Kitsap on Tap: Craft breweries a fad or the future?

June 28--Editor's note: This is Part 1 of a three-day series on the Kitsap Sun's mobile app about sustaining Kitsap's brewery boom. To read the whole series, go to kitsapsun.com.

SILVERDALE -- Three days a week, Mike Montoney runs an automotive electric shop, fixing shorts and rewiring dashboards.

Every other day he can be found in a metal-sided shop at the end of his Olympic View driveway, brewing up a new career.

A sweet-smelling vapor wafted from the open shop door on a recent afternoon. Inside, Montoney and partner Mike Painter were assembling a steaming batch of Rainy Rye, a favorite double IPA of their Rainy Daze Brewing company. A Rainier beer sign hung on the back wall. Rock thumped from a stereo.

Montoney opened a tiny taproom in this garage two years ago. Zoning conflicts forced him to shut it down within months. His hoppy beers only grew in popularity, earning accolades at festivals and competitions.

While searching for a new taproom location, Rainy Daze has picked up wholesale keg orders at a pace the two Mikes can barely keep up with. So when Montoney isn't working in his auto shop, he puts in 12-hour days at his brew kettles.

The shaggy-haired mechanic started home-brewing in 1993. His hobby grew more rewarding than his day job. Now he's making his hobby his day job.

"It was time," Montoney said, taking a break over a pint at a picnic table in his yard. "I got sick of working on cars, and what the heck, might as well roll the dice."

A dizzying number of Northwest brewers are taking the same gamble.

The list of Washington breweries doubled in the last eight years, fueled by a ravenous demand for locally made craft beer. Roughly 260 are now licensed statewide.

Kitsap County was home to two microbreweries between 1996 and 2009. Ten are now operating in the county and an 11th will open soon in Kingston. More are rumored to be on the way.

The tight-knit group of Kitsap brewers is making a mark in the industry. Six took home a combined 16 medals from this year's Washington Beer Awards. Beer made here is quaffed in bars across the Northwest, sipped in parts of Canada and even savored in Tokyo restaurants.

Kitsap has become known as a place that brews, said Jonathan Rowe, owner of Marina Market in Poulsbo, a store with a voluminous local beer section.

"The brew culture has developed, and it's so strong in Kitsap County that it's almost defining," Rowe said. "It's what we do here."

Like Montoney, nearly all these craft brew makers were home-brewers who'd dreamed of leaving their day jobs and going commercial. Among the ranks of Kitsap brewers are a former propane salesman, a law school graduate, an electrician, a city engineer and a corporate executive. They've raided savings accounts, cashed out retirement funds and rounded up investors to join the beer boom.

"Guys are paving roads or selling insurance ...," said Eric Radovich, executive director of the Washington Beer Commission. "They're thinking to themselves, 'I could open a small batch brewery, invite my friends, sell a few kegs to local bars and make a living.'"

While a boon for beer drinkers, the rapid rise of craft beer raises an obvious question: How many breweries can the market really sustain?

The Northwest already saw a craft beer bubble pop in the 1990s, when a wave of breweries and brewpubs failed. Many new breweries are also bound to go under, said Mark Hood, founder and manager of Sound Brewery in Poulsbo.

"Absolutely I think there's going to be another clean out," Hood said. "The craft brew market will continue to expand, but not as fast as breweries are expanding."

Most brewers, Hood included, believe even as some breweries fizzle out, there is now a consumer base to support craft beer for the long term. Especially in the Northwest, where beer drinkers are more interested in the brewing process and more willing to broaden their horizons in the beer aisle. Craft beer accounts for roughly 30 percent of beer sales in the Seattle area, and that market share is growing, Radovich said.

Brewers envision a gradual return to a time before mass-produced pale lagers reigned supreme, when drinking beer from a brewery down the street was a the norm.

"Pre-prohibition, every community had a brewery, every community had a butcher," said Scott Kirvan, owner of Slaughter County Brewing in Port Orchard. "I think we're rolling back toward that."

COMING TOMORROW: Brewers position themselves for growth

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