If you are here, I imagine you have found a bumper sticker.  There is really no other way for you to know that this place even exists.  Here is the scoop.  We are a failed brewery start up turned homebrew club.  The government is a pain to deal with, so we stopped because we are poor.  You can’t buy our beer because they won’t let you.  I know, you want it.  We have the ability to make it, but the government doesn’t care.  Uncle Sam don’t give a shit.

Here is what you can do to support us: start brewing for yourself.  Brew your own beer just like we do.  It is surprisingly easy once you know what you know the simple process.  You can do it in your kitchen in an afternoon.  This is where we can help.  Homebrewing is what we love to do.  We have moved from wild-eyed noobs to true craftsmen due to our enjoyment of the process of making beer as well as the beer we get out of it.  It isn’t just the beer.  It is all the steps between that first spark in the back of your mind when you think “I wish there was a beer like this” and the first sip you get weeks, sometimes months later when you get to see your frankenstien monster come to life.

We will help you if you want it.  Mostly, we want you to want to learn.  We want you to see us having fun at a homebrew event and be insanely jealous and wish you had your own beer to bring.  It could be you.  Next time, you could be right there beside us pouring your own beer.  Beer you have created to be exactly what you want to drink.  That is where we get our satisfaction.  When we say we brew the beer we drink, we mean it.  We as individuals brew beer to our specific tastes because the possibilities are endless.  Why not have a beer that caters to you exclusively?  When that moment comes, and someone drinks your beer and looks at it and says “This is the best beer I have ever had, I have never had anything like this before,” you know you have met a kindred spirit.

There is no reason it couldn’t be you.  Look at us.

Hi, everybody!

Hi, Filthy Beers!

Dr. Nick aside, here we are, in the middle of the summer, still plugging along. But you haven’t really seen us, have you? That’s because we are delivering beer ninja style these days, so quick and silent that you’re already peeing it out before you even notice you’ve ingested any. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

We’re still here, but the realization of the true costs that go into getting a brewery up off the ground are settling in. It hasn’t deterred us, but it’s put things in perspective. This town is just too expensive to do this on our scale without inheriting an already up-to-code building somewhere in Seattle with a high amount of foot traffic. That or throwing caution to the wind with job quitting and complete and utter dedication to making beer. We’d like to think we’re that awesome, but I know as I get older,  I realize much of life is being able to accept your limitations.

But there will be beer. There’s already talks of going ahead and scaling down production in our batch sizes, hopefully allowing us to create more different types of beer with less time involved, but still having enough around for the people.

Big thanks as usual to our peeps who came out to the Filthy Communist Party, our Filthel Castro and Wake Up Filthy Beers went over well, and a good time was had by all, as usual.

So now I’m gonna put this down here in an attempt to force the issue by talking about it in a public forum. At the next Filthy party, there will be growlers to buy and fill at the event, and we’ll get things together enough to start a growler subscription program, no matter how rudimentary they both might be. It’d be great if people could take home some of the beer we’ve made and share it with others. It would also really help us get rid of the gallons and gallons we have sitting around being awesome wishing it would get drank by an appreciative beer-lover willing to throw a couple bucks its way.

Don’t you worry though, we’re still going strong and will get ahold of you when it’s time to drink beer.

Seattle Beer Week!

Posted: 19th May 2011 by ryan in Uncategorized
Tags: , , ,

What a glorious time, Seattle beer week! There is alot of things going on in the next week and a half, so get out to your local brewery or bar and join in on the festivities. Nothing planned from the filthy camp, except heading out to various events, and imbibing.

Tonight’s the big kick off, starting at Martime and ending at Naked City. Congratulations to Maritime on being this years official Seattle beer! I personally can’t wait to try some Decompression ale, and sample close to a million other beers and hopefully meet more people in the community over the next week and a half.

We couldn’t be happier to be part of such a great beer culture, mayhaps next year we can be more invovled in the dispensing of beer…once we’re legit i suppose.

check out the details here: http://seattlebeerweek.com/

click events, and find some local beer to appreciate!

WAVE OF THE FUTURE

Posted: 9th May 2011 by ben in Uncategorized

Summer is coming, there is no denying it. We’ve got big plans in store! So many plans, they probably won’t all fit in during the summer. If we call them all summer plans, and they extend past the summer months, does that mean our summer will technically extend with them? Could we have struck upon the secret to a truly endless summer? We extended that summer so hard, you now have My Wave by Soundgarden stuck in your head, and you are dreaming of surfing in Australia. BELIEVE IT.

In any case, check out the latest Filthy Beer on the Filthy Beers page. Introducing our weisenbock, Filthel Castro. We flipped Weihenstephan on its head by pumping this wheat weisen monster full of munich and honey malt to turn it bright red. It is so red it was reported for its anti-american politics during the 50′s. To balance the scales, we are using an amazing new (to us) hop strain called Delta that mixes our favorite aspects of Sterling and Cascade hops to add a crisp yet spicy depth of flavor to combat all of that complex malty goodness. This one is already in the fermentor and will be good to go for the next party. Dare we call it the Communist Party?

After that, we have options. We have a slate of 5 new session beers we will be cranking out for the summer time. These all range from 4.5% to 5.5% percent (which is still session to us, because that is the way we roll). Get excited, these are going to be great. Over the last two years, the three of us have together purposefully forced ourselves to adopt a second, lighter approach to brewing to go in concert with our boundary pushing ways in order to grow as brewers, and these are the highlights that came out of this shift in philosophy. And yes, included in this list is the direct descendant of Lightheaded, our award winning lemon pale ale.

