Sightglass: Reuben's Brews' Unusual DNA
Ten years ago, Grace and Adam Robbings founded Reuben’s Brews on a shoestring in a thousand square-foot space in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood. They were among the six thousand breweries that would open in the next decade, and the scores that would soon stipple the Emerald City. Only a few would emerge as regional pace-setters, and those breweries helped shape the evolution of American craft brewing. Reuben’s Brews found itself leading Seattle’s revival through a legitimately improvisational, innovative approach (as opposed to a merely rhetorical one).
A month ago I made my first visit to Seattle since February 2020 to see the changes at Reuben’s, get a sense of the neighborhood today, and try to characterize what makes Reuben’s Reuben’s at their one-decade anniversary.
An Auspicious Victory
Shortly after the birth of their first child, Grace bought a homebrew kit for Adam in their son’s name. She had heard him complain about how he would improve certain beers had he brewed them, and as he joked, “It was time for me to put up or shut up.” That first system was a typical starter or “stovetop” model, but Adam almost immediately decided it was inadequate. “Within a month I’d already upgraded,” he said. Soon he was brewing like crazy. “Then within three months I’d upgraded to a twenty-five gallon system in the garage.” The new system—capable of making well more than a full keg per batch—wasn’t necessary because the new father needed so much beer, but because he had caught the bug of experimentation. “I was doing multiple batches and trying all kinds of different things.” He’d split batches and hop or ferment them differently, trying to figure out how all the elements functioned.
—Nat Pellman, General Manager of Brouwer's Cafe
Adam would eventually go on to UC Davis to do the intensive program, but in the meantime, he was just brewing up a storm and having fun. The signature moment in this early phase came when they were allowed to pour Adam’s beer at a neighborhood event.
“There’s a really great organization here called the Phinney Neighborhood Association close to our house, and they have a beer festival twice a year,” Grace explained. “As homebrewers, we went and poured our beer there. It was such a fun night and everybody was excited to try our beer. We ended up winning the people’s choice award that night. There were 800 people and several breweries, so it was really a great honor.”
Because they needed a name as a placeholder for the event, they thought it would be fun to use their son’s name. Reuben’s Brews was born. (Sort of.)
The win made them think seriously about opening a brewery. Seattle bars were emailing about buying kegs of beer. Unfortunately, the tight real estate market and limited industrial spaces ground everything to a slow march. They pursued several sites and made multiple offers, but time after time, they lost out. Eventually they found what became their first site, the tiny one in Ballard, and installed a five-barrel system. By that time, it had been nearly two years since their win at the Phinney beer event.
Grace (c) and Adam (r) in the hop fields.
Born to brew—Reuben, about the time of the first brew kit.
Ballard taproom
Thinking Like a Homebrewer
Reuben’s has a corporate philosophy they call “glass backward.” In-house, it means starting with the end product and then building it, using whatever ingredients and processes are necessary. That idea came from Adam’s experience as a homebrewer, when he would never think about things like ingredient cost or long or convoluted processes. He highlighted this when we emailed recently.
“Back before we opened, I was in a homebrew club with some amazing brewers. The beers we brewed were usually better than those commercially available—and this would be the genesis of where one of our core guiding principles comes from—our Glass Backwards approach. I realized our club could make great beers because we didn't worry about process difficulties, production efficiencies, or ease of supply—we concentrated only on what we wanted the beer to be.”
—Kim Sharpe-Jones, Washington Beer Blog
This is definitely reflected in the kinds of beers they make, including a coolship project, barrel rooms, and experiments like their all-cryo IPAs, which are so expensive they couldn’t afford to can them. But it’s true in another, perhaps more essential way—one that is central to the brewery’s DNA. Reuben’s is easily one of the most experimental breweries in the Northwest, and still one of the most prolific. Like a home brewery, Reuben’s makes a lot of different beers.
That experimentation has led to multiple phases, but the through-line has always been looking to the next experiment. When they launched the brewery, they made several rye beers—a throwback to the roasted rye IPA that won the people’s choice award, and a reflection of Adam’s curiosity about the overlooked grain. Later they became known for their dark ales. An early win in gose at the GABF sent sourheads their way. Of course, most fans today probably associate them with hoppy beers today—a vein of experimentation that really picked up in the past several years. Yet through each era, they were churning out new beers the way Adam had done when he first got into brewing. The thirst for experimentation is baked into their process. When I walked around the brewery last month with Matt Lutton, he mentioned that they currently make around 180 beers a year—a new one every other day.
