"Beer is beautiful" is the mantra at Whistle Punk Brewing. While many microbreweries focus on specific styles, Whistle Punk focuses on sharing the love across the many beers that can be brewed, and their updated-daily menu reflects that.
Whether it properly fits in a pilsner or a hefeweizen glass, a Belgian tulip or a British nonic pint, or a German dimple mug or Czech pilsner glass, Whistle Punk will have a variety that fits your style and sensibility.
For many breweries around the region, the India Pale Ale [IPA] has been tried and true. At Whistle Punk, they eschew the common and go for the route less traveled.
"When we opened, it was kind of really the height of the IBU [International Bitterness Unit] wars and the height of people really trying to just make super hoppy beer. I loved IPA, too, it's all I drank for a few years," owner and brewer Matt Hanson says. "But when we opened, we just really had a passion for brewing lager and brewing malt-forward beers... and then always being extremely seasonal."
On his 21st birthday, Matt Hanson bought a homebrew kit and was hooked.
"[My dad] was brewing in the early '80s,," Hanson says, "but he was just brewing a couple times a year. And so when I got into it, it really got him back into it."
That homebrew kit would eventually turn into a small brewing operation on his family's property, and by 2015 Matt and his father, Craig, brought the Whistle Punk brand to life.
Two years later, in 2017, they moved into their current taproom space in downtown Spokane.
"When we first opened, we went from brewing whatever, 10 gallons at a time, to just 45 gallons at a time on a one-and-a-half barrel brew system that we basically built ourselves. It was not real brew equipment even, but it was like old steam soup kettles and things like that that we kind of retrofitted to make beer. That's how it first started, and that's what we opened the taproom with. And then I realized that I was brewing like six days a week at that point. So we upgraded to a four-barrel brew house."
Whistle Punk now has two locations, one downtown and another in Millwood, the latter being where the brewing takes place.
Despite not having a familial connection to the Czech and German brewing traditions, and even though there will always be a couple of IPAs on the menu, Whistle Punk's offerings are overwhelmingly Central European, not the Pacific Northwest fare of hoppy-over-everything ales.
If they have a single signature beer, it's likely the Whistle Punk Doppelbock, which is released annually on Christmas Eve and served in the taprooms through February.
A traditional German dark lager, it clocks in at a hefty 8% alcohol by volume, with fruit cake and cinnamon flavors that deliver a full-flavored mouthfeel without the bitterness often associated with high ABV microbrews.
Unlike those bitter beers, the more malty lagers on tap at Whistle Punk are very food-friendly. While neither taproom has a kitchen, the downtown location partners with Heritage Bar and Kitchen, just across the hall, which offers its full menu to Whistle Punk patrons.
"We have a great relationship, and they're our house restaurant," Hanson says.
Open since 2017, Whistle Punk is now among the old guard in Spokane's craft brewing scene. And they've done it by bucking the trends and focusing on the beers the owners like to drink.
It's been a recipe that works, even when it sometimes sounds a bit weird. For example, there's the Tube Shot, an offering you're unlikely to find anywhere else in the region.
"You pour a 100 percent foam into a tall cylinder, almost like a Collins glass, and then the goal is to shoot it. It's basically just a full pour of foam, but it's a foam you can drink. It drinks really creamy. In the Czech Republic, they call it Mlìko, which just means milk," Hanson says.
The Tube Shot is meant to be enjoyed with friends, often in a competitive way, seeing who can take it down the fastest, but like all beers on the menu at Whistle Punk, it's likely to help move you out of your Northwestern comfort zone.
