Otherlands Beer, the story of one of the Pacific Northwest’s Most Interesting New Breweries
Former Portland residents Ben Howe and Karolina Lobrow moved to Bellingham, WA to open one of the pacific northwest's most exciting new breweries - Otherlands Beer. The charmingly quaint brewpub belies it’s age and place, by bringing a distinctly European and traveled sense of casual sophistication to it’s beers and atmosphere. From Franconian Kellerbier to Polish Pilsners, Czech Dark, French Saison and NW Pale, Howe and Lobrow pull in influences from their otherworldly travels that began in Boston, and stretched from Uganda to Denmark, before finding a home in one of the west coast’s best small beer cities.
This is their story.
Otherlands Beer founders Ben Howe and Karolina Lubrow
Delaware native Ben Howe grew up in western Massachusettes and moved to Boston when he was 18. It was there that he met Karolina, a Washingtonian who immigrated from Poland with her family when she was 5. They struck up a relationship as co-workers in the front of the house operations at the renowned Cambridge Brewing Co., through separations, long distance, earlier successes and failures, they reunited in Portland, OR before moving to Bellingham to open Otherlands Brewing in 2020.
Karolina had discovered beer from her father and took to it quickly when she was old enough to drink it. “None of the women in my family (except for my grandmother, "Babcia") drank beer - it wasn’'t considered a very lady-like drink, so that made me want to drink it more,” she says. Karolina loved growing up in the PNW and getting to know the craft beer culture, first falling in love with classics like Manny’s Pale Ale, Mac n’ Jacks Amber, and later the beers of Bellingham’s Boundary Bay Brewing where she moved to attend Western Washington University (WWU). At the time, she imagined a life in foreign lands working with indigenous people and never thought she would end up back in this small college town known for it’s proximity to the San Juan Islands and Alaska Marine Highway.
After attending WWU, Karoline volunteered for the Peace Corps, and spent 2 years in the tiny land-locked country of Lesotho in Southern Africa. “I lived in a small village in the mountains working as a community health volunteer. It was a wonderful and difficult experience.”
Karolina continued in social service type programs working for groups in Bellingham like the Nooksack Indian Tribe but ultimately decided to go to grad school at an intensive MBA program at Brandeis University in Waltham, MA, just outside of Boston. She had worked in restaurants and hospitality when she was younger, she knew she liked beer, so as she was working her way through the MBA program she took a job as a server at Cambridge Brewing Company.
“Being exposed to so many different traditions and softer flavors at CBC was a huge eye-opening experience. The best mixed ferment beer I ever had was there, the first saison, the first barleywine, the first gruit. I had no idea that beers could have such complexity while also being so delicate. I loved the beers at CBC and learned so much from them.”
As Karolina was going to school to for non-profit management in her spare time, Ben was running his own nano brewery.
Enlightenment Ales was his first 'business,' an experimental and semi-solo brewing project that focused entirely on European beers like Saison and other farmhouse style creations. Saving up and borrowing money, Ben was able to rent a 1k sq. ft. warehouse in Lowell, MA and install a 1.5bbl brewhouse and 3bbl variable volume wine fermenters. At first he only made one beer, a Biere de Champagne called "Enlightenment Brut." 11%, dry, bottle conditioned, hand riddled for a month and then hand disgorged with dry ice.
Ben ran Enlightenment Ales by himself with label art provided by his friend Liz for 2 years before striking up a partnership with Chris Tkach at Idle Hands Craft Ales in Everett, MA. Tkach wanted to start his own nano brand and brought in his own money for a new 5bbl shared brewhouse and space. Ben did all the brewing for both brands while Tkach handled distribution. It was a fun, wild, stressful and ironically enlightening experience.
“I never paid myself at all before Chris and I partnered up and kept my night job at CBC. We had a hand painted banner, we built a dozen riddling racks out of plywood, and I delivered cases of my beer in my Ford Focus. I took the beer very seriously but had little appreciation for the challenges of running a business. There was a lot of rolling with the punches.”
