Located in Yakima Valley, a premiere hop-growing region, Bale Breaker Brewing Company finds itself surrounded (literally) by thousands of acres of hops. Sitting in Bale Breaker’s beer garden in Moxee provides consumers with a one-of-a-kind view of one of beer’s raw ingredients while they sip on delectable Bale Breaker brews (that likely has some of the prior year’s harvested hops in it). The brewery’s backstory, team, beer and connection to its community have, in less than 10 years, propelled the company to being the third largest craft brewery in Washington. Such incredible growth becomes plausible when you get to know more about Bale Breaker.
Founded by Meghann Quinn, Kevin Quinn (Quinn) and Kevin Smith (Smitty), the backstory to Bale Breaker stretches all the way back to the early 20th century. It begins with Leota Mae and B.T. Loftus, Meghann and Smitty’s great grandparents, who moved to and purchased farmland in Moxee, Washington in the 1920s. They started by growing potatoes and vegetables for their family needs.
As Prohibition (1920-1933) came to its inevitable end, Leota Mae had the foresight to understand the impending national need for hops as the country celebrated the end of the “Great Experiment” with a whole lot of beer. The family replanted their entire farmland with hops. They been in the hop growing business ever since, growing from less than 10 acres of hop vines to over 2,400 acres today. Through their two farms, B.T. Loftus Ranches and Tributary Hop Farms, the family contributes a substantial amount of hops on an annual basis to Yakima Chief Hops, a 100% grower-owned global hop supplier that connects professional and home brewers with family hop farms.
Meghann grew up on Loftus Ranches and, upon graduating from high school, “wanted nothing to do with farming or hops” or with being an entrepreneur. She received a degree in business finance from the University of Washington (UW) where she met her husband and now business partner, Quinn. Meghann started as a management consultant in the corporate world, but quickly realized that she held typical entrepreneurial traits and did not wish to work for someone else.
After graduating from UW with degrees in business finance and geographic information systems, Quinn worked for UBS Financial in Seattle. He later moved to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho where he worked at the corporate headquarters of The Pita Pit, traveling the country to open new restaurant franchises. The skills and experiences Quinn gained during these years would prove useful as Bale Breaker has grown and expanded its reach across the Northwest.
Smitty grew up along with his sister, Meghann, and brother, Patrick, on Loftus Ranches. He started out working at the farm by drying hops during harvest, taking hop samples and driving the water truck. He did his first homebrew with Patrick and Quinn when he was 19 and, from there, Smitty knew he wanted to make it a career in the brewing industry (Meghann was also an enthusiastic homebrewer). Shortly after graduating from UW, Smitty submitted his homebrew to around 30 different breweries in the Seattle area. That led to a job with Two Beers Brewing Company where he was quickly promoted from cellerman to brewer.
Meghann, Quinn and Smitty decided to move forward with opening the brewery in the fall/winter of 2011, envisioning a “farm to glass” brewery. The Bale Breaker name was inspired by how hops are packaged before being sent off to Yakima Chief; in bale form (see picture above). Instead of sending the hops off as a bale, Meghann, Quinn and Smitty, for the first time in family history, would be breaking them right on site to add straight to the beer. Thus, they became bale breakers, and the name for the brewery was born.
Before opening the company doors, the team spent a year perfecting their initial two flagship beers, Topcutter IPA and Field 41 Pale Ale, on a 10-gallon SABCO BrewMagic system. They did 130 batches of the two beers, refining the recipes with each batch, starting with tweaking the malt bill, then the bittering hops and last the aroma hop additions.
During the 2012 hop harvest, many professional breweries visited Loftus Ranches, such as the likes of Ken Grossman (Sierra Nevada), Vinny Cilurzo (Russian River), John Mallet (Bell’s) and others. They each tried Topcutter IPA and Field 41 Pale Ale and provided overwhelmingly positive feedback. Talk about validation. Still, within the friendly ribbing that is part of the craft beer industry, Vinny remarked, “Okay, good job, you can do it on a 10-gallon system. Now you’ve got one year because we’re all coming back for the next harvest, and you better have it together [on the professional system].” Challenged accepted.
Bale Breaker is a production brewery producing a high volume of beer and primarily deriving revenue from distribution to packaged stores (such as grocery and liquor stores). The family decided to go this route for three reasons: (1) they highly respected breweries like Russian River, New Belgium, Sierra Nevada and Boston Beer Company, in part, because of their ability to make high quality beer and distribute it regionally to a wide consumer base; (2) there was not really a brewery in the Yakima/Eastern Washington area that was doing anything like those breweries; and (3) Meghann and Smitty had spent a lot of time working in restaurants during college and, although they loved the industry, they didn’t want to deal with the headaches attendant to a brew pub model.
Bale Breaker opened in April 2013 smack-dab in the middle of the family hop farm. Sitting in the brewery’s beer garden while surrounded by hop vines leaves a feeling of connectedness to the experience one may feel sipping wine at a vineyard. The brewery’s popularity from the beginning has kept the team forever on their toes. For instance, the business plan did not account for the taproom being very busy, but the projected first year taproom sales were hit in the first six weeks of operations. Bale Breaker adapted with brewery renovations and upgrades, starting with expanding the bathroom to accommodate for the much greater foot traffic than anticipated as nobody likes to wait when nature calls.
