St. Brigid's Brewery & Taproom, Moses Lake

Woohoo!!! All right all right all right! A newly opened taproom at 606 Broadway, downtown Moses Lake, and the beer is superb.

I'd been tasting their London Calling Brown around town for a year, and tho brown is not my favorite you could tell the quality was good. So as soon as the taproom opened April & I hustled down and found a spot on the lakefront patio for a sunset brew. Oh. Yeah.

Do you like your beer fresh? How 'bout made this morning.

Tom & Whitney Wytko, a couple of schoolteachers, are the proprietors. (They gave each other credit for the beer.) Tom is a former dairyman who's been making home beer for 23 years and obviously knows how to do it. It's rare that you walk into a place and every one of the beers is great. We are surely lucky to have them in little ol' Moses Lake.

www.stbrigidsbrewery.com

Vineyard in Repose

More Grapes

On Monday April, Gilbert & I picked, stomped and pressed another 15 gallons worth of Chardonnay. The fruit is beautiful, about 20.5 brix and nicely balanced with pretty good hang time. (My acidity measurements were less than precise so I won't try to quantify that; we'll just see how everything turns out.) Next year I will look to market both the Chard and the Cab Franc. We have about 1.5 acres of each, and our 20 gallons didn't even put a dent in it. Some neighbors are going to come by and pick as much of the remaining Chard as they want before the birds get it. We also moved the netting over to the Cab Franc.

First Crush

What followed was a whirlwind week starting with gathering supplies from Jim's Homebrew Supply in Spokane (ask for Bob) and Beer Essentials in Lakewood. April & I picked and crushed (she stomped) a carboy's worth, after which Jen, Den, Matt & Erica came for the weekend and helped with the press, winemaking advice and general good time. Much fun, good friends. Thanks everyone!

Bird Netting

Lots has happened since last post. Among other things, we decided to make wine. It's been a perfect season and the Chardonnay was coming in beautifully, with the Cab Franc probably 3 weeks behind. But we were losing the battle with the starlings. April & I went to Wilson's Irrigation Supply in Wenatchee and came away with 2,500 feet of bird netting. We put it up in about 3 hours with Gilbert sitting in the tractor bucket and feeding the net over the rows. (don't do this at home kids)