A Perry good year

Perry Street Brewing is only three years old, but it’s celebrating a golden anniversary of sorts this weekend.

The headline for 2016 was winning a gold medal at the Great American Beer Festival – only the third time an Inland Northwest brewery has done so in the renowned competition’s 30-year history.

And as part of the anniversary celebration Friday and Saturday, it’s again raffling a Golden Growler, good for a free fill and a pint each week for the coming year.

In its second year of entries, Perry Street captured GABF gold for its Session IPL (India pale lager), a former seasonal that since has been added to the year-round lineup. Previous local winners were No-Li in 2012 and the now-defunct Coeur d’Alene Brewing back in 1988.

While he received positive feedback from judges the previous year, owner/brewer Ben Lukes says, “You never expect to go down there and win. The competition is so tough. That’s the level we aspire to compete at, tasting these amazing beers that are all around us and seeing how we stack up against them.”

Lukes also won the inaugural IPA Showdown at last spring’s Spokane Craft Beer Week with his regular India pale ale, which he says also got good notes at GABF this year. “It’s right where we want it to be,” he says.

Perry Street is the first Spokane brewery to experiment with lupulin powder, a concentrated form of the oils and resins in hops. That’s a fixture in the Citra Dust Double IPA, the taproom’s top seller despite (or maybe because of) its hefty 9 percent alcohol by volume.

“We have 50-year-old women in here drinking three of these big beers, and they only weigh 100 pounds,” Lukes chuckles.

He last week launched the first in a yearlong series of hazy, juicy New England-style IPAs, and also plans weekly firkins of infused, cask-conditioned beers.

But beer innovations and awards aside, he says, the major achievement of year three was adding an in-house food menu featuring small plates, sandwiches and salads – including fresh produce from the South Perry farmers market, in season – under the guidance of chef Alisha Van Guilder.

“What she’s been able to accomplish out of an 8-by-11 kitchen is pretty outrageous,” Lukes says. “We wanted to get awesome craft food into our brewery, and people have really responded.”