Brandon Fralic joins us again to discuss his books, how he got started as a freelance writer, and what led to his hiking and beer guides. The journey began with the Beer at the Bottom blog, and naturally led to writing for an industry journal, and then to publishing the books.

The first post was a pairing of the Oyster Dome hike with Boundary Bay Brewing, a classic Bellingham pairing. From there, Scott and Brandon launch into a discussion of Brandon’s favorite (and not so favorite) beers and hikes that appeared in the blog.

Brandon talks about reaching out to Washington Trails magazine about doing some articles, and got some experience as a published author. He talks about the long journey from blog and magazine articles to his first book, and how that became a reality.

Brandon Fralic Episode Transcript

Hello, friends, and welcome to the Exploring Washington state podcast. My name is Scott Cowan and I’m the host of the show. Each episode, I have a conversation with an interesting guest who is living in or from Washington State. These are casual conversations with real and interesting people. I think you’re going to like the show. So let’s jump right in with today’s guest, our it all right, Brandon, you’re back for your second time. I don’t know if I should say I’m sorry or welcome back or both, but Brandon Fralic, you’re back today we’re going to talk about we’re doing this out of order, man. This is your first book. It’s the second edition. Beer hiking, Pacific Northwest. Your website. Beers at the bottom. I’m sorry. This is an awesome name, and that’s what I keep wanting to call the.

Brandon Fralic [00:00:48]:
Book, so easily Confused.

Scott Cowan [00:00:51]:
Yeah. So welcome back.

Brandon Fralic [00:00:53]:
Thank you.

Scott Cowan [00:00:55]:
Now, I should tease you because you got Oregon and Canada in here, but I’m not you started this back, what, like your concept, beers at the Bottom, like in 2013, right?

Brandon Fralic [00:01:08]:
Yes.

Scott Cowan [00:01:09]:
So almost a decade you’ve been doing this.

Brandon Fralic [00:01:11]:
It’s been a long time.

Scott Cowan [00:01:12]:
and you look like you’re twelve, so I’m not sure. I’m not sure. Yeah. Well, to remind our guests, because they probably won’t remember, you’re based in Bellingham, you’re an author, you do other things. You do some stuff with us at Explore Washington State. Always appreciate that. Why don’t you tell the audience where you got the inspiration for doing this book?

Brandon Fralic [00:01:33]:
Sure. Yeah. So, taking it back to 2013, my partner and I at the time were at our local bookstore here in Bellingham Village Books, and just browsing on a rainy day. And we noticed that there were all these hiking guide books, and each one had sort of a theme. There were waterfall hiking guides, creaky knees hiking and all this kind of thing. And then nearby they also had some drinking guides. So you’ve got your Pacific Northwest brewery guide next to it or whatever, and I thought, why not combine hiking with beer? That would be kind of fun. Those are two things that I enjoy and that I think a lot of people do naturally. So you go for a hike and then you end up at the brewery afterwards. Who’s going to write that guidebook? So I thought, well, let’s do that. And of course, I thought it would be an easier path to publication than it was. It took several years to get there, but we started by starting the block beers at the bottom. And so that’s kind of how that came about. And we just started going for hikes in Bellingham and pairing each trail with a brewery afterwards.

Scott Cowan [00:03:02]:
I could make so much fun of that, but just because I’d be like, I just go to the brewery, just forget the hike. I can have another beer while you’re out hiking.

Brandon Fralic [00:03:12]:
No, the idea is you earn your beer, Scott. You get some exercise, and then you go.

Scott Cowan [00:03:20]:
You outdoor enthusiasts, it’s overrated. Well, you allude to something. Okay. Nothing that you had done at this point had ever been published, had it?

Brandon Fralic [00:03:37]:
Not really. At that time, this was just a hobby blog. I wasn’t really a writer or I didn’t consider myself to be at that time. I was actually the one more taking the photos for the blog. It was really just a starting point. We had to start somewhere. Let’s just do this blog and see what happens. It was for fun.

Scott Cowan [00:04:02]:
Okay. Asking you to go back almost ten years, what was the first blog post? What was the first hike in beer pairing?

Brandon Fralic [00:04:15]:
So I actually know the answer to this. The first hike was Oyster Dome, which is a pretty popular Bellingham area hike, and we paired it with Boundary Bay Brewing here in Bellingham. And at that time and even now, it’s still kind of a classic pairing in this area.

Scott Cowan [00:04:37]:
Okay. All right. I got lots of questions about all of this stuff, and some of them I’m going to be asking your favorite or least favorite. So I know that these are kind of subjective, and when I ask you your least favorite, I’m really not asking you to kind of rip on the brewery at all. But let’s be honest, not every beer is something you would like. I might like it, you might not like it. So we’re going to tackle some negative stuff too.

Brandon Fralic [00:05:04]:
I apologize in advance to any breweries.

Scott Cowan [00:05:07]:
That we no, but the whole point is you might really love a hazy IPA, and that’s not my thing. So if you say I didn’t like XYZ Porter, that’s fine. I’m not asking you to say it’s a bad beer for your palate.

Brandon Fralic [00:05:24]:
Right.

Scott Cowan [00:05:25]:
We can all agree that there are bad beers, though, and we just won’t talk about any of them.

Brandon Fralic [00:05:29]:
Yes.

Scott Cowan [00:05:30]:
Okay. So as the blog goes on and you guys are starting to put this thing together, walk me through what was it like trying to get it published?

Brandon Fralic [00:05:40]:
Yeah, the blog itself was something that we were just self publishing.

Scott Cowan [00:05:47]:
Right.

Brandon Fralic [00:05:47]:
And then years later, we kind of got to the point of turning it into a book and getting a book deal. So that was always the goal, but it took quite a long time to get there. The next step from the blog was actually writing for some local magazines.

Scott Cowan [00:06:10]:
Okay.

Brandon Fralic [00:06:12]:
And again, that was something that I didn’t have any experience in. But I reached out to Washington Trails Magazine that’s the Washington Trails Association, they have their own magazine and said, hey, I read about hiking and beer in Bellingham. Can I do a story for you? And the editor at the time got back to me and said, yeah, I like that idea. Let’s run with it. That kind of got the ball rolling. And you get your first byline in a credible publication like that. And this was volunteer work. I mean, I wasn’t sure, but it was a way to just kind of move in that direction of publishing the book. So did some stories for them. Really enjoyed working with their team there, and that led to other paid work at other publications, and that’s kind of how I got into Freelancing and eventually to the book deal.

Scott Cowan [00:07:16]:
Okay. How many publishers did you pitch the book to?

Brandon Fralic [00:07:22]:
None.

Scott Cowan [00:07:24]:
None?

Brandon Fralic [00:07:25]:
Yeah.

Scott Cowan [00:07:25]:
But yet it’s in my hand. How did that happen?

Brandon Fralic [00:07:31]:
Yeah, that is a story. So fair question. I mean, normally you would pitch a book right, to a bunch of different publishers. In our case, I was already in the process of writing a book proposal, which is basically like a business plan for a book. And so part of that process is you research competing titles so other books on the market that are similar to what you want to produce.

Scott Cowan [00:08:05]:
Okay. All right.

Brandon Fralic [00:08:07]:
And I was just googling beer and hiking books to see if anything existed, and I came across this title, beer Hiking Switzerland.

Scott Cowan [00:08:22]:
All right.