This is very much the way a homebrewer thinks. They love to tinker with recipes and ingredients, and no sooner is a batch in the carboy than they’re thinking of the next beer. Stop in at Reuben’s Ballard taproom now and you'll find wild ales, dark beers, lagers, kettle sours, probably something made of rye—oh, and something hoppy. Many somethings hoppy. For their tenth anniversary, they decided to do ten collaborations—a very ambitious, very Reuben’s way to celebrate. With three breweries, Reuben’s has the ability to make tons of different beers—and they don’t seem any more hesitant to use them than Adam was a decade ago.
Before 2012, when the brewery was founded, brewing thirty beers in a year would have been considered ambitious. Part of what made Reuben’s seem exciting was their constant stream of new beers. Their experimentation attracted fans who were increasingly coming to Ballard’s new brewery scene because of its vibrancy. Reuben’s was an obvious stop because of their diversity. They didn’t necessarily build a business model to capture this excitement, but that’s how it worked out.
Growth and Expansion
2012 was a good year to found a brewery. The market was growing rapidly, but craft was still on the margins of significance. IPAs had only recently become the most popular craft brand, and the segment as a whole constituted just 6.5% of the beer market. New brewery owners couldn’t know what was coming, of course—they had to assume craft beer would continue to grow incrementally. (Instead, the dollar and volume shares grew at double digits for years, and the number of breweries tripled.) At the time, Grace was teaching economics at a community college, and Adam was an accountant. They were keenly aware that businesses fail, and described themselves as risk-averse. “Let’s start at a size that if it all goes horribly wrong we get to keep the house,” Adam said, describing why they settled on a small facility. “Reuben can run around in the [new brewery] space for the three years of the lease and then that’s all done.” Starting with a small brewery kept the debt—and risk—low. But it had another effect: “At six months we are at capacity,” Adam said. It meant they were ready to expand almost the moment they were born.
—Mark Krukar, beer fest organizer
The first space was famously tiny. Mark Krukar, who organized that Phinney Neighborhood event Grace and Adam won, said, “It was always packed, and the space was so small they had to move the furniture out of the way when it was time to brew.” Nat Pellman, the general manager at the legendary pub Brouwer’s, recalled those days with amusement as well. “Mike would brew all morning then work the taproom at night, so stories of napping on the grain sacks and all sorts of laughs were had by all.”
“Our original space was just 1,000 square feet,” Adam said, confirming those memories. “It functioned as our taproom / brewery / packaging hall depending on the time of the week and where we put the bench seats.”
Amazingly, Adam was able to coax 1,200 barrels of beer from that first five-barrel system, but they knew they’d have to grow. Despite the early success, though, the Robbings remained cautious. They added a bigger space with a taproom and new 15-barrel brewhouse in 2015, but it was still undersized. They secured another lease for a building across the parking lot from that one, which they used for fermentation. They had to wheel freshly-brewed wort fifty feet across the lot. Finally in late 2018, a new 11,000-square-foot warehouse came online a half mile away. It had a 30-barrel brewhouse and plenty of space for tanks and a canning line.
Patrick and I visited that brewery in December 2017 to interview Grace and Adam for the podcast, and they were already looking toward the next brewery. We wanted to interview them because by that time they had already earned a reputation for quality and experimentalism—which included traditional styles like the kind Patrick and I champion. After five years, it had become a leader in the city (even if its volume was a fraction of Georgetown and Fremont).
Looking Forward
Over the next five years, the brewery continued to grow, thanks to that new production brewery and vibrant branding highlighted by that “R” logo. Reuben’s brewed 25,000 barrels last year, and even through Covid, they’ve always managed to grow. That growth came not just in barrels, but in new product lines, a soccer sponsorship, the many new buildings, and new philanthropic work like the Mosaic State Brewers Collective.
—Kendall Jones, Washington Beer Blog
For the first time, it seems like the brewery is beginning to think about focus rather than constant expansion in all directions. The tenth anniversary may itself be creating space for a moment of reflection. To celebrate, the brewery put together a ten-beer series of collaborations that all tipped their hat to important influences. They’re doing a beer with Adam’s old homebrew club, with the Phinney Neighborhood Association. They did a beer with Alan Sprints, who sold them the first barrels in their barrel program. These point to milestones for the brewery, those significant moments when the nascent impulses were codified into that DNA that makes a brewery. As Reuben’s looks to its next ten years, those celebrated influences become the foundation of the brewery’s legacy and identity.
Looking forward, Reuben’s will be joining that select group of Washington breweries that aren’t just driving buzz, but helping define and support Washington’s beer industry. This tenth anniversary is in some ways codifying those qualities that allowed it to succeed. New breweries may have buzz, but they don’t quite have an established personality. Reuben’s, entering craft-beer middle-age at ten, can look back with pride at what they’ve created: a reputation for fun experiments, classics like Crikey, as well as a fun, homey, and welcoming taproom anchoring Ballard’s raucous brewery scene.
Photos taken by me or provided by Reuben’s.