak barrels and places the focal points on the beer itself. Rather than windows to the street, the taproom has skylights that will send streams of light down reflecting into a ruby red kriek or wine grape hybrid ale. The lighting highlights the bar-area and the beers served there with the austere atmosphere of a church. And there are no sounds or smells of a kitchen, or slams of a shot glass to distract you from the liquid in the glass.

“In almost every way, Sovereign feels more serious, more reverent, more focused on the process than Standard,” says Gerardy.

That extends to the serving and packaging vessels, instead of the in vogue cans that most craft breweries are pushing their beer into, Sovereign will focus on the classic larger format bottles. Since most of the ales produced in-house are made with wild yeasts and bacteria, natural bottle conditioning is the best method to preserving the flavors and carbonation, though they may try can or keg conditioning in the future. Gerardy is a fan of cans, but thinks bottles are sexy and shouldn’t be ignored, especially for Sovereign’s types of beers. The taproom will encourage bottle pours, even serving them in old world lambic baskets that you can use to enjoy more than one serving of and even share with friends.

Sovereign Brewing will try to keep a brettanomyoces conditioned saison called “Faithful and True” and a brett primary fermented Pale Ale called “Old Money” available at all times. Spontaneously fermented coolship sours will begin to factor into blends once they mature more. Fruit conditioned beers will be coming out on the regular, Gerardy is fascinated by the possibilities of hybrid wild ales with traditional cider fruits. A pear saison is coming out soon, and another beer is about to referment with Arkansas Black Apples. Wine-beer hybrids will be a major focus, with four different grape varietals aging on beer in their cellar right now. The first will be called “Right Hand Path",” and the second-use version will be called “Left Hand Path.”

“I think grapes are a tremendously under-represented fruit in this type of brewing. I mean, people are making them, but I think they aren’t fully appreciated yet,” says Gerardy.

But the first official bottle release coming out of Sovereign is called Fléchette, and it drops this New Years Eve 12/31/2020 at the taproom. Inspired by Belgian kriek, Fléchette is a blend of aged beers refermented on Balaton and Montmorency cherries.

Though Sovereign Brewing is brand new, their greatest challenge won’t be the quality of their beers but establishing their identity as a separate brand that commands it’s own following. And it sounds like this question has kept Gerardy up at night.

“I’ve had some folks tell me I’m crazy for not doubling down with the Standard name,” he admits. “But I don’t see Standard losing good will because Sovereign exists”

By his estimation the only down side is the additional paperwork associated with a separate brewing company, but the sway of a new name, a new place, a different process and feel will more than make up for the additional effort. Gerardy sites similar spinoffs like The Bruery’s Terreux, Perennial’s Side Project, and Hill Farmstead’s Grassroots line as proofs of concept.

”I guess I’m also a little restless, and I lose myself without change,” admits Gerardy in a moment of self introspection.

“Reinvention has always been a part of Standard’s personality. Anyone that has visited us from the beginning knows that we’ve been in a perpetual state of change since day one. It keeps my mind engaged in what we’re doing. Maybe my spirit animal is a shark or something - maybe I’ll die if I stop moving.”

Sovereign Brewing, 851 Rainier Ave S, Seattle, WA 98144

Covid hours: Wednesday - Sunday 12 - 7pm

“On a more personal level, if I were any more guided by self-determination, I’d probably be a hermit in the mountains. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is how my retirement years go. The name fits on a few levels.”

opened in the midst of a government mandated shutdown and overbearing restrictions imposed upon them.

a benevolent dictator may be better positioned to succeed under a standard

or woman is an island, but sovereign nations do still have the opportunity to succeed on their own terms with a standardized government behind them.

with the right people behind them. Seattle, Washington’s Sovereign Brewing has the 7-year-old cult favorite Standard Brewing behind them, but the Sovereign beers will be much different.

A sovereign nation is a nation that has one centralized government that has the power to govern a specific geographic area. Under the definition set by international law, a sovereign nation has a defined territory with just one government.

_______ founded Standard Brewing in 2______, before he had settled on their operations name he had considered the name Sovereign Brewing.

“Almost everything at Sovereign spends time in oak at some point, going through secondary fermentation and development if it wasn’t actually fermented in oak. I don’t think there is a beer under the Sovereign brand right now that spent less than 6 months finding itself before keg or bottle conditioning. Many of these beers, actually most at the moment, spend time sitting on fruit.” says Gerardy. Even the four booths indoors at Sovereign Brewing are made out of oak salvaged from two 20 hectolitre open top foeders.