Brandon Fralic [00:08:23]:
Wasn’t expecting that, but it looked really interesting. And so I reached out to the publisher, just sent them an email on the contact form on their website and said, I’d love to review this book or find out more about it. And they got back to me, and actually the author got back to me and said, I don’t speak English, but I will send you. It was in, like, broken English, the email.

Scott Cowan [00:08:58]:
Are you sure it wasn’t an email from me?

Brandon Fralic [00:09:02]:
And so she connected me to the publisher that is the publisher of our book. And so it was serendipitous. It was being in the right place at the right time and talking to the right people, because they had a lot of success with the Switzerland beer hiking concept, and they were ready to expand, and they wanted to do it in the US. So they reached out and said, hey, do you want to hop on a call? Let’s talk about this, and you can write a book for us.

Scott Cowan [00:09:39]:
Wow, that’s kind of cool. All right, so from that phone call to the book being published, and when I say published, I mean you’re done. You’re waiting on it. Your words are locked in, frozen. You’re not changing anything. The editor has gone through it. You’re done. It’s in their hands for printing and all that. How long did that take?

Brandon Fralic [00:10:08]:
I want to say probably it was a couple of years. Yeah.

Scott Cowan [00:10:13]:
Okay.

Brandon Fralic [00:10:14]:
All right.

Scott Cowan [00:10:16]:
Once you’ve handed it off, was it like, I don’t know, a sense of relief?

Brandon Fralic [00:10:25]:
Yeah.

Scott Cowan [00:10:25]:
Were you sick of beer?

Brandon Fralic [00:10:27]:
No. I will say that we probably tried over 200 beers during the research for this book because there’s 50 breweries that are featured in the first edition of the book. And so each one we would go to and we would sample more than one beer because you want to showcase the best beer at each brewery. So typically we would get a sample tray, and those come with what, maybe four beers, right? Maybe some places we go and get a couple of pints and share those. But I would try at least two beers at each place, maybe a few. And so many beers were drank during the research.

Scott Cowan [00:11:24]:
Okay, we’re going to come back to the beer. So help me out because this is kind of an interesting when I talk to authors, it’s always interesting to me because I think the public just thinks I don’t know what the public thinks because here’s this book and no one sees this, but I’m holding it up, right? And you put two years of work into the first edition. I’m holding up the second edition. But you put two years of work into this thing, and then it’s published, and it’s kind of maybe is it old news to you? Because you’ve already done it and now it’s new, like it’s launched, and now you’ve got the public say, oh, this is cool, this is brand new. And you’re like, well, unfortunately, XYZ Brewery is no longer in business, or something’s changed because it’s all out of our control. So two years of writing to getting it to the final version and then.

Brandon Fralic [00:12:22]:
Printing in production, I should correct you there. So the two years was actually the question was about from that phone call we had with the publisher to publication, the writing process was not two years.

Scott Cowan [00:12:38]:
How long was the writing process was?

Brandon Fralic [00:12:41]:
About four months.

Scott Cowan [00:12:43]:
So that’s making 200 beer sound more impressive over a four month period.

Brandon Fralic [00:12:48]:
Yeah.

Scott Cowan [00:12:49]:
So help me out here. So four months of writing, were you able to use any of your hikes from beers from the Beers at the Bottom site, or were you out for four months hiking 50 trails and hitting 50 brewers?

Brandon Fralic [00:13:09]:
I would say the majority of it was done in that four month period. We did pull some research from the blog and from other trips that we had taken, like the summer before we got the book contract. Okay. Because we’d been in talks with the publisher for a while and we thought, okay, this is moving in the right direction. Let’s go on a couple of trips, and we’re going to be hiking and drinking beer anyway. That’s what we like to do.

Scott Cowan [00:13:38]:
Hard work.

Brandon Fralic [00:13:39]:
No, not at all. Some of that did make it in there, but the bulk of the research and writing did happen in a four month period in 2016.

Scott Cowan [00:13:51]:
Okay, so I want to come back to that. Keep going on my train of thought. Excuse me. So you handed the book off to the publisher. How long then before you saw the book?

Brandon Fralic [00:14:06]:
Okay, so we turned everything in at the end of 2016, and the book actually came out in, I think, May of 2018, a long process.

Scott Cowan [00:14:23]:
Yeah. Why so long?

Brandon Fralic [00:14:26]:
It got held up in publication for unknown reasons to me. But basically we turned it in and we didn’t hear anything for a long time.

Scott Cowan [00:14:37]:
Drive me nuts.

Brandon Fralic [00:14:39]:
Yeah, it was frustrating. I think the publisher was having a hard time figuring out their distribution here and also because they were expanding into the US. For the first time.

Scott Cowan [00:14:52]:
Okay.

Brandon Fralic [00:14:53]:
So there were a lot of moving parts and then shipping and all that. It just took a lot longer than expected.

Scott Cowan [00:15:02]:
Okay. I asked this question of an author. I think it’s fair I can ask you the same question, because his answer blew me away, by the way. And I’ll tell you his answer after you give me yours. Where was the first place you saw the actual book? On the shelf.

Brandon Fralic [00:15:21]:
I want to say, man, this has taken me back a few years. I want to say it was Brick and Mortar Books in Redmond, which is a bookstore down there. But around this, I mean, it hit shelves at the same time everywhere. And so it was there, and it was at Bartels and Rei. So I would go around and try to find it in as many stores as I could. It’s so exciting as a new author.

Scott Cowan [00:15:54]:
All right, I’m disappointed in your answer because I didn’t think you would say it. I thought what he told me it blew my mind when he told me this, and now it’s not quite as interesting. He saw his Brad Holden is the guy, and he’s written three books about the Seattle area of Prohibition, and they’re great books. The first time he saw his first book was at a Bartels. And I’m just like, what? I mean, to me, that just seemed really weird, like a book about Seattle. And granted, Bartels at that time was still locally owned and local longtime chain of drugstores in Seattle, but I was expecting to say Barnes and Noble or maybe Elliot Bay Books or something like that. Right? Because he’s a Seattle. But you say you saw it at Bartels, too. I would have never thought Bartels would be big in Washington State books. That’s kind of cool, actually.

Brandon Fralic [00:16:53]:
Yeah. They’ve always been kind of like local focus and yeah, they have a book category and they do really seek out local titles.

Scott Cowan [00:17:07]:
I had no idea.

Brandon Fralic [00:17:10]:
They were really great. They actually did a radio ad for our book and so I could hear my book title being read out over the radio, and it was all kind of surreal at that time.

Scott Cowan [00:17:24]:
That’s pretty cool.

Brandon Fralic [00:17:25]:
Yeah, they were great. They really promoted it heavily and sold a lot of books for us.

Scott Cowan [00:17:32]:
Now, the book’s obviously done well because you came back with a second edition. I haven’t looked at the first edition, so you can make stuff up now and I won’t be able to fact check you. But what’s changed between the first edition and the new edition.

Brandon Fralic [00:17:46]:
Yeah. Okay. So the biggest changes are there are nine new breweries and three new trails, and that is because the book came out in 2018, and then a few years have gone by and there was this pandemic thing that happened. So more breweries closed than trails during that time just because sorry, I should laugh. Okay, right. But we lost a few breweries, so we went through the whole book and updated breweries as needed.

Scott Cowan [00:18:37]:
Now, when you updated a brewery, did you go and sit down with the new brewery and sample everything? Did you do the hike again or did you cheat and do what I would do, which just go to the brewery?

