At 11 a.m. on a Tuesday, more than 30 Marines walk into a brewpub. There is no punchline here. It’s just business at Valor Brewpub, which opened in the fall on Barracks Row in Southeast. This Friday, the restaurant will loosen its taps and pour its first in-house beers, just in time for the first of the summer’s weekly evening parades at the Marine Barracks.
Brewmaster Greg Maddrey, who served for four years as a hospital corpsman in the Navy, gestures at the Marines lunching together. “I’d like to think I’m serving them a different kind of medicine,” he says.
“Being across the street from the Marine Barracks also serves as inspiration,” says owner Gaynor Jablonski in an email. “We wanted to create a space that not only honored the Marines but also where they felt welcomed.” Jablonski also owns the Ugly Mug, a sports bar that moved upstairs to make space for Valor Brewpub.
Maddrey, who has been brewing beer professionally for 22 years, says he’s thrilled to work for the veterans-inspired brewpub. “How could I possibly be giving back to my Marines?” Maddrey asks. “I’m putting beer on the table.”
One striking feature of the brewpub is the brewing space. The brewing equipment is tucked into a small 500-square-foot room at the end of the bar. It has the appearance of a converted office filled with steel brewing tanks. Connected steel pipes run parallel above the bar and are anchored to the ceiling’s wooden joists. The hoses and piping link to four bright tanks positioned behind the bar.
Valor Brewpub’s system has eight taps that Maddrey plans to utilize, and he will consistently brew four beers year-round. They’ll have a growler program at the bar for take-home beer, and they’re also serving the beers on tap at their Union Market pop-up through July 1.
“I want to have four core beers, one to represent all four branches of the military,” says Maddrey. “We’ll have a Coast Guard beer, too. We won’t leave them out.”
The four core beers are Commandants Kolsch (Marines), Deep Dive Northwest IPA (Navy), Two Tank Vienna Lager (Army), and Ghostrider Porter (Air Force). Maddrey is also brewing a Schwarzbier and Hefeweizen for the spring and summer seasons. He uses a seven-barrel brewhouse and plans to brew twice a week, although that could change depending on sales and demand.
Since Valor Brewpub is veterans-inspired, Maddrey named everything accordingly. The Ghostrider Porter, for example, refers to a type of AC-130 gunship, a favorite plane of his. Maddrey labeled one of his brewing tanks the USS Solace, after the nation’s first hospital ship used in World War I.
Each beer is a solid iteration of a traditional style. The Ghostrider porter is an English-style porter with strong chocolate flavor and bits of licorice and cigar notes, according to Maddrey.
The Kolsch and lager are both lighter, slightly bready, and very drinkable. Drinkability is something that marks all the beers. They are low in bitterness and easy on the finish.
“I’ve gone away from bitter beers,” says Maddrey. “I like to accentuate the flavors instead.”
His best beer is the Deep Dive NW IPA, an unfiltered semi-tropical IPA that’s dry-hopped with Chinook, Cascade, and Amarillo hops but isn’t especially hazy. In a changing world of hard-to-define IPAs, it’s a refreshingly solid one: It’s slightly bitter, slightly tropical, slightly creamy, and flavorful.
“If I have one core value in brewing, it’s pursuit of balance,” says Maddrey.
Maddrey recognizes his beers’ recipes remain imperfect, as most beers do. “Remember, these are first runs,” he tells me. Maddrey is a meticulous note-taker, a jittery can’t-sit-soul who is constantly jumping up to check the boil, to review his notes, thinking about how he can tinker with the recipes to get them right, although he argues the beers are tinkering with him.
During our interview, Joshua Bryant, a Marine, leans over from his lunch. He has been drinking the IPA, too. The Marines are getting an early preview of the beer.
“I love this beer,” he tells Maddrey. “It’s full-bodied, well-balanced. It’s really great.”
Maddrey, who can’t sit still for long, jumps up again and disappears. This time he isn’t checking on the boil of his hefeweizen. He’s inspired by his patrons. He reappears with boot-like pitchers of Commandants Kolsch, the beer dedicated to the Marines. He drops one off at each table and thanks the patrons for their service. They drink it all up.
