Barley to Brewery Skagit Valley Bicycle Tour

Gain an in-depth look at the world of craft brewing while tasting your way around one of the most scenic bicycle routes in the Pacific NW. From visiting barley and hop farms, making malt with the pros, and taking a behind-the-scenes look at some of our best local breweries, to enjoying locally sourced meals and award-winning Ales, for the aspiring and expert beer aficionados alike, this is one tour you will not want to miss!

• A full-day bike tour that follows barley and hops from the seed all the way to the glass!
• Behind the scenes view of brewing, fermenting & bottling craft beers
• Bike Skagit County’s most scenic trails & byways.
• Tour an organic hop farm in full bloom.
• Enjoy a catered dinner and spirit tasting at Terramar Brewstillery
• Taste hyper-local beer brewed from the farms you visit!
• Tour Skagit Valley Malting and follow the journey barley makes to become award-winning brews and spirits at two unique local micro-breweries.
• Enjoy a scrumptious locally-sourced picnic lunch while tasting ales brewed with native yeast at Garden Path Fermentation.
• Light snacks and refreshments along the way.
• Experienced guides & fun-loving facilitators

Prefer to set up this trip as a private group tour on the dates of your choice? Call us at 360-966-4059 or visit our custom trip page HERE.

• Picnic lunch and Light Snacks
• Catered Dinner at Terramar Brewstillery
• Behind the scenes tours at Skagit Valley Malting and two different breweries in Skagit county
• Visits to an organic hop farm and commercial barley production
• Two experienced guides throughout the trip
• Chaser vehicle and bike tune-ups when needed
• Downloadable Photo Album of Trip to Cherish Priceless Memories

You will need a bicycle and helmet, proof of identification (21+ only), a mask, an openness to learning, and a sense of adventure!

For participants in need of a bike/helmet, we can coordinate rentals with a local shop (e-bicycle options available). Email BikeNW@expint.org for details.

This full-day Barley to Brewery journey allows participants to explore what makes Skagit Valley such a spectacular place to call home. From visiting barley and hop fields to exploring nearly every aspect of brewing beer, including growing and malting barley/hops, brewing, fermenting, aging, and blending the final product. The Barley to Brewery tour highlights some of the special characteristics of this region that make it one of the few places on earth where all of the ingredients needed to craft delicious beer can be grown, processed, and brewed within just a few square miles. This special opportunity is arranged to maximize your fun and enjoyment while deepening your appreciation for the connections and collaborative partnerships that are working to preserve the future of the Skagit Valley.

The tour begins at 9:00 am at Blanchard Mountain Farm in Bow, WA. Participants will park their vehicles in a private lot. Blanchard Mountain Farm owners, Linda and Walter, will lead a tour of their greenhouses and introduce us to the vegetables, herbs and native plants they grow. Blanchard Mountain supplies Terramar Brewstillery with herbs for their craft cocktails and vegetables for their pizzas, so you get to see growing what you will later eat for dinner! After the tour, the biking starts with a gentle 45 minute ride through the quaint town of Edison heading south along the Farm to Market road to the Port of Skagit, a one of a kind industrial district home to the Washington State University Bread Lab, Skagit Valley Malting, Chuckanut Brewery, and Garden Path Fermentation.

Skagit Valley Malting (SVM) is the the region’s only small-batch custom malting operation. The malts produced here provide the basis of award-winning ales for iconic PNW breweries such as Garden Path Fermentation, Fremont Brewery, and Pike Brewing in Seattle. After taking a behind-the-scenes tour at SVM, we will visit Garden Path Fermentation, a hyper-local brewery that specializes in regional ingredients, native yeast, and barrel-aged ales. Here we will enjoy a locally prepared picnic-style lunch and learn what makes brewing with native yeast and local ingredients so special.

After exploring this unique industrial park and filling our minds with a deeper appreciation for both the art of craft brewing and the many partnerships needed to make this iconic industry possible, we will hop back on our bikes for a relaxed thirty-minute ride to Hop Skagit, currently, the region’s only commercial hop farm. There we will learn about cultivating organic hops in the PNW before enjoying a relaxed bicycle ride back north along Padilla Bay.

Back in Edison, not far from where we began, we will enjoy a delicious wood-fired pizza dinner at spirit tasting at Terramar Brewstillery. While we wait for our food, we will receive a brewstillery tour and introduction to distillation from the owner. Thus we will complete our journey from seed to spirits!

After a gourmet dinner and tasting inside the brewery, we will ride just five minutes back to Blanchard Mountain Farm. There we can say farewell to our new friends before parting ways.

For information on additional opportunities during your visit to the Skagit Valley, check out Visit Skagit Valley.

We are committed to supporting our local community – food for our programs is sourced from local providers and sustainable producers.

Light snacks and refreshments are always on hand, just ask your friendly guide if you are hungry or run out of water.

Please let us know if you have any dietary restrictions on your registration and we will do our best to accommodate your needs.

Lunch

A pre-packaged picnic lunch for the program is included and will be prepared fresh to order on the day of the program by local licensed food providers. After program registration and 30 days before trip start date, participants will receive a menu from which to select food preferences for meals.

Dinner

A Farm to Table catered dinner for the program is provided at Terramar Brewstillery. As a special inclusion with this tour, participants will be able to enjoy a tasting flight of Terramar’s signature line of artisan spirits, brewed and distilled entirely from malted barley grown and processed in the Skagit Valley.

To reserve your Bike Northwest tour, please take a moment to fill out the reservation form by clicking the button below.

We will confirm all reservations via e-mail or phone within 24 to 48 hours. No reservation is valid without our confirmation.

• $100 (per person) trip deposit: due upon booking your reservation.
• Full payment: due no later than 30 days before trip date.  (A reminder email will be sent to you 60 days before trip date.)
• Cancellations made more than 30 days before your trip date are refunded in full, minus the deposit, or you can request a credit voucher for the full value of your trip toward a future EI trip.
• Cancellations made fewer than 30 days before the trip date will receive a credit voucher for the full value of the trip toward a future EI trip.
• If Experience International is forced to cancel the event for any reason (such as unsafe weather conditions) all participants will receive full credit toward a future trip (or a refund if you are unable to use the credit).