Brandon Fralic [00:18:51]:
A little bit of both. I would say for most of them, we did actually go to the brewery. So I can give you some examples in Washington, but there were a couple that we didn’t make it to just because of time constraints. They’re in there, and I’m not going to tell you which ones I haven’t been to. Okay. Or maybe we can. I mean, if that would be an interesting story.

Scott Cowan [00:19:18]:
Actually, it might be, yeah. So are there any Washington State breweries that you haven’t been to that are in the book and that are in the book?

Brandon Fralic [00:19:25]:
Okay, let me look at my new list here. Okay, here’s a good one. Packwood Brewing, which is in the town of Packwood by Mount Rainier. There I have not been there, and it’s in the book. When we did the updates for this book, that was earlier this year, I think January, February, we had a pretty quick turnaround time on it, and the weather was not great for taking a road trip to Mount Rainier. So it wasn’t practical at the time for us to go down there. But we really did want to include them because they’re the closest trail or the closest brewery to the Paradise Trails at Rainier.

Scott Cowan [00:20:21]:
There’s not a brewery up at Crystal Mountain?

Brandon Fralic [00:20:26]:
Not that I’m aware of.

Scott Cowan [00:20:28]:
I would have thought there would be a brewery at Crystal Mountain. I would just thought somebody would have done that. Yeah. Okay. All right, so Packwood, this is kind of interesting. The first book had, what, 50 hikes in it, right?

Brandon Fralic [00:20:46]:
Yes.

Scott Cowan [00:20:47]:
And this one has 52.

Brandon Fralic [00:20:49]:
Yes.

Scott Cowan [00:20:51]:
So out of 50, that’s a little more. Round it. I’m going to round it for bad math, but about 10% of the breweries closed between the time of the first edition and the new book, which, given the pandemic, that’s actually, to me, surprisingly shows how strong the brewing industry is that they were able to adapt and stay open. Okay. All right. I think I asked you this question before on your Urban Trails book, but put it on the spot. These are the hard questions I warned you about earlier.

Brandon Fralic [00:21:29]:
All right?

Scott Cowan [00:21:30]:
I’m going to ask you the question three different times because I’m going to ask you about it for British Columbia, for Washington and Oregon. Okay. We’re going to actually break my rule of Oregon on this show today.

Brandon Fralic [00:21:42]:
Oh, all right. Here we go.

Scott Cowan [00:21:45]:
Your least favorite hike in each state that you put in the book. For you personally, this is not an indictment about the hike or the view for you. I could leave that one off.

Brandon Fralic [00:22:00]:
All right. That is a hard question, but I will answer it. Let me browse my list here, because, like we were talking about earlier, it has been a long time, and some of these trails I haven’t been to since 2016.

Scott Cowan [00:22:18]:
I’ll give you the next question, which is the exact opposite. Your favorite of each three.

Brandon Fralic [00:22:22]:
Right?

Scott Cowan [00:22:23]:
So you can answer all six questions however they come to your brain. It’s okay.

Brandon Fralic [00:22:27]:
This is the whole podcast right here?

Scott Cowan [00:22:29]:
Pretty much, yes. Brandon is going to talk about hiking.

Brandon Fralic [00:22:34]:
Favorites and least favorites. Okay. Let’s start with BC and work our way out.

Scott Cowan [00:22:40]:
Okay, that works.

Brandon Fralic [00:22:43]:
All right. Let’s start with least favorite. So this one’s kind of cheating a little bit because I’m not sure I consider this a hike. So there’s a hike in here called Iona Jetty. It’s on page 202 if anybody’s interested in that.

Scott Cowan [00:23:12]:
All right.

Brandon Fralic [00:23:14]:
And it actually is pretty interesting if you’re into birding or actually watching the planes come and go, because this trail is near the Vancouver airport.

Scott Cowan [00:23:28]:
Okay.

Brandon Fralic [00:23:30]:
I think we mostly included it because we really wanted to feature this brewery, Fuggles and Warlock, and there wasn’t a lot of hiking nearby. This is in kind of a Richmond area of BC, right. It’s more of an urban walk or an urban hike than, like, a hike hike. It’s flat. It’s straight there’s. There’s not a lot of variation. So to me, it’s just kind of a walk, but fair. Okay. But if you want to get out and stretch your legs, I mean, Fuggles.

Scott Cowan [00:24:07]:
And Warlock, I kind of understand your rationalization to got to get that name in there. It’s just kind of fun to say it, isn’t it?

Brandon Fralic [00:24:13]:
It is fun to stay, and that place is incredible. They’re kind of how do I say this in a nice way? They appeal to the geek, the nerd crowd a bit with, well, may I.

Scott Cowan [00:24:36]:
Just read the description that you guys have? Because I think it’s oh, yeah.

Brandon Fralic [00:24:39]:
Because I’m going to fumble through it. So if you want to read it, please.

Scott Cowan [00:24:42]:
All right. So this is straight from the book. Do I have to license this with you? Just curious.

Brandon Fralic [00:24:47]:
Absolutely not.

Scott Cowan [00:24:48]:
Foggles and warlock. Okay. That’s the headline. Foggles and Warlock Craft Works wants the geek in each of us to pull up a stool, enjoy a pint pulled by a lightsaber tap, and face off in an old school video game battle. It’s all about keeping beer weird. I think from there, that sums it up pretty cool. Lightsabers, taps. That’s interesting. Old school video games. I’m all for that. I’ll be honest with you. Strawberry Wit doesn’t I don’t know. That doesn’t sound like something I would try. But you liked it?

Brandon Fralic [00:25:26]:
I liked it, yeah. I think they have really great beer. It’s interesting and kind of inventive and experimental, so I like what they’re doing with their beer. And also the anime and video game themes are a lot of fun.

Scott Cowan [00:25:40]:
Cool. All right, well, let’s talk trash about Washington State least favorite Washington hike, in your opinion.

Brandon Fralic [00:25:49]:
Once again, this is so Washington is like, half the book. We have a lot of Washington in here, so give me a second to think about this one. Least favorite Washington hike.

Scott Cowan [00:26:08]:
That’s probably a horrible way of phrasing it, but, you know okay.

Brandon Fralic [00:26:13]:
This one is not really my least favorite hike. It’s an incredible hike, but there’s a story okay.

Scott Cowan [00:26:21]:
That’s cool. Stories are good.

Brandon Fralic [00:26:24]:
Green Mountain, which we have on page 112.

Scott Cowan [00:26:29]:
Okay.

Brandon Fralic [00:26:30]:
This is a really amazing hike that’s seasonal in the summer and early fall and gets you up to views of Glacier Peak. It’s pretty challenging. It’s one of the harder hikes in the book at what do we have? 8.4 miles round trip with 3300ft of elevation gain when we did this hike for the book. Have you heard of summer meltdown? The festival?

Scott Cowan [00:27:06]:
I haven’t.

Brandon Fralic [00:27:07]:
Okay. It’s a music festival that they have each year in Darrington.

Scott Cowan [00:27:11]:
Okay.

Brandon Fralic [00:27:12]:
And I had never been to it before. I didn’t really know what to expect. But sometimes being a travel writer, you get free tickets to things. And so we went, and it turned out that this is one of those more like electronic music type things. And there were a lot of drugs and nobody was sleeping. I was up all night. Not partaking, necessarily, but you can’t sleep in a place like this.

Scott Cowan [00:27:43]:
No, you can’t. I went to Grateful Dead shows. I get it.

