Precious Things Fermentation Project:

a farmhouse brewery and hidden Eden celebrating Spokane’s local beer community.

PHOTOS BY BEN MATTEWS
INTRODUCTION BY JEFF FIJOLEK
INTERVIEW WITH MORGAN MARIE AND MATT BERGMAN

Among the Pines that rise above Argonne and Bigelow Gulch sits the home of Precious Things Fermentation Project a farmhouse brewery and hidden Eden celebrating Spokane’s local beer community.

Jeff and Candace Clark are the kind of people you run into everywhere—or at least it seems that way when you all share a love for local beer.

The owners of Precious Things Fermentation Project certainly aren’t alone when it comes to developing their own beers or enjoying those crafted and served by many of the breweries that call this region home, but the Clarks have given a new meaning to the term homebrewing since opening their farmhouse brewery in 2019.

Sitting on approximately seven acres of wooded land in North Spokane, the Clarks live, brew, and open the doors of the Precious Things taphouse each weekend, where friends old and new can gather and enjoy beers in a space that encourages camaraderie, celebrates the outdoors and fosters community.

Get to know Jeff and Candace here, in their own words, and by visiting them at Precious Things Fermentation Project

8403 N. Bruce Rd.
preciousthingsbeer.com

Typically, a brewery will get grain from all over the world, hops from all over the world. When we first started, we were doing that. But we have made the decision that we’re trying to be a hyperlocal farmhouse. 100% of our base malt–and sometimes 100% of the beer–is from LINC Malt, so it’s all local.

I mean, it’s malted about 10 miles away in Spokane Valley. In fact, I just picked up a bag earlier today. They have stuff that’s grown in Idaho, but we only use the stuff that’s grown in Eastern Washington, like 60 miles away from here, and then malted right down the road.

And then you’d use noble hops from Germany or the Czech Republic for certain styles. We’ve substituted all those with American varieties that are grown in Yakima. We’re trying to make everything as hyperlocal as possible.

We frequently do collabs. It helps us out because we don’t have a ton of volume. We’re so small, the beers rotate a lot. You’re not getting a beer that has been sitting around for six months unless that was on purpose.

For our five year anniversary, we did five collabs with five different breweries:

Cold Pillow, a Hazy IPA with local homebrewer, Jake LaMere.
Infinite Wisdom, an 8% ABV Belgian Ale with Humble Abode Brewing.
A German-style rye Roggenbier produced alongside Whistle Punk Brewing
A Grisette with Seattle’s Burke-Gilman Brewing Company
Adam Boyd of Garland Brew Werks and Aaron Fernald joined forces to create Oakenstein, a wheat ale made in an oak barrel using hot granite stones.

It was pretty wild. We had these medieval tong things, picking up the hot rocks, dumping them into the wort and it just starts smoking and sizzling.

It was very satisfying.

The whole idea behind the taproom is to highlight our love of beer. Having all the stuff on the walls–those are our favorite places to drink.

In fact, some of the stuff, like the serving trays on this wall up here, we got that idea from Delirium Café in Brussels. Then we tried to make around the fireplace to be more kind of like an English Pub kind of feel. Where the bar is, it’s supposed to be more like a German bierstube. We lived in Germany for a few years. I was working in Mannheim and we were living in a little tiny village called Elmshausen. We were already into beer, but we really got into beer culture then, especially when we moved back to The States.

When Jeff got out of the Air Force, his first job was at the Pentagon in DC. We visited Portland on vacation, and he’s like, ‘I want to live here, I don’t want to wear suits all the time anymore.’ So he got a job at BLM in Oregon, then he did a detail up here and we fell in love with Spokane.

Jason Gass, co-founder of YaYa Brewing, was here one day and we were in the tasting room. We had just closed and were all hanging out and he brings up a big beerfest from Oxbow Brewing in Maine called ‘Goods From the Woods’. Killer name, but we couldn’t steal it. They have 40 acres and a lake, so people camp out, hike—they even have unmanned kegs hidden for people to find. He proposed we do something like that here, but I didn’t think we could get a permit.

Well their family has the LiveLikeLara Foundation in memory of his sister, so we started brainstorming and came up with Among The Pines as a not-for-profit beer festival.

Now, every Sunday before Labor Day, local breweries from Spokane and Spokane Valley come and set up along the trails.

Since 2021, we’ve raised nearly $50,000 for Spokane-area non-profits and Lara’s scholarship. This year, we’ll have 22 breweries, 50+ beers, food trucks & live music.

For more information about Among the Pines, visit LiveLikeLara.org