Kings & Daughters Brewing opens The Walled Garden public house
Kings & Daughters, the 2021 founded brewing company known for soft-delicate, balanced, and quaffable beers, is finally opening their first taproom in Hood River, Oregon on Saturday September 13th. ‘The Walled Garden’ is a bright and breezy taproom and boutique market with wine, cocktails, patio and kitchen that showcases all things owners Kyle Larsen and wife Kacie McMackin are passionate about.
A Soft, Delicate, and Elegant Brand is Born
“I want to make beer that is flavor intense, has an inviting soft body and encourages spending long afternoons in the company of others,” said Kyle when launching K&D as an alternating proprietorship at the now defunct Back 40 Beverage in Clackamas, Oregon in 2021.
The first seeds of Kings & Daughters Brewing were planted in Hood River where Kyle got his first brewing gig at Full Sail Brewing, and began to blossom after he became a lead brewer at Double Mountain Brewing in the early days of the craft beer renaissance. Kacie meanwhile was on her own path writing, photography, and developing recipes for publications around the world. Kacie and Kyle moved to the UK in 2016 where Kyle brewed at Siren Craft Brew, an experience that changed the way he thinks about beer and flavors which had previously had always been through a Pacific Northwest lens. That vision developed further as Kyle briefly took the reins as head brewer of Trap Door Brewing where he released his first K&D beer.
Kings & Daughters is named after Kyle and Kacie’s children; son Whitman, and daughters Gyneth, Love, and Odette who was just three weeks old when the brewery was founded. The couple has been married for nearly 25 years, meeting in high school and growing up just 2 miles apart in a Seattle suburb.
Kyle and Kacie moved back to Oregon in 2019 with the plan to open Kings & Daughters as a true collaboration combining years of brewing experience, raising young boys and girls, and pushing back ever so slightly on the masculine boys club that craft beer has almost always been. K&D coined the term “soft IPA” early on, and stood out for their descriptive ‘soft, subtle, feminine beer’ that raised some eyebrows before beer fans got to know the approachable but hop forward beers and the painterly, elegant and airy hand-drawn designs that feel personal and intimate.
Kacie’s experience as a visual artist and storyteller has been as important to the brewery as the liquid. Even though she had experienced Kyle’s brewer’s journey from the co-pilots seat, the beer industry was still very new and unfamiliar to her at first. Her approach to the aesthetics and the communication also makes its way into the beer as a collaborative liquid art form.
“Our recipes, and our ethos are decidedly feminine: strong, elegant, inclusive, warm, and delicate. We want our daughters to have a sense of belonging and ownership in an industry that tends to be more masculine and male-dominated,” Kacie told the New School in 2021. “Kyle knows how the industry works and I like to challenge the status quo and approach things in a new or different way. We work well together (and drive each other nuts) because we come at creativity, problem solving, and the brewing industry in completely different ways with a completely different skill sets. Kyle is very logical and thinks very clearly and linearly... I bring a "dreamer" aspect to our brand and like to ask "why not?" a lot.”
Kacie McMackin Larsen and Kyle Larsen at their new Kings & Daughters Brewery taphouse
The Walled Garden public house opens
Kyle and Kacie have envisioned a pub and brewery since day one, but the pandemic and finances put the larger plan on the backburner. The Walled Garden pub has been a long time coming and a dream come true, their own brewery is the next challenge to take on but production has found a great home for now at Von Ebert Brewing’s new N. Mississippi location where an acclaimed brewteam makes the wort.
The Walled Garden Public House is centrally located in downtown Hood River. Around the corner on the same block is Double Mountain Brewing’s iconic brewpub, across the street at the corner is the new Hood River Brewing, across the other corner is the great taproom/bottleshops Hood River Common House, up a block is Spinning Wheels Brewing Project, and on the other side of the block is Full Sail Brewing. The public house space is the lower level of a formal water sports retail business, and a prime storefront with a warm brick facade and huge front facing windows to Cascade Avenue that provide lots of natural light.
From the entry point it’s clear that this brewery taproom is different than the others. A merch section is laid out more like an artisan workshop and boutique market with racks and tables of books on decidedly non-beery subjects like flowers and floral arrangements, cocktails, gardening, with some Jane Austen thrown in. You can also browse and purchase everything from handmade candles and soaps, to tinned fish and K&D shirts, sweaters, and canned beer.
“The goal in creating The Walled Garden will be to have a space that feels like diving into one of our illustrations: it will be elegant, feminine, playful... and will hopefully tell a story and invite our patrons to create their own,” says Kacie.
The space is bright and white with warm pastels and subdued blues with none of the black, metallic, woody, or rustic design elements that have become the go-to palate for craft beer taprooms. The tone setter is a wall size fresca painting of a luscious peach and sea shaded skyline that transports you to a romantic sunset on the coast.
The taplist is populated with 13 varied offerings from K&D and one guest cider from Yonder. The brewery has become a favorite of connoisseurs but has remained illusive on draft, and never had this level of showcase of styles. From rustic lager to Czech Pils, fruited sours, West coast IPA, and even an odd cream ale and flavored Imperial Stout. True to their traditions, the majority of beers are under 6% abv! All the beers are buoyed by in-house classic custom cocktails like Vieux Carre, Boulevardier, Old Fashioned, Martini, Negroni, and Manhattan. A a few light and bubbly wines like a Rose and Tempranillo from Cor Wines will form a rotating winery feature.
A small but full food menu is available from K&D’s own food truck permanently parked outside and anchoring the patio. A menu of French/European-inspired baguette sandwiches and salads goes great with the light beers, and the brewery hopes to have regular pairing menus and seasonal changes. The semi-enclosed patio has space for people watching, but partial walls and a full roof to block the gorge’s notorious winds and seasonal weather. Two more food carts are planned to fill the paved landing pad outside of the taproom.
Kings & Daughters The Walled Garden Public House
416 Cascade Ave, Hood River, OR 97031