Brandon Fralic [00:27:47]:
Yeah. So didn’t get any sleep that night. Feeling pretty rough the next morning. And our plan was, oh, we’re going to go hike Green Mountain, one of the hardest hikes.

Scott Cowan [00:28:00]:
What could go wrong?

Brandon Fralic [00:28:01]:
Feeling pretty rough that day. It turned out to be like it was like in the 80s, too. It was really hot and there were biting flies and just one of the worst days to go on a hike in terms of the conditions and how we were feeling.

Scott Cowan [00:28:19]:
Right.

Brandon Fralic [00:28:20]:
But we did it, and the views were incredible, and I don’t regret it, but it was a slog, man. I did not want to be there.

Scott Cowan [00:28:30]:
All right. And Scottish ale at the end from Rivertime.

Brandon Fralic [00:28:37]:
Yes.

Scott Cowan [00:28:38]:
Okay. What were your thoughts on that one? On their Scottish ale?

Brandon Fralic [00:28:44]:
A Scottish ale. It has been years since I’ve had that beer. But the funny thing about that is it’s called life changer. Scottish ale. I don’t know if it changed my life, but we made a joke about that in here somewhere.

Scott Cowan [00:29:04]:
Are you trying to say there’s not truth in advertising on this one.

Brandon Fralic [00:29:07]:
Come on. It’s a good beer. That’s a fun little brewery that they have out there. That building has done all kinds of things over the years, like a fire station. What else does it say here? Police station, library, dance hall. So it’s a fun location. And if you’re out in Darrington, that’s where you’re going to go for a beer.

Scott Cowan [00:29:31]:
All right, so I have to ask you so I want some clarity here. There’s a confusing part of this description here. Now you can kick back and enjoy a beer at an appropriate pace.

Brandon Fralic [00:29:43]:
Yeah.

Scott Cowan [00:29:44]:
What is an appropriate pace for drinking beer?

Brandon Fralic [00:29:48]:
So that is another little inside joke thing, because I believe that is like, their slogan at a river time, fear and appropriate pace.

Scott Cowan [00:30:00]:
Okay.

Brandon Fralic [00:30:01]:
Yeah.

Scott Cowan [00:30:02]:
Okay. All right. So now the dreaded Oregon.

Brandon Fralic [00:30:12]:
And these least favorite questions are tough.

Scott Cowan [00:30:16]:
Yeah, but look how easy the favorite ones are going to be, comparatively speaking.

Brandon Fralic [00:30:20]:
All right, let’s talk about Oregon.

Scott Cowan [00:30:23]:
Do we have to not skin? Yes, I asked the question. You did ask the question.

Brandon Fralic [00:30:31]:
All right, this is another one that was like it was a nice trail, but the day I was there, the conditions that we hiked it in was for me. Okay.

Scott Cowan [00:30:43]:
And that’s completely fair.

Brandon Fralic [00:30:47]:
Oak Ridge, north Fort Trail.

Scott Cowan [00:30:50]:
What page? Got it.

Brandon Fralic [00:30:56]:
So this is a nice river walk, really easy, mostly flat trail and pretty short, I think it’s only a couple of miles. I guess it’s up to 6 miles, but we didn’t go that far. We were out there hoping to do some bigger hikes, but the weather wasn’t great, and I got sick on this research trip and was just feeling awful.

Scott Cowan [00:31:29]:
It’s called a hangover.

Brandon Fralic [00:31:31]:
No, it was not a hangover. I think it was strep throat or something. I could barely okay. It was real rough. We were going to go on, like, a bigger hike that day, but we had to really scale things back and just do, like, a couple of miles on this trail. So that one, for me, was not a favorite because I was not feeling well. But it is a nice trail. Again, it’s another kind of like I said with BC, it’s like not a hike hike. It’s more of a stroll or a walk, sure, but it’s still a nice nature walk along the water. If you’re down in that area, check it out.

Scott Cowan [00:32:15]:
Now, I got to say, though, I mean, the beer sounds pretty cool. Three legged crane. Brace griddle. What the heck is brace griddle?

Brandon Fralic [00:32:22]:
Brace griddle.

Scott Cowan [00:32:23]:
Brace griddle.

Brandon Fralic [00:32:25]:
This is one of the breweries that we actually updated for the new addition.

Scott Cowan [00:32:29]:
Okay.

Brandon Fralic [00:32:31]:
Because there was a brewery there called Brewers Union Local 180, and the proprietor of that brewery, Ted Sobel, passed away in recent years. And so the brewery, I believe, went up for sale or changed hands and changed names. So it’s the same location, but new ownership. New ownership, new name, different business. And so I believe they changed the names of the beers as well. But what’s cool about that place was they do like traditional British cask ale. The beer comes out of these casks with like a hand pump. I’m doing the motion, like people can see me when they can’t. But yeah, so that’s pretty unique. And there aren’t too many breweries like that in the Northwest.

Scott Cowan [00:33:40]:
So I asked you the flip side, which is your favorite? So I’m going to retract that statement. I’m going to reframe that statement each BC, Oregon and Washington, in your opinion today, as of today, in December 2022, this may change next week. Who knows? It doesn’t matter what’s the one must see. Gold star recommendation you’ve got for each of the areas of the hikes you picked. What’s the one people shouldn’t miss in each?

Brandon Fralic [00:34:14]:
Yeah, let’s go that area. Okay.

Scott Cowan [00:34:18]:
And that can be because the beer is outstanding, that the beer made the hike worth the while. Or it can be that the hike is awesome, the beers are fine, whatever. If each location had its own signature okay, what would you call their signature move?

Brandon Fralic [00:34:35]:
Okay, that’s challenging, but I think we can figure this out. So looking at BC here, and BC has some great hikes. And I live so close to the border that it’s like tempting to go up there.

Scott Cowan [00:34:56]:
It’s easier to go there than Oregon.

Brandon Fralic [00:34:58]:
Yeah. Oh, for sure. Probably one of my favorite pairings in BC is going to be the Sea to Summit Trail in Squamish.

Scott Cowan [00:35:11]:
Okay.

Brandon Fralic [00:35:13]:
That’s on 214. And that one is paired with House Sound Brewing, which is brewery that’s been in Squamish for a long time. But that’s a cool trail because well, you’re going to like this guy because you don’t actually have to hike this trail to get to the top.

Scott Cowan [00:35:38]:
Okay. Because I’m like there’s a 3000 elevation gain on this trail. No.

Brandon Fralic [00:35:44]:
So there’s two ways to get up there, okay. You can do the 3000 foot hike or you can take a gondola to the top.

Scott Cowan [00:35:55]:
Not a big fan of that either, to be honest. Okay, wait, so tell me, is the beer worth it?

Brandon Fralic [00:36:03]:
Well, the beer is not at the top. That’s the thing is the beer is down in the town of Squamish.

Scott Cowan [00:36:10]:
It’s a hard sell for me. I don’t know.

Brandon Fralic [00:36:12]:
You can get their beer up at the top, but the brewery itself is in town. Okay, so at the top there’s like a mountain lodge, right. And they have a cafe and you can get a beer up there. It’s absolutely stunning. You’re looking out over the mountains and the House sound and in the picture in the book, there’s a suspension bridge that you Cowan walk.

Scott Cowan [00:36:42]:
That’s why I was the first one I flipped to. I was like, oh, hey. Okay.

Brandon Fralic [00:36:48]:
You can either do the hike or take the gondola up. I’m assuming. You’re taking the gondola, but I’m going to do the hike right.

