Evergreen State College alumni and Darby’s Café owners Nathan and Sara Reilly opened Three Magnets Brewing Co. in downtown Olympia in November 2014, but longtime home brewers Pat Jansen and Jeff Stokes brewed their first Three Magnets batches on the 15-barrel system several months early in July. Head brewer/local sourcing liaison Jansen and assistant brewers/taproom manager Stokes hit the ground running when the brewery opened in the late fall with several recipes dialed in. Together, they brewed a wide range of craft beers — Jansen’s beloved sours, farmhouse ales and white ales; Stokes’ cherished stouts and barleywines — plus delicious IPAs.
As we reported back in April 2016, Jansen, along with Three Magnets bartender Grant Bolt, will transition to Matchless Brewing Company in Tumwater, with a summer opening looking more like fall. They’ll still be active in some aspects with Three Magnets albeit in a reduced capacity.
After two years, four Washington Brewers Awards medals, a Great American Beer Festival award, distribution in two states, Three Magnets has much to celebrate … if they could. Demand forces full-time brewing.
We pulled Stokes out of his brewhouse for a breathier and insight on Three Magnets’ future.
PEAKS AND PINTS: Will you take on an assistant brewer once Pat transitions to Matchless?
JEFF STOKES: The succession plan inside of Three Magnets brew house operations include Kelsey Ferguson stepping in as assistant brewer. Kelsey has been with Three Magnets for about a year now. She was originally hired as a server/bartender and from day one she expressed great interest in learning to brew. She didn’t have any previous home or commercial brewing background but almost immediately began volunteering on brew days with both Pat and myself. This past spring quarter, as a student of The Evergreen State College, she did an internship with the brewery under Pat’s tutelage. Her plan after graduating, which she did in June, was originally to begin a job on a hop farm in Maine. However, after Pat’s announcement of his departure I inquired if she would be interested in staying on the West Coast and becoming my assistant. I’m pretty sure I could see the huge smile even through our phone conversation that day as she accepted. Kelsey will continue to work three shifts a week as a server/bartender and the balance of her workweek will be both in production and cellar work with the brewery.
PEAKS AND PINTS: What does the next year hold for Three Magnets?
STOKES: The focus for Three Magnets, in my opinion, doesn’t need change. The next year will certainly provide challenges but I look at it as an opportunity to continue to solidify our place in the craft beer scene. With just a few days over two years of brewing at Three Magnets the whole team is thrilled to be packaged and distributed throughout Western Washington and the greater Portland markets. If you asked Pat, Nate or myself when we started this venture if we figured we’d have the success we have found and the recognition/awards so early in our timeline, none of us would have predicted we’d have come this far in such a short period. We have already maxed out our production capacity and figure to produce around 1,400 barrels this year, which puts us squarely in the top 10 brew pubs in Washington state, as far as production.
We are seeking options at this time to help increase production, but space is limited. One option that is being discussed — asides from contracting some beers through Matchless, which is still a very real scenario — would be to add additional fermentation capacity into the alley next to the brewery.
My goal, with added capacity, will be to focus more on specialty offerings and high gravity, barrel-aged beers to a greater degree, with the expansion helping with the production primarily of our line on four IPAs opening up fermenters for some projects I am very passionate about. Bring me more stouts and barleywine!
PEAKS AND PINTS: With Olympia Beer Week being moved from August to early 2017, we see you’re celebrating OLYMPIA BREW FESTivities WEEK Aug. 2-6.
STOKES: To be the first establishment in our beer loving city to pour some very special beers is huge and exciting. We’ll serve beer from some of our favorite breweries in Washington state, each day tapping four beers at 5 p.m. — one from Seapine, Holy Mountain, Stoup and Cloudburst. Major credit to our sales guy Lionel Espinoza for creating the connections necessary to bring these beers to our pub. Saturday, after the Olympia Brew Fest, we will host an after party featuring beers from local breweries.
PEAKS AND PINTS: What new beer can we expect next from you?
STOKES: Due to peak demand we had to forgo our monthly bottling run for July. We simply couldn’t make enough beer to satisfy the combination of thirst in our brewpub, draft accounts throughout the Puget Sound/Portland markets and the bottle shops.
We did recently hand bottle our Sour Strawberry Helsing Farmhouse Ale and will be releasing that in either late August or September, as soon as the carbonation from bottle conditioning is complete. That beer is being released in 750ml corks and cage packaging. We have decided to go traditional in using dark green “Fantome”-style bottles for packaging farmhouse and sour ales in the future. This is a shift from our previous packaging in brown cork and cage “Allagash”-style bottles.
We also have our Apricot Helsing and Logsdon Collaboration Black Saison. The Black Saison doesn’t have a name yet, but we brewed with a blend of our Saison cultures and Logsdon’s house blend. We whirlpool hopped it with Centennial, Citra and Amarillo. Bottles of the Apricot Helsing and Logsdon collab will be limited as they will be hand bottled into the same 750ml green cork and cage bottles.
Another unique, meaning never brewed before, offering at Three Magnets will be a Mexican Lager. It should be available on draft around the second week of August.
THREE MAGNETS BREWING CO., 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday-Thursday, 8 a.m. to midnight Friday and Saturday, 600 Franklin St. SE, Olympia, 360.972.2481
