Nestled in the heart of Spokane, Washington.

Whistle Punk Brewing is more than just a place to grab a pint.

It's a labor of love built by a father and son.

Dedicated to craft and community.

Cheers!

My name is Matt Hanson.

Co-owner, brewer here at Whistle Punk Brewing.

And my name is Craig Hanson.

I, happened to be Matt's dad.

Beer is, a beautiful product.

Something that we're very passionate about is presenting it in a way that does showcase the beauty of the beer.

You know, of the malts, of the color of the way light passes through it.

It's awesome working with Matt and Craig.

They're, really highly motivated people.

They're hard workers.

The coolest father son brewery duo.

They're just fun.

They feed off of each other.

How did this small brewery carve out its own place in Spokane's thriving craft beer scene?

I turned 21 in 2008, went and bought a small home brew kit, and brewed in our little apartment on a stovetop.

Just like everyone starts out.

I fell in love with it.

Through that, it rekindled my dad to start brewing and it was a shared interest and we started brewing a lot together.

It's pretty awesome to be able to work with, one of my sons every day and have that opportunity that a lot of parents don't get.

I grew up in that small town logging community and knew what a whistle punk was.

A whistle punk was a member of logging crews during the early 20th century.

Their primary role was to operate a steam whistle that communicated crucial signals to the rest of the team.

We wanted to do something that tied into our family because it is a family business, and also it felt like a brewery name.

With a new name selected and the acquisition of some retrofitted brewing equipment.

Matt and Craig created Whistle Punk's first beers.

Whistle Punk, having no brewhouse of their own, was featured at other local breweries, where they quickly built a following.

It kind of became this mystery thing of where do you find Whistle Punk beer?

And that was, I felt like where, we might have something here.

And by 2017, Whistle Punk had moved into their downtown location and had a place to call their own.

From there, Matt and Craig have continued to make beer and refine their craft.

Welcome to the brewhouse, the brew space.

It's a tight space in here, but I'll show you around.

So what we do, at the beginning of a brew day, we start over here at our grain mill.

Basically, we add different barleys, different grains.

It's going to grind them, take them up here into our mash tun.

A mash tun is basically a big kettle where all the grains and water go into.

And you create sugar water, which is called wort.

We're kind of recirculating the beer or wort right now on top of itself.

All this is just happening.

We run this for a while.

And then we're going to transfer all of this over here into the brew kettle.

We're going to boil this beer, this specific beer for about two hours.

And then during that time we're going to hop it with different hops throughout it.

And then we'll chill it down and transfer it all the way up into that tank, where we will then pitch yeast ferment for two weeks and lager it for about six weeks.

This specific beer is, kind of a Pacific Northwest take on a Bavarian lager.

And so we serve this one kind of, Keller style.

We call it our “tank beer”.

So it will transfer into this large tank in here.

And this beer never gets package, never gets kegged.

It just goes straight from the serving tank and into the pint glass.

We do make a lot of historical style beers, a lot of very traditional style beers.

When we put out these German style beers, we want it.

We want someone who went to Germany or is from Germany to be able to drink that and say, this is very close, this is good.

So this is like really traditional, like Czech glass.

These are Czech style faucets.

And so they're meant to actually kind of articulate.

So you can kind of control the foam on them.

And then you actually dip the faucet into the glass, which would typically be a no-no with most beer.

But as you can see, it creates a real nice tight foam that kind of holds on.

Their employees always come over and make sure we're comfortable.

They feel like friends they've known for a long time.

Whistle Punk feels like, it's it's a cool local little brewery, got a great selection of beers.

The vibes are really awesome.

It's really chill.

We kind of created our own vibes too.

So it's just, it's fun to be a part of.

The community we've created at Whistle Punk is something that we're extremely proud of, the people who have met through our taproom.

It's really incredible the stories that have come out of it.

We've had people get married in our taproom.

We've had numerous proposals.

It's designed for people to sit and talk, families and people gather around this, and that's what we like to see the most.

Instead of walking in and it's a party atmosphere every day.

We like the social aspect of it is what we like.

So they're trying to build a community where people can gather, and hang out.

It makes me feel great working for one of the best breweries in the in the state.

Every single day I get to make beer.

I still love the process of brewing beer.

You get to see it from start to finish.

You get to see this creation, and then you share this creation with other people.

I feel so fortunate, so blessed that, you know, we've got to build this together.

And it's really been a dream that's been really neat.