Scott Cowan [00:36:59]:
I would only take the gondola for safety reasons. My safety.

Brandon Fralic [00:37:05]:
It’s a hard hike.

Scott Cowan [00:37:07]:
Okay.

Brandon Fralic [00:37:09]:
It kicked my ass, but I hope to do it again soon.

Scott Cowan [00:37:16]:
So wait a second. Let me set the stage here. So I’m reading this and it says, duration of the hike, three to 5 hours, 4.6 miles elevation gain, 3012ft in four and a half miles. Or how many kilometers that works.

Brandon Fralic [00:37:36]:
Yeah, because that is one way mileage. Normally the mileage is listed round trip in our book, but in this case, you don’t hike down this trail. You only hike up it because you take the gondola down.

Scott Cowan [00:37:56]:
So it’s 7.4 km. How long did this take you? I’m cheating. It’s right there in the book.

Brandon Fralic [00:38:04]:
Three to 5 hours.

Scott Cowan [00:38:12]:
Okay.

Brandon Fralic [00:38:13]:
I don’t remember.

Scott Cowan [00:38:14]:
Well played.

Brandon Fralic [00:38:20]:
I do remember that we were not well prepared for how hard this hike was going to be and did not come with enough snacks, like food. And I had water, but we got really hungry on the trail because we were thinking, oh, we’ll just hike up to the top and have lunch. They have a cafe up there. No big problem or no big deal. But, like, halfway up the trail, man, I’m like, I need some food.

Scott Cowan [00:38:47]:
Do they deliver?

Brandon Fralic [00:38:51]:
No. And there are parts of this trail that are so steep that there are, like, ropes and chains that you use to haul yourself up the trail. It’s a bit of a climb sections or a scramble. So you’re really using your full body.

Scott Cowan [00:39:13]:
If you’re into that. And I’m not in the condition to be into that at this point. That would kill me. But that’s cool. I think this sounds like a cool hike. All right. And the beer, how was the beer? Was the beer worth the effort?

Brandon Fralic [00:39:31]:
I love how it sound. Yeah. Okay. Like I was saying before, you can once you get to the top, you can sit down and have a beer.

Scott Cowan [00:39:40]:
Up there at an appropriate pace.

Brandon Fralic [00:39:45]:
Yeah, sure. But you’re just so happy to be up there and that you don’t have to go back down the trail. You’re taking the gondola down. They actually don’t recommend hiking down it because it’s so steep. But yeah, so we hiked up, we took the gondola down and went to this brewery back in town. And it’s a really cool brewery that’s been there for a long time. They have a hotel upstairs, so if you have one too many beers, you can just spend the night. Kind of a bed and brew situation.

Scott Cowan [00:40:24]:
Okay.

Brandon Fralic [00:40:26]:
And I like their beer. They’re just one of those classic DC breweries. It’s been around for a long time.

Scott Cowan [00:40:34]:
All right, so what about in Oregon?

Brandon Fralic [00:40:39]:
Okay.

Scott Cowan [00:40:41]:
What’s the signature Oregon one for you?

Brandon Fralic [00:40:45]:
Well, I think the obvious one is actually the first hike in the book, which is Cape to Wanda.

Scott Cowan [00:40:56]:
Yeah, that’s what I was going to say.

Brandon Fralic [00:40:58]:
Yeah.

Scott Cowan [00:41:02]:
Actually, because it does haystack Rock. I mean, that’s kind of Oregon. That’s iconic oregon to me.

Brandon Fralic [00:41:09]:
So this one’s cool. It’s not very much of a hike. You hike up on this big sand dune. But what I like about this hike is you park once and you walk from the brewery parking lot up this big sand dune, and you have nice views. You can extend it, walk along the beach, whatever, and then you just walk back. You go to the brewery. You’re tracking sand into the brewery with you. Pelican Brewing is right on the beach there on the Oregon coast. And it’s the trailhead for this trail. So most of the trails in our book, there’s a little bit of driving in between or whatever. This one’s cool because you start at the brewery and you end at the brewery.

Scott Cowan [00:42:00]:
Okay. All right. Well, now it’s the Washington.

Brandon Fralic [00:42:05]:
Did I convince you to go to Oregon?

Scott Cowan [00:42:08]:
No, I joke about Oregon, actually. Oregon is a really cool place.

Brandon Fralic [00:42:13]:
Yeah.

Scott Cowan [00:42:14]:
This episode is brought to you by the Oregon Tourism Board. Thank you for visiting Oregon. No, I do like Oregon somehow. I started mainly because I got in such trouble early on in the podcast, I said something off the cuff about Spokane, and I actually literally had people emailing me about how awful I was for picking on Spokane. So I was like, really? I just said it was cool. It wasn’t cool when I was a kid, and that wasn’t okay. So I started picking on Oregon. I figured if Oregon cancels me, I can probably keep doing the show.

Brandon Fralic [00:42:47]:
Oh, there you go. Just pick on everyone equally and you’ll be yeah, exactly. Okay, so we’re looking at Washington.

Scott Cowan [00:42:55]:
Washington. Yeah.

Brandon Fralic [00:42:56]:
This is really hard for me because I love so many of these pairings. I might have to go local.

Scott Cowan [00:43:06]:
I figured as much.

Brandon Fralic [00:43:09]:
Yeah.

Scott Cowan [00:43:13]:
I’m curious, though. Okay, local. What’s it going to be?

Brandon Fralic [00:43:19]:
Well, we’ve got Winchester Mountain in here, which honestly, we’ve almost taken that trail out of the book a couple of times because it is such a special place that I don’t really want to promote it anymore yet.

Scott Cowan [00:43:40]:
You’re going to talk about it now?

Brandon Fralic [00:43:41]:
Well, I kind of have to mention that one.

Scott Cowan [00:43:44]:
Okay.

Brandon Fralic [00:43:44]:
Being honest. Okay. I’ve opened the can of worms. Now I have to talk about it. So that one’s on page one. Maybe we can do two for Washington because there’s so many in Washington.

Scott Cowan [00:44:03]:
All right.

Brandon Fralic [00:44:05]:
So start with this. Those are the twin lakes in the photo there, and you can drive up to that. There’s a trailhead in between those two lakes. So you can park there, you can camp there. It’s a very rough, extremely rough road to get up to that point. Okay. If you’ve heard of yellow attribute before, that’s one of our popular trails around here. So beyond yellow attribute, if you keep going on that road. You eventually end up at Finn Lakes, but the road is unmaintained. You need high clearance, you need four wheel drive. It’s a really rough ride getting up there, but you start out at, I don’t know, over 5000ft and it’s just stunning up there. Winchester Mountain is a cool hike because you’re already up so high that the trail is pretty relatively short and not too difficult. But it gets you up to this historic fire lookout with like 360 degree views of the North Cascades.

Scott Cowan [00:45:21]:
That’d be fun. That’d be fun. Okay. The beer pairing on that one beer.

Brandon Fralic [00:45:28]:
Pairing on that one is the Northport Brewery on Not Baker Highway.

Scott Cowan [00:45:33]:
Okay.

Brandon Fralic [00:45:34]:
And that’s a natural pairing because it’s the only brewery out there. But it also happens to be a really good brewery. They’ve been around again for, I don’t know, a long time. I used to know the number of years. But anyways, yeah, they do some really fun beer and then they also have pizza that they make there. Super good.