But everything started falling apart in 2015. Ben and Karolina found themselves on divergent paths, she wanted to return home to the west coast and he couldn’t imagine ever leaving New England. Around this same time Ben and Tkach found out their building that held Enlightenment Ales & Idle Hands Craft Ales was being sold to make room for the Wynn Casino. An opportunity then fell in his lap to brew in Denmark. So Ben and Karolina decided they each had to explore their own futures and take separate paths.
“With my girlfriend leaving and my business being evicted, I took the job, and moved to Denmark with plans to return to Boston in 2 years and open a brewpub with my longtime friend and coworker at CBC, Jon Gilman” says Howe.
In retrospect he was running from Enlightenment Ales closing and his relationship in turmoil, but his new gig brewing for a small farmhouse brewery called "Ebeltoft Gårdbryggeri (Ebeltoft Farm Brewery) opened up new possibilities. It was the first time he had lived completely on his own, he rented a tiny thatched roof house in the village of only 100 people called the Hyl Skovgårde and walked across town to his brewing job every day. His chief job was making American IPA.
“I worked maybe 60 hours a week and had the freedom to take a long weekend every month to travel. Living in this little community I ended up making a lot of friends and getting to learn a great deal.”
As Ben was eating raw fish, drinking cider and going to reggae parties in the woods with the Danes, Karolina was having her own adventure in Africa. When their relationship took a hiatus, and after graduating with an MBA, she started looking for new work.
“I knew I didn't want to stay in Boston, and going back to the PNW felt too painful at the time because I knew that Ben was not going to go with me,” says Karolina. She took a job with the Mercy Corps that would take her to Uganda for a 6 month internship.
“I thought I would try working for them internationally for a while and then slowly make my way to their Portland office,” she says, but it turns out getting a full-time gig at the Portland headquarters was difficult, so she spent the time in PDX working across the non-profit sector.
Though he lived there for only 2 years, the Danish culture made a huge impact on Ben which profoundly impacted what he would later create with Otherlands beers. From traveling around Europe, meeting new people and brewing new styles, the experience was transformative, not only in his thinking about beer, but also himself.
“There's a beautiful kind of loneliness I felt living alone in a little house in a rural village,” says Howe. “It took living in Europe and getting some real perspective into life that led me to realize how important Karolina was to me. And then that job at Ebeltoft allowed me to make connections and travel after my contract ended.” Howe went from Denmark to Franconia and France, learning more about less recognized international brewing techniques and rustic traditions.
Karolina had settled into Portland, and they decided that when he returned home from Europe he would give the pacific northwest a try. “I said my hellos, my goodbyes, made a last trip to Hill Farmstead, spent a long time wandering around Boston, loaded all my important possessions into a rented car, and drove out to Portland with my three best friends from high school.”
Ben got a job at a brand new spot called Wayfinder Beer, after making IPA’s in Denmark, it must have been a joy and challenge to get into the new Modern American Lager movement. It was also experience in how to run a brewpub production schedule and troubleshoot. So much so that Otherlands brew day work sheet is exactly the same as the one Wayfinder brewmaster Kevin Davey had developed.
However Ben was still unsettled, perhaps it was just about missing New England, but he spent the next two years bitching and moaning about Portland. Meanwhile, Karolina was stretching her muscles in non-profit work and developing skills like accounting, financial management, HR, product development, and business development. All practical skills that would prove essential to developing a business plan to open their own brewery and find investors.
Karolina and Ben knew they wanted to open their own brewery in the pacific northwest, but they couldn’t find a space in Portland that made sense. After urging from friends they made a visit up north to Bellingham, where Structures Brewing owner James Alexander encouraged them to take a closer look. “His point was more or less 'this is a beautiful city that is proud to be known for great beer. If you do something different and add to the beer community there's a place for you here.'” recalls Ben.
