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

Hidden Mother’s baby steps

Rick Bonino

Mike Detar’s dreams are so vivid you can almost taste them.

He talks of beers made from hops and grain grown on his family’s 44-acre Liberty Lake spread. He envisions brewing his organic wild ales in hollowed-out tree trunks, and creating a cave to condition the bottles.

But first, Detar needs to make some money to get his new brewery, The Hidden Mother (after the yeasts that give birth to beer), off the ground. So his initial, more mainstream releases – a smoked porter and an imperial rye stout – are about ready to roll out in kegs to area accounts.

“This is my baby, and I need to get things moving,” said Detar, who previously brewed at Paradise Creek in Pullman. “It’s been a pretty crazy run so far, for sure.”

Detar, 33, grew up here but moved to the Bay Area at age 18 on a bicycling team sponsorship. He worked for 11 years at a bakery in Berkeley, which “opened up that whole world of yeast cultivation.”

It also taught him the importance of a creative, passionate approach. “It’s not just a recipe, it’s what you’re putting into it,” he said.

He began homebrewing eight years ago and decided to go professional, selling his house to fund the project. It was going to cost too much in California, so he moved back here in the fall of 2013.

Detar’s five-barrel brewhouse was built by a metal-fabricating friend in Oakland. He bought fermenters from Selkirk Abbey and Waddell’s.

On Feb. 1, he was finally ready for his first official brew day – one which started at 8:30 a.m. and ended 18 hours later, as he worked to get the system dialed in. The second brew last week was a bit better, at 13 hours.

He’s still figuring things out. The stout, typically 10.5 percent alcohol by volume, came in at 8.5 percent while the porter was 5.5 compared to the usual 7.5, though samples show the flavor didn’t suffer.

Now it’s time to start selling the beer, something Detar hopes will be helped by his industry connections from Paradise Creek and from working at Crafted Tap House in Coeur d’Alene. Along with distribution, he plans to open a taproom soon, preferably in a location that also can serve as a barrel-aging facility.