Scott Cowan [00:46:01]:
Okay.

Brandon Fralic [00:46:02]:
But they do not only like their core line of beers, but they do some fun, sours and really funky stuff out there.

Scott Cowan [00:46:11]:
All right. You were going to give a second one in Washington. What’s that?

Brandon Fralic [00:46:15]:
Okay, I should have prepared this in advance.

Scott Cowan [00:46:20]:
I would never tell you what the.

Brandon Fralic [00:46:21]:
Questions are, but you like to put people on the spot.

Scott Cowan [00:46:24]:
Kind of like asking the questions that are I don’t try for them to be hard. Not in a hard, like show your work sweating at the chalkboard type of hard, but more like thought provoking. Yeah, thought provoking. That’s a more polite way.

Brandon Fralic [00:46:40]:
Let’s see. So let’s go with let’s talk about Icicle Ridge out in Lebanon. That’s a cool one.

Scott Cowan [00:46:50]:
Okay.

Brandon Fralic [00:46:51]:
It’s going to be on page 120. And this hike is, again, not super long. It’s like 5 miles round trip, but it gets up and goes.

Scott Cowan [00:47:05]:
Right.

Brandon Fralic [00:47:07]:
It still gains like almost 2000ft in that amount of trail. Has nice views over the town, eleven worth. And it’s like right, maybe ten to 15 minutes out of town to the trailhead. So really accessible unless you go there.

Scott Cowan [00:47:24]:
During October fast or Christmas for the Christmas lighting. And then you’re walking into town from the trailhead, right?

Brandon Fralic [00:47:31]:
Yes, that is true. But icicle brewing. You can actually from the top of Icicle Ridge, you’re like looking out over leavenworth. So if you had binoculars, you could probably see the brewery from the top of this hike.

Scott Cowan [00:47:49]:
Right.

Brandon Fralic [00:47:50]:
And they have this cool beer, the Dark Persuasion. It’s like a German chocolate cake ale. It is really tasty.

Scott Cowan [00:48:00]:
Okay, well, that’s a well known icicle is really well known here.

Brandon Fralic [00:48:08]:
Oh, yeah, that’s right. Winachi. Yeah, right.

Scott Cowan [00:48:12]:
All right, so I got some other questions for you. Now. Sure, you mentioned pizza, but all along here I know that you didn’t just go for a hike or a climb and go drink beer. You had to eat food too. Most of these places have pretty good food. Pub grub.

Brandon Fralic [00:48:39]:
Yeah. You’re talking about the breweries. Yeah. Generally the breweries serve food. Either they’ll have some kind of pub grub or sometimes they’ll have food trucks on site. Okay. It really varies by brewery, but some of them are more food focused than others. Like the north, work is all about pizza up there.

Scott Cowan [00:49:04]:
Okay. Any memorable food from any you can go BC, Washington, Oregon doesn’t have to be one from each and that’s not what the book is about. But was there any memorable, like, oh, yeah, that was a pleasant surprise. Or like North Park, you say their pizza, in which I’ve heard other people talk about their pizza. So that might be your answer.

Brandon Fralic [00:49:28]:
Yeah, I mean, that one people go there just for the pizza.

Scott Cowan [00:49:32]:
Yeah, I’ve heard that from other people too.

Brandon Fralic [00:49:35]:
Okay, so there’s that. Let’s see. I think Frames down in the river, Oregon had some really nice food as well. I can’t remember what I had there. It’s been so many years. But they had an interesting menu at the time. Yeah, it’s tricky when you’ve been to so many breweries. And most of this was done several years ago. Right. I don’t remember what I had for breakfast this morning. So remembering a meal from there goes.

Scott Cowan [00:50:18]:
One of my questions for the rest of the show. Darn it.

Brandon Fralic [00:50:21]:
Okay, so if I come up with an answer to that, I’ll let you know.

Scott Cowan [00:50:26]:
There you go. Who’s the book for? Who’s that? Avatar. Who did you write the book for?

Brandon Fralic [00:50:37]:
Yeah, I think initially it was when we first had the idea when we were standing in the bookstore, it was like, well, we want a book like that. So it’s like kind of for us, but it’s also for people like us who really enjoy going on hikes and going to breweries afterwards. Okay, maybe it was a little bit of like a selfish indulgence.

Scott Cowan [00:51:21]:
But that’s.

Brandon Fralic [00:51:21]:
The most honest answer.

Scott Cowan [00:51:23]:
Maybe it is. Maybe it’s a completely self serving book.

Brandon Fralic [00:51:26]:
Yeah.

Scott Cowan [00:51:26]:
But you got a publisher to pick it up. You’re on your second edition. That’s obviously been a market for this book.

Brandon Fralic [00:51:38]:
Oh, yeah.

Scott Cowan [00:51:39]:
Bartel drugs. You don’t go back and update a book that didn’t sell.

Brandon Fralic [00:51:47]:
It sold. And it’s sold and it’s still selling. Yeah.

Scott Cowan [00:51:51]:
That’s awesome. Good for you. That’s really cool. Do you have any thoughts of another book in the future?

Brandon Fralic [00:52:05]:
I am always careful how I answer this question. The short answer is no.

Scott Cowan [00:52:14]:
Okay.

Brandon Fralic [00:52:16]:
The longer answer is I’m open to possibilities. But right now I don’t have anything really in the works at the moment. But there has been some talk about some spin off type of projects. A publisher asked us if we wanted to do, like a wine hiking book. I don’t think that’ll happen because I don’t know wine, and I’m not that interested in wine in the same way that I am. Beer.

Scott Cowan [00:52:59]:
Okay. You could do cider, too, in Washington? Washington, Oregon and British Columbia. Frankly, all three have great ciders.

Brandon Fralic [00:53:09]:
Yeah, cider. And then there’s spirits as well. We have a lot of distilleries around here, so they do another series. It’s like whiskey walks. They have a Whiskey Walks scotland book that’s going to be coming out.

Scott Cowan [00:53:26]:
That’s cool. That’d be cool.

Brandon Fralic [00:53:30]:
So, I don’t know, we’ll see what comes along. But right now, I’m just really enjoying having this back out on the shelves.

Scott Cowan [00:53:37]:
Okay, so last time we talked, you were in Bellingham. You’re still in Bellingham. So let’s talk about Bellingham for a couple of minutes.

Brandon Fralic [00:53:46]:
Sure.

Scott Cowan [00:53:47]:
As you know, I’m a huge coffee fan. So got any coffee recommendations for me in Bellingham these days? Anything new and exciting in Bellingham I need to know about?

Brandon Fralic [00:53:56]:
Yeah, well, when was the last time you were in Bellingham?

Scott Cowan [00:54:00]:
I haven’t been to Bellingham in four years.

Brandon Fralic [00:54:07]:
Four years? Okay.

Scott Cowan [00:54:09]:
Yeah, but I mean, like, was it Black Drop?

Brandon Fralic [00:54:14]:
Black Drop was here.

Scott Cowan [00:54:15]:
Yeah, closed. That made me cry.

Brandon Fralic [00:54:18]:
Okay.

Scott Cowan [00:54:19]:
I love that place.

Brandon Fralic [00:54:20]:
Did you ever go to Camber?

Scott Cowan [00:54:21]:
I went to Camber. I’m more of a black drop guy.

Brandon Fralic [00:54:26]:
Got you.