After driving around Bellingham for 2 months with no luck, Aslan Brewing owner Jack Lamb tipped them off to a realtor helping with new construction on a building in the Sunnyland neighborhood. The building was only 6,000 sq. ft. and only 2,500 was available, but when they saw the view from the second floor they could imagine the brewery and cafe that they had in mind. They decided to make a go of it.
Ben and Karolina got married on June 21st of 2019, it was two weeks after they were approved for a business loan. A few months later they would pack up and move to Bellingham.
“When it finally came time for us to move, I was struck both by how much I would miss PDX (the adventures, the friends, the weird culture and all the memories we made there) and also how unfair I had been in not giving it a chance,” says Ben.
It would be two more years and a name change before Otherlands Brewing would open in the midst of a pandemic in June of 2020. It was a struggle to say the least.
“During some of the most challenging parts of the build out and opening up during COVID, I would remind myself that I withstood two years of Peace Corps service and that no bureaucratic obstacle, delay or unforeseen social mayhem was going to stop me. A common refrain I tell myself over the years” recalls Karolina.
Otherlands Beer cafe and taproom
Otherlands Beer has now been open for a little over a year, and yet already has a homey lived-in feel like a neighborhood pub and restaurant that feels essential to the community. It’s also attracted beer nerds from Seattle and Portland nostalgic for their old world lagers, rustic ales, and gravity cask poured European beers. The guesthouse-style café at Otherlands has also developed a small but noteworthy kitchen where Karoline’s Polish heritage really shines with European inspired street foods and old family dishes. The menu is 100% vegetarian, but you won’t miss the meat, and nothing on the menu calls for even it’s faux substitutes. Seasonal and savory dishes like mushroom barley soup, pierogies, falafel wrap, latkes, and the regulars favorite beet reuben sandwich, all do more than satisfy.
If you don’t already travel (or plan to travel) to Bellingham, then may this inspire you to put Otherlands Brewing on your list.
Otherlands Beer founders Karolina Lobrow and Ben Howe
Q & A with Karolina Lobrow and Ben Howe:
Q: What food and drink do you miss the most from anywhere else that you have lived or traveled?
Ben: This one is very tough. While I want to say something cultured like "oh I miss drinking fresh Taras Boulba with a bowl of cubed Gouda in Brussels" or "how I yearn for the soft, yeasty lagers in Franconia," the truth is... I most miss cheap, tasty donuts that you can eat in two bites and giant jugs of iced coffee (not cold brew!) from New England (read: I miss Dunkin Donuts more than anything else!)
Karolina: I miss the food from my time in Uganda, specifically fresh jackfruit and the ten different types of bananas I could get. What I miss the most is the no-frills experience of eating at tiny shops with grills at taxi ranks, villages and towns in Lesotho (where I was in the Peace Corps), sitting on tree stumps or plastic chairs enjoying a lukewarm Black Label and some grilled meat and papa (corn grits).
Q: Some people have described Otherlands as a Polish inspired brewery, is that accurate?
Karolina: I think we would describe our brewery as being European inspired, as Ben was impacted by his time in Europe and I grew up in a Polish household. We draw from things that we find odd or interesting in our background, like the food menu, the Pilsner, colors and designs, and look at it as ways to share those traditions with others and hope they like them.
Ben: I'd say that we're a very European influenced and inspired brewery & cafe. In addition to a focus on simple, easy drinking, traditional lagers and farmhouse beers and European food, we want our space to reflect the warmth and hospitality of the little guest house cafes we love throughout Europe. Our goal is a cozy, friendly space to drink refreshing beers and be nourished. As Karolina alluded to we're both quite inspired by our experiences with such hospitality and simplicity in our lives and travels in Europe and beyond.
Plus having my Polish in-laws show up regularly to berate me helps the place feel truly Polish inspired.
Q: In the last 1+ years that Otherlands has been open, what has been the biggest change or lesson learned as a startup?
Karolina: Nothing prepared me for the emotional, psychological and physical toll that muscling through the first year of business during a pandemic would take. Nothing I've ever done has been as hard as this last year, and we're slowly learning how to wrestle some tiny bit of our lives back. I imagine new business owners generally have no idea what the fuck is going on, which was also true in our case, but then add in terrified/angry customers, staff that look to you to lead through the constant restrictions, and little to no governement guidance and it'll take ten years off your life.
