Ice Harbor In Kennewick Creates Great Beer & Food

Mike Hall couldn't have imagined that he'd create a legendary eastern Washington craft beer when he started brewing in his basement.  "No, we had no clue at the time, but you know we have definitely grown a lot," said Hall.

I'll say that hobby has turned into a full time love affair. The Ice Harbor brand of beer is some of the best known across the northwest, but you would never know how good Ice Harbor beer really is by Mike's humble nature. 

"I started brewing at home in the late 80's and then in 1996 my partner and I decided to open a microbrewery,"said Hall. 

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It was a pretty smart decision. Fast forward to 2017, Ice Harbor now operates two bustling locations, the marina at Clover Island and on Benton Street in historic downtown Kennewick. Both spots have their own identity, but they pack the same flavor.

The Benton Street facility where they brew the Ice Harbor beer, sells supplies to home brewers and where you can relax and have beer inside the pub. The man at the center of the brewery is Russ Corey, whose been working with Mike Hall for 17 years. "Russ has been, he's been awesome. He's my right hand man. He runs the brewery. Him and Adam produce the beers and they've done a really solid job. They won the People's Choice Award five years in row for best brewery and I think that speaks volumes about the quality of the beer. It's really come a long ways," said Hall.

The pub has its regulars like Dale Walter who says it's just a comfortable place he can hang out with friends. 

It's sort of like Cheers. It's just that people are friendly, everybody is friendly, there's all ages, said Walter.

John Peonke from Blaine, Washington who knows his beer says he never misses a visit when he is on business in eastern Washington. "It's well-balanced. You know, good beer been brewing it for a while. I enjoy their pale ale." says Peonke.

When it comes to pub food, Ice Harbor is right on top. We got a look inside the kitchen as some favorites were flying out. How about the garlic herb wrap stuffed with chicken, chopped romaine, diced tomatoes, Parmesan cheese, topped with buffalo sauce, and Cesar dressing. But what really caught my eye wa the Das Uberswine. It's a barbecued pulled pork sandwich topped with jalapenos, ham, smoked bacon, melted pepper jack cheese, served on a Ciabatta roll. 

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We took a trip over to Ice Harbor on Clover Island. Same great food and brew, but more of an island kind of vibe. You can enjoy some food on the deck while taking in a breeze, but if it gets a bit too hot, there's a welcoming crew took a visit into the Ice Harbor Marina kitchen where kitchen manager Mike Ellig was cooking up a bunch of beauties that was making my mouth water. We're talking things like the roast beef sandwich and the Ruben sandwich, wraps, and chicken wings, burgers you can hardly wrap your mouth around. 

If that sounds good, check out their Bombs Burger, it's a single patty burger with mushrooms, bacon, Swiss cheese, add some deep fried frizzled seasoned onions, topped with stern wheeler stout beer glaze making this baby a true beer burger. 

As for Mike Hall he knows the burgers are pretty awesome, but he also knows that the beer is his bread and butter and that means a new building is in the works. "I think the future holds a new brewery for us somewhere. We are going to have to build a building and in order to go through to the next step we are going to have to buy a 30 barrel brewery system instead of a 10 barrel and just take us to the whole next level," said Mike Hall.

                                                HOW ICE HARBOR BREWS THEIR AMAZING BEER

Welcome inside Russ Corey's home away from home. A building filled with worts, kettles, fermenting tanks, clarifying units, and bottling machines. Corey says from day one it's been a labor of love. 

 "Brewing is kind of a labor of love. Brewing is a labor of love is when we do our fresh hop IPA because it's like hot the can be the hottest time of the year where there is sweat in the back here. It is kind of one the most labor intensive for us. Kind of a hard and dirty deal," says Corey.

For 17 years, Corey has been brewing some great beer. Corey took us through process step by step of how he brews it up. 

"This morning we started out with- I mashed the grains in that means we mixed hot water, 180 degree water with our grains and the grains actually before that process we ran the grains through a mill and cracked them and that opened up the inside so that we can extract all the stuff out of it, but anyway we mashed the hot water with the grains and you end up with something that looks kind of like oatmeal and it's about a 150 ... today it was 151 degrees. 

At that temperature there is enzymes that will convert starches and the sugar and that about an hour, we let it rest for an hour, and then after that we run hot water through and rinse out the sugars out of the mash and we pump that into our boil kettle and that takes about two hours and once that's done we bring our wort, that's actually we've collected, it's called the wort, and we bring the wort to a boil and then we boil for 90 minutes and we add hops during that 90 minutes and the hops give the beer kind of that balance in flavor you know to balance the sweetness with bitterness and flavors you know hop flavors and can be anywhere from herbal to flower flavors to citrus fruity flavors things like that, but that kind of balances it out and kind of brings life to the beer.

"But anyway after we boil it we run it through a heat exchanger and cool it down to room temperature and we inject oxygen into the beer and then we pump it into the fermentor and then we add yeast to it before it goes into the fermentor you know, 12 to 24 hours later fermentation will start. That's the start of the primary fermentation and that takes about a week and then after primary or active fermentation is done we kind of let is set for another week and that's when we do the secondary fermentation. Some beers we will add hops to that and those hops we kind of get more aromas and flavors out of those hops. 

The beers that we do out [inaudible 00:22:49] IPA. But then after the secondary is done, after that two weeks, we transfer it to a bright tank or ... where we clarify it and then we inject CO2 into it and a after few days in there we are ready to package the beer. Either we are bottling it or we're kegging it," said Corey.