Scott Cowan [00:54:27]:
That being said, nothing, no disrespect to Camber, camber voted one of the best coffee shops in America. It’s an experience. Yeah, I had a great experience there. But when somebody who doesn’t know me and I’ve never been in your coffee shop before, and they’re not even so you’ve been in Blackdrop before, right?

Brandon Fralic [00:54:52]:
Yes.

Scott Cowan [00:54:53]:
So I walked in and you know how the espresso machine, the barista’s back is to you so they don’t see you? Right? So I walk up to the counter and I’m talking to the woman who’s taking my order, and I say, what’s in the Bellinghamster? Because that was the coffee of the day, Bellinghamster. And the barista, without even looking, goes, well, tiny little hamsters. Of course I found my home. I just done.

Brandon Fralic [00:55:21]:
Yeah.

Scott Cowan [00:55:21]:
Coolest coffee shop in Washington State.

Brandon Fralic [00:55:23]:
That’s it right there.

Scott Cowan [00:55:24]:
It broke my heart to hear that they closed. I loved that. I started cracking up. Really good coffee, too.

Brandon Fralic [00:55:34]:
Yeah, they were great. I was sad to see Blackdrop go. Yeah.

Scott Cowan [00:55:39]:
I mean, Cambers, don’t get me wrong, Cambers, but Canberra is an experience.

Brandon Fralic [00:55:44]:
Yeah.

Scott Cowan [00:55:48]:
Let’S just grab some. I love coffee. I mean, I’ll take the coffee experience all day long, don’t get me wrong, but I also just love grabbing a cup of coffee, looking at my phone for a few minutes, or reading a newspaper in the shop, watching people.

Brandon Fralic [00:56:01]:
Yeah, sure.

Scott Cowan [00:56:04]:
Besides Camber and no more Blackdrop, what else is going on in Bellingham?

Brandon Fralic [00:56:08]:
All right, so this won’t surprise you that I’m going to bring this back to beer, but it does also involve coffee. There’s a new coffee and beer place called Rome Roam, and it’s actually the second location of Wander Brewing, which is one of our local breweries here.

Scott Cowan [00:56:34]:
Okay.

Brandon Fralic [00:56:35]:
They renovated a space that used to be like a butcher shop. And it has a drive through now, and you can do drive through coffee. You can go inside and sit down and have coffee or beer and beer. Okay. So the cool thing about it is they’re open all day morning until, I don’t know, 09:00 p.m. Or so.

Scott Cowan [00:57:03]:
All right.

Brandon Fralic [00:57:04]:
And you can get coffee all day. I don’t know when they start serving beer, but they kind of blend hours and they’re using local coffee from there’s a new brand called Forecast Coffee here in Bellingham.

Scott Cowan [00:57:27]:
I’ve not tried that.

Brandon Fralic [00:57:28]:
I believe it’s kind of under the Tony’s umbrella. I think they roasted out at Tony’s facility here, but it’s like a more sustainably sourced brand or something along those lines. I’m not a big coffee snob, so don’t quote me on that.

Scott Cowan [00:57:45]:
No, you said Tony’s and I didn’t laugh at you. Tony’s is great. Drinkable coffee, man. I’m just teasing you. I seriously will drink coffee at Denny’s so I can go to Denny’s and have coffee or go to Camber and have coffee, and I’m perfectly happy either place for completely different reasons. Okay, you’re not a coffee guy, but have you been to Narrative?

Brandon Fralic [00:58:13]:
That’s Narrative. Yes. Well, I know where it is. It’s by, again, a beer place. I’m catching myself here. Yeah. It’s attached to Elizabeth Station, which is a local bottle shop.

Scott Cowan [00:58:33]:
Okay. Narrative is a guy out of Everett, and I have not been to Narrative in Bellingham, but I’ve been to Narrative in Everett, and Narrative is another one of those great destination coffee shops. Not so much like Camber. Not like that, but Narrative gets they bring in kind of like breweries that bring in rotating taps. They bring in rotating coffee roasters. So they do a really nice job of showcasing interesting coffee roasters, doing cool things with coffee. So I would encourage you to check out Narrative just from that aspect of it.

Brandon Fralic [00:59:13]:
Yeah, they do a nice job. I mean, I can walk there from my place. It’s in my neighborhood, so I should check it out.

Scott Cowan [00:59:21]:
Very specific questions now. Best tacos in Bellingham. Don’t say you don’t like tacos, because.

Brandon Fralic [00:59:29]:
This interview is oh, no, everybody likes tacos. It’s just the best, the worst. Those are always hard. Right? I probably would say I mean, Black Sheep is, like, the most popular place. Everybody goes for tacos.

Scott Cowan [00:59:46]:
They’re very good. I will say that.

Brandon Fralic [00:59:49]:
Yeah. So you’ve been there?

Scott Cowan [00:59:52]:
I’ve been to Black Sheep.

Brandon Fralic [00:59:53]:
Yeah. Okay.

Scott Cowan [00:59:55]:
Same day I went to Canberra.

Brandon Fralic [00:59:57]:
Oh, yeah. I mean, they’re right next to you.

Scott Cowan [00:59:59]:
Canberra, Black Tropical Day. It was glorious.

Brandon Fralic [01:00:03]:
Yeah. That’s great. I used to be before Black Sheep, they were in a different space on that street, actually closer to Camber, but they moved into that larger space that they’re in now. And when they were first starting out in a smaller space, I really loved going there. It wasn’t as popular as it is now, and often there’s a wait and it got really big and for good reason.

Scott Cowan [01:00:33]:
Right.

Brandon Fralic [01:00:33]:
The food is great, but I don’t.

Scott Cowan [01:00:36]:
Like to wait for tacos.

Brandon Fralic [01:00:37]:
But you’re most likely going to be waiting. Yeah.

Scott Cowan [01:00:40]:
To me, tacos kind of like, once again, if I’ll drink Denny’s coffee and I want quick tacos, too. Okay, so we’ll go with black sheep because that’s a safe answer. Best burger in town right now. What’s going on for hamburgers in Bellingham?

Brandon Fralic [01:01:00]:
Burgers? Okay, well, you’re asking the vegetarian.

Scott Cowan [01:01:04]:
That was going to be my next question, so let’s skip the burgers. I don’t want to put you on the spot vegetarian food, because I have nothing against it, but I don’t frequent a lot of vegetarian places unless they’re highly recommended to me. So how about vegetarian food? What’s going on in vegetarian food?

Brandon Fralic [01:01:21]:
Yeah, there are a couple of places that I like to go that don’t necessarily advertise that they’re vegetarian, but they just happen to have a very veggie friendly menu.

Scott Cowan [01:01:36]:
Sure.

Brandon Fralic [01:01:38]:
One of them, of course, is a brewery. I swear they’re not all going to be breweries, but this one. Yeah, they are.

Scott Cowan [01:01:45]:
Come on.

Brandon Fralic [01:01:47]:
Yes, they are. I mean, I don’t go anywhere else. This is my life.

Scott Cowan [01:01:55]:
That’s why you’re on the show, hiking in beer. Come on.

Brandon Fralic [01:01:58]:
Hey, that’s how you know I actually been to all these places. So Otherlands beer in Bellingham, okay. They make incredible beer and they also make incredible food. A lot of it is like European inspired beer and foods. So you’re going to see, like, latkes and karogi’s on the menu.

Scott Cowan [01:02:30]:
Nothing wrong with that.

Brandon Fralic [01:02:31]:
And you’re going to see like, they have a Ruben, but it’s a beat Ruben, which sounds kind of weird, but it’s actually good.

