Three Magnets Brewing hires GABF Medal Winning Brewer to Lead them into 2020

Aaron Blonden (left) and Three Magnets Brewing owner Nathan Reilly (right)

Aaron Blonden is the new head brewer at Olympia, Washington's Three Magnets Brewing. Blonden is departing Matchless Brewing to take the gig, he previously won a Silver medal at the Great American Beer Festival for his work at Seattle's Chainline Brewing.

"You can probably expect us to also piss a lot of people off together," remarks 3 Magnets owner Nathan Reilly on the news Blonden is joining the team.

3 Magnets Brewing opened in 2014 and their IPA's, farmhouse ales and malt-driven beers have found a fanbase in Washington and the Portland-area. Former 3 Mags head brewer Pat Jensen went on to found Matchless Brewing and more recently Cody Morris (formerly of Epic Brewing and Mollusk) was handling production while working on opening a new brewery in the area. With Morris now off to begin his own project, Three Magnets owner Nathan Reilly needed a more permanent head brewer to lead them into challenging times for the industry. The pair are excited to shake things up while staying true to the brewery's roots.

"My wife and I first met Aaron in 2017 when he was a brewer at Chainline. We were hanging out with a group of PNW industry folks at Churchkey in Washington DC during the week of Craft Brewers Conference when we had our first conversation with him," recalls Reilly.

"Chainline was the turning point in my career for me," says Blonden. "It was the first considerable leap into running a facility. I was allowed to define a tap list and produce flagships for the beer program. My whole center there was lager and my interpretation of "hazy IPA"."

"He [Aaron Blonden] has an incredibly dry sense of humor. I’m usually pretty perceptive to that, but my wife and I somehow both didn’t pick up on it at the time. He was rambling on, seemingly very seriously, about brewing a beer with all the free samples that the syrup and flavoring companies hand out at their conference expo booths every year. Like seriously, just dumping them all into a fermenter on top of a beer and seeing what happens. My wife and I kind of just looked at each other like, “who the fuck is this guy?”."

Blonden moved to Olympia to brew at Matchless Brewing in 2018. Matchless has a close relationship with Three Magnets and has even brewed production beers for them. Matchless co-founder Pat Jensen created many of Three Magnets popular recipes.

"It was then that we learned to recognize (and appreciate) his dry sense of humor," says Reilly of Blonden's time at Matchless in Tumwater. "For obvious reasons, we’re pretty close to the folks at Matchless. In general, the South Sound brewing scene is super supportive of each other. We started hanging out occasionally with Aaron and his wife Elizabeth (and their dog Whip) over the past year, and we all just really clicked. Both on a personal level, and with our thoughts about beer - especially that of using quality ingredients, sourcing locally to celebrate the flavors of our terroir (and support small farmers and our local economies), and paying close attention to the nuances within the brewing process."

For his part, Blonden was looking to diversify his career and explore other facets of the industry. He recently began working part time for Mainstem Malt in Walla Walla and will be teaching at South Puget Sound's Craft Brewing and Distilling program. Blonden felt that between the former part-time work he would have a hard time keeping up with Matchless Brewing's 30bbl production facility. Brewing on a smaller pub system with a full restaurant will allow him to work smaller and take beer and food pairing more seriously.

"Three Magnets is a mature brewery with an innovative-forward beer program, which is very similar to Matchless but on a different scale," says of his new brewing position.

Reilly/Three Magnets has been greatly inspired by the micro maltster revolution that has been slowly creeping into the industry. Some believe that micro maltsters are going to change the industry for the better, Reilly is especially into LINC malt in Spokane, Washington.

"With malt forward beers, is all about the subtleties. If you use the malts correctly, you can taste all of the love and hard work put into the grains throughout their life cycle, from the farmers who harvest their own seeds each year to plant the next year’s crops, to the artisans who malt them," says Reilly. "And they taste different to the consumer than product made with macro-malted grains, even if they do not know or understand why. To us, that is added value, even if there’s a learning curve for our customers to get them to understand that."

Aaron Blonden

Blonden has also been into craft malts and of course his part-time work at Mainstem Malt meant he and Reilly had similar interests. Blonden had brewed the 2016 Great American Beer Festival Silver Medal winning Polaris Pilsner when he was at Chainline Brewing. Pilsner being a malt forward style that requires a deft use of malts and fermentation.

"Chainline ran 100% spunded/captured carbonation on their brewhouse, which was how the Czech brewers had designed it," says Blonden of his medal winning lager program. "That sort of adaptation made me a passenger to my fermentations with frequent weekends of transferring and perfecting the overlooked process."

"And yet, he can still brew an aggressive, hop-forward IPA with the best of them," says Reilly. "Our plan is to introduce more lagers into our lineup"

Of course malt driven beers are not the big sellers that IPA's and west coast IPA's are, but lagers and farmhouse/mixed-culture beers are increasing in popularity. Reilly and Blonden both plan to keep innovating on the tried and true hits like 3 Mags 'Little Juice' smoothie IPA while fitting in craft malt innovation in when they can.

Reilly is excited about a new 45bbl oak foudre they recently acquired from Anchorage Brewing. The plan is to condense and streamline 3 Mags barrel program with more intentionally crafted ales. There is talk of mixed culture table beers and using lager yeast and foeders in untraditional ways.

Three Magnets Brewing

Three Magnets Brewing Pub

"Three Magnets is craving innovation and I'm hoping I can bring that. Not by just throwing fancy ingredients at it, but also by exploring techniques and processes," says Blonden.

"We never wanted to be perceived as a one-trick pony simply following the trends. We’d rather be out there doing things that not a lot of other breweries are doing." adds Reilly.

Three Magnets has never shied away from making waves, that starts with Reilly and his wife Sara who wear their progressive politics on their sleeves. They are not afraid to stir things up in the beer industry either, that's something they share in common with Blonden.

"Aaron is also very outspoken within the PNW beer scene, and calls it like it is. He’s not afraid to call out someone on social media on their bullshit. He’s not afraid to use his knowledge to bluntly educate in an industry where there are a lot of misconceptions about the product."

3 Magnets Brewing logo

Aaron Blonden started work at Three Magnets this week, and he joins a team that includes Zach Petty, formerly of Dallas, TX's Four Corners Brewing and operations manager Victoria Martens. Look for some of Blonden's first recipes being released in early January, and check out the new collaboration beer and whiskey they recently released with Copperworks Distilling.