Oh god the excitement. I can’t contain the excitement! SO MUCH EXCITEMENT.

So yes, look forward to all of this, and remember, for relaxing times, make it filthy times.

This will probably be the first post of a few to come on the topic, but recently Filthy Beers participated in a beer competition with Rain City Brewing and an excellent collection of Home and Semi-pro brewers like ourselves. It was an amazing night, mostly because we got to share our creations with the masses. If you have been to one of our parties, you know that is all we care about, nerding out about brewing, and forcing our beers into you until you say you like them.

Tonight was a great night. We brought the Filthy Gentleman and Lightheaded with us. Two supremely talented artists created portraits based on our beers for us to display during the tasting. The beers were received will. That may be the understatement of the night. Lightheaded took home both 1st place in the Brewer’s Choice category and the People’s Choice. A CLEAN SWEEP. Oh god, our egos did not need this, and this was beyond our expectations, but we knew our beers were good. Everyone agreed, and that sort of validation is so extremely rare that we feel honored, humbled, thankful, and entirely giddy simultaneously.

Here is a huge thanks to Rain City Brewing and all of the other amazing brewers at the event tonight. Also, without the help and expert knowledge of the fine folks at Cellar Homebrew, Filthy Beers would not be the smashing success it is today.

See everyone next week for our ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY!!!

National Beer Day

Posted: 7th April 2011 by ryan in Uncategorized

Hey, did you know?

It’s beer day in the good ol’ US of A.

Apparently, there was some leeway passed by FDR during prohibition times to allow beer less than 3.2 ABV to be commercially released to the public. Hence, beer day. This sounds like one of those days to celebrate drinking beer, which I have to say, is a great thing. I really wish prohibition had never happened though, it makes me wonder how much further along beer culture in America would be. We’re out here making beer though, so better late than never, right?

Anyways, happy Beer Day! Drink a beer you love, drink a beer you’re OK with, drink something rancid you made months ago and have been keeping around to see if they get any mellower with age.

But really, if you’re like me, everyday is Beer Day.

Adventures and Misadventures

Posted: 29th March 2011 by ryan in Uncategorized

hello there! been awhile, it has.

Brewed some more fortnight yesterday and there was some riding dirty. Things like the mash tun getting stuck and dropping things was par for the course. My favorite was having the tube running from the mash tun to the boiling pot popped out while it was running, and ended up on the brewery floor for a little bit. oops. but we’re filthy after all.

speaking of filthy, we’re turning one! the inception of this whole idea came about around this time last year, and we have some beers to show for it. Our party will be the 16th, but check the Facebook for details. I feel like we move so slow these days, but when i think back to where we were a year ago, this is pretty damn impressive.

could we be working harder? sure. but when you’re filthy, you do it your way.

On the pulse

Posted: 22nd February 2011 by ryan in Uncategorized
Tags: , , ,

It’s no secret that brewer Ryan is a huge fan of seattle hip hop. Now the two can collide as Macklemore takes up the torch of representing seattle on his US tour by proclaiming that seattle is filthy. Over here at filthy beers, we couldn’t agree more.

My city’s filthy!

Let the good times roll

Posted: 22nd February 2011 by ryan in Uncategorized

Thanks to everyone who came out and enjoyed our beer with us last saturday night. Everything went over pretty well, and we’re all pretty convinced this batch of Filthy Gentleman we made is by far the best batch of beer we’ve made so far. Good on you if you ended up getting some.

There are rumblings about us maybe upping our production a bit and getting more out there. Stay tuned for that!

A big weekend last weekend! Made another batch of filthy blonde, and it went stunningly well. No clogged pipes, no missed hop additions, no frozen hoses. Everything went as it should have and it was fantastic. Temperatures are back up in the mid 40′s during the day now, so our beers should be a little fruitier in their ale characteristics, hopefully.

The Filthy Gentleman has been put into kegs now, and is tasting fantastic. a week in kegs should take off the grain edge, leaving that wonderful grapefruit and hop hybrid bitterness that tickles the fancy and delights the tastebuds.

We’ve sent out a few feelers via the usual twitbook, but we might as well make it official here. We’re going to be having a birthday for our friend and brewer Ben on Feb 19th, and will have all three of our beers present at the party. Along with that, we have a bonus keg of DufFilthy, the first batch we ever made. It’s been sitting in a keg since September, and has turned into a nice light sour. it’s been under CO2 for the entire time, so it actually mellowed out and is pretty drinkable now. We’ll probably bring a few other things we’ve cooked up at home as well.

Some guy named Scott will be hosting the party for us (it’s his birthday as well) so shoot us a message at filthybeers@gmail.com or through facebook. We promise to actually check these things coming up to the big event this time, and will make sure you can find the place to drink our delicious beer. Bring a growler if you feel so inclined as well, we’ll be accepting donations.

Speaking of which, things are getting better for us and our beer making prospects. Thanks to wonderful support from so many of you that have gotten your hands on our beer, we can probably invest a little and make a lot more.

We have two more 30 gallon tanks sitting around, they just need stands to hold them up, and then a few more kegs to hold and store what we make. This also factors us putting in alot more work at the brewery, but working on beer is awesome.  temperatures are starting to pop back up again, and will allow us to make beer a little quicker. Then on to finding a more permanent space. As much as we love my parent’s garage, we know we can never set up permanent shop there.

make it to the party if you can! considering the great hop shortage of 11′ has already hit many favorite hops used by us and anyone who makes beer, this may be your last chance to get the gentleman for the rest of the year.

no pressure though.