Fish Have Feelings: A Celebration of One of Earth’s Most Important Life Forms

Happy belated Earth Day! At Aslan, Earth Day is one of our favorite holidays. That’s why we thought it would be special to switch things up this year and give Earth Day it’s very own community beer. Introducing, Fish Have Feelings! A west coast IPA featuring Salmon Safe malt and hops. Not only is this beer a refreshing treat for humans, but a minimal impact on our scaly friends in nearby waterways.

We’re always talking amongst ourselves about how lucky we are to live and make beer in one of the most gorgeous parts of the country. One of the perks of our location is being surrounded by amazing local farms, like Hedlin Farms providing us with world-class organic malt in Skagit Valley, or Roy Farms and their incredible hops, just east of us. 

You might be wondering, what is Salmon Safe?

On the Fish Have Feelings label, you might notice a new logo next to our usual Aslan hophead. This is a good place to start, since Salmon-Safe is an ecolabel that shows the ingredients in that specific product have been vetted to ensure farming and sourcing practices are helping to keep Pacific Salmon thriving in West Coast watersheds.

Much like the process for getting our beer to be certified organic, Salmon-Safe has a master list of certified farms that support their mission. This certification means that these farms are environmentally conscious when it comes to water use, sediment control, biodiversity conservation, pest management, and more.

Fortunately for us, those farms are suppliers for Skagit Valley Malting, and Yakima Chief Hops, from who we source a large portion of our ingredients from. For more on why Salmon Safe is import to Yakima Chief Hops, check out the great article they put together here! By purchasing this beer, you are directly supporting healthy watersheds and Salmon Safe farming practices.

While the goal is to create more demand for Salmon Safe farming, this project is just one ripple in the pond when it comes to making it more accessible and popular. We look forward to working with Salmon Safe more in the future and seeing the impact they make throughout the craft brewing industry!

5 Ways to Drink Sustainably

As our favorite local watering holes begin to open up for more indoor and outdoor seating, we can imagine you’re just as excited about (safely drinking) beers with friends. While it was fun bringing the bar home to our houses during quarantine, there’s nothing like a cold pint of draft. Whether you’re enjoying to-go beer at home or hitting the bars for the first time in a long time (masked up, of course!), here are some ways to drink both sustainably and responsibly.

1. Bike or walk to your favorite breweries!

This one seems obvious, but the collective impact would absolutely make a difference if enough people decided to walk/bike to drink a beer. This option is not only a way to lessen your carbon footprint, but to lessen the risk of drinking too much before getting behind the wheel.

2. Opt for beer with locally sourced ingredients.

While this may already be the case for some, buying beer from not only your favorite local breweries, but ones that buy ingredients from local farms is a great way to keep your dollar within the local economy. For instance, we buy lots of grain from Skagit Valley Malting and hops from Yakima Chief Hops. Beer ingredients are heavy and transporting palettes of grain and hop pellets is heavy and high impact in regards to carbon emissions.

3. Check with your city about what kind of six-pack or four-pack holders are recyclable.

A lot of people assume six-pack holders are recyclable right along with the beer can itself. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case for all rigid six-pack holders. We are working toward having a collection site of our own for our Pack-Tech six-pack holders since the manufacturers let us send them back to be recycled properly, but until then you can always take them to your local bottle shop where they’re used for mix-and-match six-packs.

Of course, we encourage you to continue saving the turtles by cutting the plastic rings from domestic six-packs. And to answer a FAQ, we don’t use the paper six-pack holders because most of them are made of poly-coated paper, which isn’t recyclable in Bellingham, and is high risk for microplastics when they’re just thrown away in the trash. 

When making sustainability decisions, we always have to assume the worst. In this case, that’s the six-pack holder ending up in the ocean, where microplastics could be more detrimental to the environment than an improperly recycled plastic six-pack holder.

4. Pack it in, pack it out!

We absolutely LOVE to see Aslan beer being enjoyed in the great outdoors! Nothing brings our souls more happiness than a cold beer on a mountain top. But even more so, it’s important to pack it in and pack it out when drinking craft beer outside. Leaving no trace and every environment we get to enjoy undisturbed is so important to us at Aslan. And if you see someone else’s beer cans in the wilderness, pack them back with you! We have a collective responsibility as a species to keep our planet clean and litter-free.

5. Drink Organic Beer!

Good news, if you’re drinking Aslan beer, it’s already organic! By purchasing organic beer, you’re contributing to the demand for organic products and ingredients in our area. The more organic products are available, the more affordable they become, and soon more and more breweries and restaurants will be able to serve you organic food and beers, which are not only better for the environment, but consumers, farmers, and producers.

NOW ON TAP! - Brick Is Red (North Fork Brewery Collab)

Brick Is Red - Dry Hopped Sour

5.7% ABV // 10 IBU // 1.059 OG

medium body + tart + dark chocolate & cherry notes

For this year's Washington Beer Collaboration Festival, we teamed up with North Fork Brewery head brewer, Eric Jorgensen. This deep red, moderately tart beer exudes flavors of dark chocolate and pie cherries. In the spirit of creative collaboration, we went a step further and dry hopped it with Nelson Sauvin to create a truly unique beer that exemplifies the strengths of both North Fork and Aslan brew.

HOPS:
Nelson Sauvin
MALT:
Acidulated, Carafa, Chocolate, Maris Otter, Munich

NOW ON TAP! - Lucky Break - Vienna Lager

Lucky Break - Vienna Style Lager

4.7% ABV // 20 IBU // 1.050 OG

medium body + toffee notes + clean

This special creation comes to you from the mind of Jenn Tadder, the **Bellingham Homebrewers Guild 2015 Homebrewer of the Year**. In addition to some new hardware for her trophy shelf, Jenn won the opportunity to brew a collaboration beer with our Masterbrewer, Frank, and will enter it as Bellingham’s first Pro-Am entry in the WA Beer Awards! The result is a delicately malty beer with notes of toffee, a soft bitterness, and a clean, refreshing finish.

HOPS:
Hallertau, Sterling
MALT:
C-60, Carafa, Munich, Pilsner, Vienna

Brew Collaboration: Base Camp Brewing Company PART II - B'HAM

Base Camp Brewing Co. was in-house this last weekend to do the second batch of our collaboration beer. Our first collaboration happened down at Base Camp Brewing where we decided on an Imperial Steam Bock. So... Base Camp Brewing has a batch of Imperial Steam Bock and now we have a batch! In a couple weeks we will be releasing both batches with a name. We brewed beer, talked beer, drank beer and went on beer adventures.  

Brew Collaboration: Base Camp Brewing Company PART I - PDX

We had a blast working with the team at Base Camp Brewing Company on our 1st Brewery Collaboration. We went down and brewed a batch on their system and in two weeks they will come up here and brew the same style on our system. We'll release both in Bellingham and Portland. It's a great way for Aslan to get some fun exposure in Oregon and Base Camp to get exposure up here! The beer is an Imperial Steam Bock, not yet named. Look for a big event at each of our breweries in the next 6 weeks!!

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