They’ve come a long way since ham-flavored beer.
And they met in church.
Meet Wingman Brewers, Tacoma’s newest production-only microbrewery. Four Tacoma natives—Derrick Moyer, Ken Thoburn, Daniel Heath and Jason Sabol—have combined resources, talents and dedication to brew spirited, full-flavored craft beers for the South Sound.
Located on the edge of the historical brewer’s district on Fawcett Avenue, Wingman Brewers can see the old Heidelberg building from their window, which was the last operating production brewery in Tacoma. “We are the first production brewery in Tacoma since the Heidelberg closed,” Thoburn noted, meaning that Wingman’s will only sell to taverns, bars and restaurants, but does not have a taproom or bar location. Their goal is to promote their beer in local Tacoma restaurants and bars rather than sell it themselves. According to Thoburn, they are plenty of local brewpubs already.
When I arrived at Wingman Brewers, Thoburn and Moyer had been waiting all day on a barley delivery for their first batch of India Pale Ale. Unfortunately, the delivery didn’t arrive until 3 p.m., too late in the day to start the intensive seven to eight hour brewing process.
This faulty delivery service at least provided a little entertainment in the sparse office space.
“We were watching this guy through the window, trying to make it so he couldn’t see us, seeing if he would actually get out of his truck to read the sign we’d put on the door [that tells the delivery service to knock and then try opening the door before leaving]. He didn’t even get out of his truck. Then we saw him putting his seatbelt back on to drive away, and I was like, ‘Oh heck no!’” recounted Thoburn. Thoburn and Moyer ran outside to stop the rogue deliveryman and finally got their delayed barley shipment.
Patience seems to be a necessity in the worlds of business licensing and beer brewing. Moyer, Thoburn and the rest of the crew have been refining the brewing process since their college days, and the eventual microbrewery has been a long time coming.
“The original plan was to just build up the product with our own money, without investments, but we quickly realized that just wasn’t going happen. So we got some family members and friends to invest a little bit of money and people who were also interested in building off a home brewery. It’s not all about making money, although we do want to make money eventually,” Moyer explained.
“It’s a very small investment for a brewery, but big for recent college graduates,” Thoburn noted.
They’ve been officially incorporated since January of 2010, and the four friends run every single aspect of their microbrewery, save for the graphic design.
Coincidently, they also know their graphic designer, Lance Kagey, from church. Kagey owns the startup design and marketing firm, Rotator Creative, and is responsible for the Beautiful Angle poster project. Kagey met the Wingman team when they were high schoolers attending the First Presbyterian Church in the Stadium district (where Thoburn’s father was a pastor), and they’ve all been friends ever since.
“The men behind the product have created a well-crafted, honest beer that is sure to be enthusiastically received. Our goal in creating the Wingman identity was to find an expression that was sophisticated, authentic and spoke to the work ethic that is part of Tacoma’s legacy. The brand references world-war era nose art which provides a rich palette of history to draw from,” Kagey stated via email.
All four men split their commitments to Wingman Brewers with day jobs. Moyer works in bilingual customer support at Nintendo in Redmond and graduated from Puget Sound in 2006 with a degree in Computer Science. His mother, Carol Moyer, is the math and computer science department secretary. Thoburn, a Pacific Lutheran University graduate, works in the Tacoma Public Schools ESL office.
Back in their college days, the friends of Wingman Brewers started talking about a microbrewery even before they began home brewing.
“From the beginning we started brewing and formulating our own recipes, and then basically we would start one recipe, and just brew it over and over until it tasted good, changing one variable here and one variable there,” Thoburn recalled.
Thoburn and Moyer made the switch to malt brewing towards the end of their senior year of college. “Usually in homebrewing, you’re working on a stove and using what’s called malt extract. Then when you get to all grain, you use much bigger equipment, because you actually have the real grains sitting in the pot, as opposed to using the syrups. Using a propane burner…that’s when it starts getting better,” Ken noted.
Now Wingman Brewers runs a three-tier brewing system, which consists of a water tub, mash tub and brew kettle.
According to Moyer, they use a very scientific approach in their brewing, tracking amounts and varieties of hops, grains and yeast, because even small variations can affect the flavor of the beer.
“We don’t use any additives at the moment. I’m not a big fan of additives. You can get so many flavors from barley: chocolate, coffee, nuts, figs, leather…and then from your hops you can get grapefruit, any citrus, all sorts of lemon and lime. There’s just millions of ways to achieve flavors without adding it in other ways,” Thoburn explained.
“We’ve made some really good beers that we don’t even make any more. We had to fasten on a couple. The double IPA is probably our favorite. It’s our regular IPA recipe, but then we add 50 percent more grain and 100 percent more hops,” Thoburn said, adding that “the 50 percent more grain adds a bigger malt flavor, and then it also adds to the alcohol content. And the hops obviously make it more hoppy and kind of balance out the extra grain.”
Wingman Brewers is starting off with four beers—the P-51 Porter, Pinup Pale Ale and the Ace IPA, and the Pocket Aces Double IPA, their specialty beer.
A debate currently circulating in the Washington microbrewery community is legalizing the option for production-only breweries to sell growlers. These reusable beer vessels could greatly decrease the need for can and bottle production.
“If you can take your coffee mug into Starbuck’s to get your coffee in the morning, then why can’t you take your growler and get it filled up in a bar?” Thoburn questioned.
Wingman Brewers is clearly here to stay and promote local business and sustainable brewing. When asked if they would ever consider moving their brewery to a bigger city like Seattle, their reply was instant and emphatic: “Never!”
“Being from Tacoma, one of our main focuses is really representing Tacoma and building a reputation here,” Thoburn said. “We want to do a lot of outreach stuff, too,” Moyer added. A portion of their keg sales will go to various Tacoma charities, and they are figuring out how to donate their spent grain.
These busy young entrepreneurs have also participated in a number of brew fests and craft beer festivals, and they network within the regional microbrewery community, which is friendly, receptive and non-competitive, according to Thoburn and Moyer.
“For any entrepreneur or any college person, it’s difficult to find a job right now. So creating a job for yourself is sometimes a better way to do it. This is just one way college graduates can do things like this. Graduates of Puget Sound especially should feel empowered; if you went through college, you can start a business. It may not be successful, but it’s worth a try,” Thoburn advised.
“Grow a beard if you’re a guy, it makes you look older,” Moyer added.
For anyone interested in the brewing process, Thoburn and Moyer suggest tasting a lot of beer and figuring out the process as you go along.
And that ham-flavored beer?
The flavor was derived naturally from smoked barley. “We put the barely on the stove and just let it boil, essentially, until we reduced it down to syrup. We were kind of experimenting. It’s in the vein of something called Rauchbier, which is a smoked beer,” Thoburn explained.
This early experimentation with brewing is what eventually led four friends to create an exciting new Tacoma business, a bubbly proof that practice makes perfect.
[PHOTO COURTESY / GREG NISSEN]