Scott Cowan [01:02:40]:
No beats.

Brandon Fralic [01:02:44]:
I didn’t think I liked beets either until I did.

Scott Cowan [01:02:50]:
If I came up to Bellingham and you took me there, I would try it. Yeah, I’d be honest with you, I’d try it, but I don’t like beets, man.

Brandon Fralic [01:03:00]:
Okay, well, so they also do a really great brunch, so you could go there for breakfast and you get coffee. Cowan, have a nice brunch. Let’s see, what’s another one that’s not a brewery.

Scott Cowan [01:03:17]:
It’s okay that they’re breweries, man. Don’t feel bad. I love it. Actually, what I think is really cool is that breweries are serving good food. I think it’s awesome. I like the pairing, just like coffee shops that have good food, distilleries that have good food, wineries that have good food. I like the idea of pairing these things together and having a more well rounded experience. So you do not need to apologize for going to breweries.

Brandon Fralic [01:04:01]:
Yeah, well, I guess it makes breweries or wineries, all these types of places, a bit more inclusive, because even if you’re not really into beer, you can still go there and have a meal and you can go with your friends who are really into beer. And you can still have good times.

Scott Cowan [01:04:22]:
I also think being over here in Wenatchee a lot of cider places and a lot of wineries, I think some of them miss the mark. I’m not talking about any specific place, but if it’s a winery and they don’t have okay, so my wife likes one, I don’t appreciate one. So if I go to a winery and my beer choice is Bud Light, not really happy to stay there.

Brandon Fralic [01:04:58]:
Right?

Scott Cowan [01:04:59]:
And so my wife might buy far more wine if husband is happy and stays there. Conversely, if we go to a brewery and it’s box wine, husband’s not going to spend a lot of money because his wife wants to leave. I think they should be. Look, you do what you’re good at, but then find somebody else who’s doing good at other things and get your beer at the winery, get their wine at your brewery, get a couple of ciders that offer so that you appeal to at least it’s passable. Coffee shops should probably have tea because for the three people in the state of Washington that drink tea but should they have decaf?

Brandon Fralic [01:05:54]:
That’s the real question.

Scott Cowan [01:05:56]:
Only if it’s good. If it’s good decaf, and I’m a death before decaf type of person, but there are good decafs out there. Actually, there really are. And part of the problem with decaf, though, is that they don’t prepare it right because they don’t sell enough of it to prepare it right. So it’s really bad.

Brandon Fralic [01:06:14]:
Should it be prepared differently from well.

Scott Cowan [01:06:16]:
It should just be fresh. It shouldn’t be like, oh, we have decaf from yesterday. Would you like some? We can microwave it for you.

Brandon Fralic [01:06:23]:
Yeah, totally.

Scott Cowan [01:06:24]:
No one wants that. Nobody you know, nobody wants any of that stuff. All right, so two questions to wrap this up. Actually, three questions. Question number one. What didn’t I ask you that I should have?

Brandon Fralic [01:06:39]:
I’m going to throw that back a little bit. You did ask me a question, but I didn’t fully answer it about, like, vegetarian food in Bellingham. So I wanted to give you one more example.

Scott Cowan [01:06:53]:
Please do.

Brandon Fralic [01:06:58]:
Again. This place is not fully vegetarian, but they happen to have some good veggie options. Anyway, there’s a place in town called Banter Hospitality and they actually have two locations in town, their after hours location, which is more of a cocktail bar with, like, small plates. And they have amazing, like, cauliflower. It’s just the seasoning, and the way that they prepare it is quite okay.

Scott Cowan [01:07:31]:
Just the way you said amazing and then you cauliflower. But how are they presenting the cauliflower? Because cauliflower is such a versatile vegetable.

Brandon Fralic [01:07:41]:
Yeah, it’s like kind of a spicy and oily type of coating on it.

Scott Cowan [01:07:51]:
Okay.

Brandon Fralic [01:07:51]:
I’m not sure exactly what they’re using, but it’s like crack. Okay? You just have to try it.

Scott Cowan [01:08:03]:
Cowan you imagine selling that to parents? Get your kids to eat cauliflowers like crack.

Brandon Fralic [01:08:06]:
Yeah.

Scott Cowan [01:08:07]:
Okay.

Brandon Fralic [01:08:07]:
So that’s some fun. Like veggie appetizers. They do shishito peppers as well. And they were doing, like, Mesay type platters that came out with a bunch of different veggies and dips and that sort of thing.

Scott Cowan [01:08:26]:
Okay.

Brandon Fralic [01:08:27]:
So that was kind of fun. But I just love their happy hour. They had some really nice drink specials. You can get an old Fashioned down there for a reasonable price. And they also have some fun inventive.

Scott Cowan [01:08:43]:
Okay, I’m not going to open up the distiller the spirits conversation with you.

Brandon Fralic [01:08:47]:
No, that’s a whole other yeah, that’s.

Scott Cowan [01:08:49]:
A whole nother conversation, and I would love to do that, but not right now. Okay. Where can people find out more about you? Where are you? Online.

Brandon Fralic [01:08:58]:
Okay, that’s an easy one. So the website is beersithebottom.com and then on Instagram, pretty much all social media as beers at the bottom. Find me there.

Scott Cowan [01:09:14]:
So that was the only easy question you got today, because the next one is simple. This is a very simple question, and I want you to answer it honestly with great thought.

Brandon Fralic [01:09:23]:
Okay.

Scott Cowan [01:09:24]:
Cake or pie and why?

Brandon Fralic [01:09:30]:
Cake or pie and why? So I’m not a big cake person with the exception of ice cream cake. I like ice cream cake.

Scott Cowan [01:09:45]:
Okay. All right.

Brandon Fralic [01:09:49]:
So that is nostalgic for me because I used to get that as a kid. On birthdays, we’d get, like, the ice cream cake, right? Okay. I think I have to go with ice cream cake.

Scott Cowan [01:10:01]:
All right. There’s no wrong answer to that question. It’s so fun to ask that question. People are like, listening. People have a hard time answering that one. Man. Yeah, it’s kind of fun to ask.

Brandon Fralic [01:10:15]:
I’m sure the answers are all over the place.

Scott Cowan [01:10:18]:
They are. But it’s all good. Well, Brandon, thanks again for being here today. This was a lot of fun for me. I can honestly say I probably am not going to take any of your hikes. I did out of your urban hiking book, though. I did do the Apple loop in winanci.

Brandon Fralic [01:10:37]:
Oh, nice.

Scott Cowan [01:10:38]:
I did do that.

Brandon Fralic [01:10:39]:
Yeah.

Scott Cowan [01:10:39]:
That’s a nice little one of these days. In all seriousness, I do want to do Saddle Rock. I can’t live here and not do that, but I don’t think I’m going up to BC. Anything with ropes and chains or a gondola. Just maybe I’ll ask you to bring me a beer. I’ll meet you at the bottom. I’ll go have a beer. I don’t know.

Brandon Fralic [01:11:02]:
There’s the Jetty in Richmond, and then you go to Fuggles afterwards. So that’s a nice, easy yeah.

Scott Cowan [01:11:07]:
And the video game thing actually sounds kind of fun.

Brandon Fralic [01:11:09]:
Yeah, that place is cool.

Scott Cowan [01:11:11]:
All right, guy, thanks so much for being here.

Brandon Fralic [01:11:13]:
All right. Thanks, Scott.