Ben: Buying a glycol chiller from a company I was not familiar with has taught me important lessons about quality, redundancy, and crisis management.
Q: What beer, food, pub, or restaurant are you most excited about or enjoying in the greater Bellingham area right now?
Karolina: We adore Cafe Blue in Fairhaven, their creativity and passion for their space and craft shine through everything they do. We loved grabbing a beer at Chuckanut, so we're sad that they've closed their Bellingham location but will be sure to visit them at South Nut or Peanut.
Ben: Chuckanut Brewery, hands down. Their Helles makes me thankful to be alive. Their nachos were fantastic as well. I can't tell you how much I'm going to miss the North Nut location being open.
Q: How do you two work together at Otherlands as far as the husband/wife duo versus business partners, and what duties or boundaries do you set up?
Karolina: We work together really well. We share a lot of the responsibilities as well as the creative aspects of the project. I honestly can't imagine working on something this difficult with someone that you are not married to. We trust each other and support each other. While we have separated our responsibilities, we tend to seek each other's advice on almost everything, and all major decisions are made together. Ben will ask me my opinion on the brewing schedule and what beers we should create next and I go to him with questions about staffing or if our social media makes sense. We're a little co-dependent so decision making can take a lot longer, but the end result is a lot better than if either one of us was making decisions by ourselves. There are some duties that we have seperated: he does the physical brewing, I manage all our finances and hiring for example. I have no penchant for being up early in the morning just to be cleaning stainless steel and he has a bleeding heart that would hire anyone and everyone.
Otherlands does not feel like a business to us, it feels like our home. It's more like we are having a dinner party at our place every single day and we have to make it good. Ben and I always loved throwing parties and hosting, so in many ways it feels like a natural continuation of our regular life, rather than a business. Currently we do not have any real boundaries, the brewery is our entire life. I think that will change someday but the pandemic elongated the start-up phase for us and much of this last year was simply about survival.
Ben: General stress induced bickering aside I think we work remarkably well together, which is quite fortunate! We discovered this during the incredibly stressful buildout phase of our business... Karolina and I have different duties but share control over more or less everything. For example, while I'm responsible for most all of the brewery (brewing, cellaring, packaging, scheduling, ordering, etc.) all of the decisions we make are the result of discussions we have together. Which beers we're making and what we want to present is a result of our dialogue. I usually even run all the details of the brewing process decisions I'm making past her to get her thoughts and to make sure she's happy with the end goals of those decisions. The same is true of the duties Karolina takes on. I think the fact that we have very similar tastes and visions for our little cafe and brewery is quite important to the cohesiveness of what we're making and to our happiness!
Q: What do you want to accomplish with the brewery in the next year, and in the next 5 years?
Karolina: In the next year I would like to see the brewery grow to its full potential as a local gathering place, expand the type of food service that we can provide to include things like brunch, coffee and tea service, continue to refine the beer we offer and expand our packaged beer program, and invest more in our staff. I would love to see our business finally free of the burdens and restrictions of COVID especially so we can generate enough business to offer benefits for our staff that allow them to stay in the food/beer/service industry.
Ben: Consistently making beer that I'm proud of, want to drink, and that makes people feel happy. Oh, and having gravity kegs of kellerbier on every day, not just weekends. Every damn day. And lastly, getting one day-ish off a week to spend with Karolina.
Otherlands Beer is a neighborhood pub in a quiet residential neighborhood centrally located in Bellingham, Washington. It also makes for a great pub crawl stop as it’s right around the corner from Twin Sisters Brewing, and only a short walk from Kulshan Brewing Sunnyside pub. If you enjoy walking, you can easily string Stemma Brewing and Wander Brewing into the crawl. You can also find Otherlands Beer sporadically available in bottle shops in Washington.
2121 Humboldt St, Bellingham, WA 98225