Fair Isle Brewing to join the Ballard brewery scene

A new brewery will join the already vibrant Ballard beer scene in 2019: it’s called Fair Isle Brewing, and will create unique line-up of farmhouse beer.

Co-founded by locals Andrew Pogue and Geoffrey Barker, Fair Isle was born from the notorious North Seattle Home Brew Club, whose former members created Ballard breweries such as Reuben’s, NW Peaks, Populuxe and Lucky Envelope.

Pogue is an architectural photographer, and will use his skills to design the brewery, “creating a destination like only a few breweries across the nation have achieved.” He used to live in Austin, where he helped design and build the Jester King Brewery in 2008. The owners of Jester King, Jeffrey Stuffings and Michael Steffing, are founding partners of Fair Isle.

Barker, who worked in IT for 32 years, built an electric pilot brewery from scratch, “closely mimicking the processes of a large commercial brewhouse”, according to their website. They’ll use it test new ideas and recipes in small batches before committing to a full-sized batch.

Fair Isle announced their plans to settle in Ballard last week: “Well, the secret is out, we have signed a lease for a space in Ballard!” they write on social media. “We’ve looked at a lot of properties over the past year and we can truly say, there’s no place like home.”

The founders told Seattle Eater that they’ll be brewing with locally foraged items such as fireweed, elderberries, and mushrooms. “We also plan to have a coolship and produce true spontaneously fermented ‘wild’ beers.”

The brewers have ordered their brewhouse and fermenters, which are scheduled to arrive in January, and have started the permitting and designing of the space. No word yet on their location; they’ll release those details in September.

Co-founders pictured above: Jeffrey Stuffings, Andrew Pogue and Geoffrey Barker. Photo from Fair Isles Brewing Facebook page
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