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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Wild Goose chase

Rick Bonino

UPDATED WEDNESDAY 5/4

Chef Aaron Crumbaugh (left) and Goose Island brewer Austin Niestrom take a break from preparations for Tuesday's Migration Week kickoff at the Washington Cracker Company building.

If you only know Goose Island for its flagship IPA or more familiar Belgian-style Sofie and Matilda, you’re in for a treat this week.

The Chicago brewery's Migration Week visit to Spokane is showcasing a wide range of its creativity. Tuesday night's kickoff at the Washington Cracker Company building featured barrel-aged Bourbon County Stout (last year's regular release and a version infused with cinnamon and chocolate), three sours – Halia (with peaches), Gillian (strawberries, white pepper and honey) and Madame Rose (cherries) – and the reserve Pere Jacques Abbey-style dubbel.

More Bourbon County Stout vintages and variations will appear at the week's remaining events, including tonight's 6:30 p.m. Magic Lantern screening of a film about the beer, “Grit & Grain”; Lunch With the Brewer on Thursday from noon to 2 at the South Hill Growler Guys (look for the wild-fermented, barrel-aged Lolita Belgian-style pale with raspberries); and a closing Celebration of Beer on Friday at 6 at The Blackbird.

“One of the coolest things I think about Goose Island is that we don’t really have a house flavor,” says brewer Austin Niestrom, who’s in town for the week. “We use upwards of three dozen different yeast strains, and they all bring to the table very diverse attributes and flavors and aromas.”

And Niestrom knows his yeast. The Chicago-area native was working in beer sales with the Binny’s Beverage Depot chain there when he met Goose Island’s senior marketing manager, who invited him to send a resume.

After starting out as an intern in the barrel-aging program at the beginning of 2014, Niestrom scored a full-time job in fermentation management in the brewery’s cellar, a sometimes underappreciated part of the brewing process.

“There’s a lot of romance in the boil,” he says, while working on the fermentation and conditioning “cold side” is “like playing defense in a sport – the guy who scores the goal, he gets all the high-fives and the fame, but a brewery cannot be successful without a highly functional cellar.”

The dozen-odd brewers from both sides of the process take turns traveling the country for Migration Week stopovers in selected cities. Niestrom previously took part in programs in Nashville and Vancouver, B.C.

“We want to share the message and culture that we’re trying to bring to the beer community,” he says. “It’s one of the most rewarding parts of our job, actually getting a chance to drink with the people who are drinking our product.

“Brewers get kind of caught up in their 40 or 60 hours a week, brewing beer in a factory, basically. It’s a lot less social than some of the other jobs in the beer industry. So when you get an opportunity to socialize and experience our product, you get that reward back.”

To some, Goose Island is best known for its acquisition by Anheuser-Busch InBev in 2011, which led to it being dropped from the Brewers Association’s official ranks of craft breweries. But that’s a narrow way to look at it, Niestrom says.

“I understand where people come from as far as being defensive or suspicious about the relationship,” he says. “But if you come to Chicago and see our brewery, we’re quite craft. We’ve got the same sort of team doing the same stuff in the same old brewery with the same old equipment.”

While some of the mainstream beers now are brewed at bigger A-B facilities, such as the IPA, Honker’s ESB and 312 Urban Wheat, each batch is sent to Chicago for tasting and testing to ensure quality, Niestrom says.  

“They’re very hands-off, they allow us to express ourselves in the same way that we always have,” he says of A-B. “The support of their distribution networks is really the biggest thing that helped us grow.

“I think the best part about the relationship, that’s underappreciated by the consumer, is the fact that we have access to generations of knowledge about brewing, and also the best ingredients available in the world. It really helps us make a premium product.”