Making its ascent

Like a mountaintop emerging from the mist, Quartzite Brewing is starting to take shape in Chewelah.

Named after the peak that presides over the town of 2,600 people, Quartzite quietly opened two weekends ago. The hours and the beers are limited – Friday and Saturday, 4-8 p.m., with one small keg of each style poured per night – and there’s no signage yet on the building.

“For now, we’re focusing on the beer side of things,” says co-owner/brewer Patrick Sawyer, who runs the business with partner Jake Wilson, both 27.

The reception so far, he says, has been “way better than we expected. The beer has been getting a good reaction, but people were more amazed that two young people chose to open a business in Chewelah, and did something to this extent.”

He and Wilson transformed the former auto shop off Highway 395 into a bright, airy, modern-industrial space with a gray concrete floor, blue and gray walls and a ceiling covered with rough-cut wood planks. The rustic bar top was fashioned from a slab of Douglas fir.

Old skis and snowshoes eventually will adorn the walls. Two garage-style doors open onto what will become a patio this spring.

There’s no TV, to avoid any competition with the local sports bar. Food is available from a handful of restaurants nearby, some of which offer delivery.

Sawyer hopes the brewery will become a focal point for Chewelah, much like Republic Brewing has accomplished 75 miles to the northwest.  “They’ve built a community there that’s astonishing,” he says.

The Denver native grew up around craft beer; his brother-in-law was an original employee at Wynkoop. But he didn’t start brewing himself until moving here four years ago, when he and Wilson ran across a homebrew kit that Jake’s mother had bought his father many years ago.

“It had never been used,” Sawyer says. “Everything was still pretty much in the original packaging.”

They brewed a recipe using the old ingredients that came with the kit. “It was very, very bad, but we enjoyed the process,” Sawyer says. “We kept up with it, and that led to this.”

They’re currently turning out five beers on a tidy but tiny one-barrel system, all named after peaks in the Colville National Forest.