In less than a decade, Bale Breaker catapulted itself all the way to the number three craft brewery in Washington. The business plan accounted for hitting 15,000 barrels of beer (465,000 gallons) after seven years of operation. They hit that number in two years. The team did design the brewery to easily expand (the panels of the building could be removed and the footprint expanded). They added 15,000 square feet onto the back of the brewery in 2016 to add fermenters and an additional laboratory (for better quality control and testing), upgrade the packaging equipment and fit in a pilot brew house (which Bale Breaker uses to produce taproom exclusive beers, like barrel-aged beers and sours). The brewery sold 26,200 barrels of beer in 2020 (812,200 gallons), shattering their expected growth targets.
Bale Breaker’s “Homegrown” lineup of beers are something unique to the brewery, not to mention being super cool. Now on their ninth iteration, Homegrown is a celebration of the family’s history and livelihood, plus the team fulfilling its promise to be a “farm to glass” brewery. The beers under this lineup are made completely with hops and barley grown on the family farms, resulting in a freshness and experience that nearly all other breweries simply cannot match. There’s nothing like sipping on a beer while surrounded by the crops that contributed to your refreshment. Beyond the Homegrown series, all of Bale Breaker’s year round beers incorporate only hops grown right in their backyard.
The brewery recently brought “the bounties of the east to the west” with an additional taproom in the Ballard District. A recent change to Washington law permitted a brewery and cidery to operate out of the same location… so long as there is also a distillery on-site. No one said liquor laws made much sense. Caitlin Braam, the founder of Yonder Cider, reached out to Meghann, Smitty and Quinn when this law was in the process of being implemented, and pitched the idea of teaming up to take advantage of the change. Bale Breaker saw it as a natural partnership that would provide Seattleites with great beverages in a unique setting.
The Bale Breaker and Yonder Cider Taproom opened its doors on September 4th, serving over 1,500 beer lovers on that day alone. With 16 beers and 16 ciders on tap at any given time, an expansive outdoor beer garden and the feels from eastern Washington, the new taproom has since been providing Seattleites with a completely different drinking experience in the Emerald City.
COVID-19 affected breweries of all sizes and models. As a production brewery relying heavily on packaged store sales, Bale Breaker did not go through the exact struggles as craft breweries heavily reliant on taproom sales. In fact, production at Bale Breaker in 2020 was up 9% versus 2019 even though taproom sales were down 50% (sales generated through curbside pickup). Given the margin breweries make on taproom sales, it still hurt Bale Breaker. However, having a mixed model of distribution and direct-to-consumer pre-pandemic helped Bale Breaker avoid many of the money flow problems experienced by breweries deeply focused on the taproom.
Even though Bale Breaker’s taproom was shut down for 11 months and 1 week, “not that we were counting or anything,” as Quinn said, the brewery still needed to expend significant time, effort and resources to implement safety protocols to protect 30 employees who were in the brewery on a daily basis. These protocols included masks, social distancing, extra cleaning, regular temperature checks and adjusting work schedules to minimize close contacts, all of which are still the norm. The brewery also turned their closed taproom into a breakroom to allow for social distancing during employee breaks, and had employees who could work from home do so whenever possible.
Constantly shifting state and local safety protocols about what a brewery could and could not do (including whether they could stay open at all) made it difficult for those in the industry to anticipate what the next day or even hour would bring. Owners and employees alike were consistently aware of and worried about themselves, their friends and family, and consumers’ wellbeing on a nearly 24 hours, 7 days a week basis. These points, along with so many other complexities introduced by the ongoing pandemic, wore on the Bale Breaker team.
In response, Meghann, Quinn and Smitty checked in more often to make sure their team were doing okay, asking seemingly simple, yet meaning questions, like, “How are you doing?” and “How are you feeling?” “It’s okay to be stressed and it’s okay to be worried.” It helped. To further support the team’s mental health, Bale Breaker also:
(1) carried out many virtual meetings to stay in constant communication – not something the brewery had delved into before but ended up being so helpful; (2) set up socially distanced happy hours in the taproom, making sure employees still had social interaction while staying safe; (3) changed the compensation structure to give employees financial stability/certainty during uncertain times (for example, Bale Breaker’s taproom staff were paid throughout the time the taproom was closed); and (4) changed the paid time off structures to make sure that, if anyone had no childcare or needed to quarantine, they felt comfortable taking time off without sacrificing a paycheck. These initiatives helped the entire Bale Breaker team make it through the hardest times of the pandemic.
Bale Breaker is hometown and homegrown Yakima valley, through and through. This authenticity led to amazing support first from its local community and, after quickly making a name for itself with top of class beer, then the entire thirsty Pacific Northwest. Is world domination next? Who knows, but the team’s current vision is to stay the course and build on the momentum they have amassed in the Northwest, continuing to distribute in their region the beers you know and love while also pushing the limits on new and exciting beer styles. That may be tough news for those dwelling elsewhere in the country, but the Northwest could not be happier, and rightfully so.
