Trade Route Brewing Company

Ain’t nothin’ but a Chi thing, baby

By Cody Ellerd

When customers are drinking like fish and having a splashing good time, some Buddhists believe that it is the Laughing Buddha (a.k.a. the Patron Saint of Bartenders) who is responsible for all the fun.

It is precisely this figure, with his gleaming golden skin and proud beer belly, who welcomes visitors to the Trade Route Brewing Company, a small, two-year-old craft brewery in South Seattle that is becoming a local favorite among fans of unusual beers and Asian cuisine.

The Buddha here watches over a tasting room that owners Chris Castillo and Joe Valvo have dubbed “the tiki room,” the brewery’s bamboo-and-straw-infested entryway that would look delicious to a panda.

Not being pandas, of course, we head straight for the beer, though the exotic ingredients here, like ginger, mango, galangal and palm sugar, come straight from the panda’s neck of the woods.

“We were sitting in the backyard one day and said, ‘let’s start a brewery, and let’s make it unique,’” said Castillo. He and Valvo had been roommates and best friends at Bellevue Community College. They were both now about a decade into successful careers, Castillo at Microsoft and Valvo as a microbiologist at Puget Sound Blood Center. But they had been making beer at home since their college days, and what they had brewing was very unique indeed.

“It really all started with the Pandan Brown,” said Castillo. Valvo, who is the mad scientist, brewmaster and chef of the two-man team, was making a dark ale using Pandan leaves, a nutty tasting ingredient commonly used in Southeast Asian cooking. Valvo is also the white guy, while Castillo is Filipino, but it’s Valvo who is the resident master of Asian cuisine, with a penchant for throwing whatever is lying around his kitchen into the beer.

Castillo, the “business guy,” said the Pandan Brown Ale was “a beer we thought we could put on the market and target to Thai restaurants.” So he sold his condo for startup money and in January of 2007, they started tracking down equipment. They secured a location in South Park in May. By November of that year, they were selling beer, and were bowled over by the strong initial demand.

In addition to the Pandan Brown Ale, Trade Route is now selling a lager that Castillo says goes “perfect with sushi,” a tasty ginger pale ale brewed with galangal, a “mango weisen,” and a new spring seasonal IPA made with kaffir limes.

Whatever you think about “flavored” or “fruity” beers, put it aside. Many of these recipes were a product of necessity in the face of last year’s hops shortage as Castillo and Valvo turned to other ingredients to impart flavor. Rather than adding a flavored extract in the bottling phase, they incorporate real fruit early on in the brewing process. If this beer were an ice cream sundae, the fruit would be like the vanilla bean in the ice cream, not the saccharin cherry on top. (The Ginger Pale Ale, incidentally, is rumored to make an excellent float.) These are complex beers that have so much to give, you’ll find yourself holding your swig in your mouth, not swallowing, as the flavors evolve across your tongue.

The minimal dose of hops and savory notes make these real “food” beers that are easy to pair, and just as the duo hoped, Trade Route’s offerings have been attractive to restaurants. They’re on tap at Fremont’s venerable Chiso/Kappo, Shiku in Ballard and Wasabi Bistro. They were recently the stars of a five-course Brewer’s Dinner at Matt’s in Market, where they were paired with the likes of piquillo-pepper-stuffed Dungeness crab brandade. If you want to try it out with creations from your own kitchen, it’s sold in twenty-two-ounce bottles at Whole Foods, Top Foods, Iwajimaya and specialty beer stores like Bottleworks, The Beer Authority and Full Throttle Bottle.

Early this year, they were forced to change the original name of the brewery from Laughing Buddha to Trade Route. An Australian brewery called Lucky Drink Company, which sells beer in a Buddha-shaped bottle and has techno music playing on its Web site, came after them for trademark infringement. Castillo didn’t think that was very Zen of them, but as both he and Valvo are practicing Buddhists, they decided to go with the flow.

“It’s a mass produced beer that relies on a catchy looking bottle, and we didn’t want to be associated with it,” he said. “Changing our name goes along with the Buddhist mentality anyway—of non-attachment.”

In the end, Castillo thinks “Trade Route” better captures what they’re trying to do—incorporate a lot of ingredients from different regions of the world. They would like to continue to expand on that idea with some near-future forays into the worlds of coffee, mocha and Moroccan spices. They want to find their way into more restaurants, stay small, stay craft, keep innovating, and have you drink so much of their beer that you laugh your ass off. But if that happens, you don’t have to thank them. Thank the Buddha.