Gray Winds is our signature series of Fruited Blends. The name alludes to what we lovingly/despairingly call the dark season here in the Pacific Northwest. This series honors the transformations that occur slowly and in the darkness.

Created to encapsulate unique moments in time, these offerings bring the flavors and aromas of seasons past into the present, so you can enjoy them now and in the future. 

GW #7 – Painted Sunlight 

The 2024 Painted Sunlight blend features loads (as in loooaaads) of Collins Family Nectarines, refermented with a blend of young and oak aged wild ale.

The result is a bright stonefruit custard topped with peach rings and a side of marzipan.

750ml bottle
6.3% abv

GW #6 – Companion

When conceiving our first ever Gray Winds bottling back in 2022, Howard drew inspiration from the smells, sensations, and flavors of our annual Strawberry picking adventures. Fast forward two years and we are bringing back the Strawberries.

For this latest Gray Winds beer, we refermented delicate ripe strawberries from Munoz Berry Farms on a blend of young and oak aged saison.

Since Yarrow is a companion plant often found alongside Strawberries, we introduced the blend to Yarrow flowers and leaves upon bottling. We believe they make for great flavor companions too.

GW #5 – Painted Sunlight 2023

2023 Painted Sunlight features delightfully plump organic peaches from Winding Road Farm in Everson, WA. These are refermented with our barrel stock of wild ale and when ready, joined forces with some Madeleine Angevine grapes and pomace from our friends at Barmann Cellars.

The result is a breezy overripe peach bellini party that finishes with a crisp minerale finale.

750ml bottle
5.7% abv

GW #4 – Sun Tracker

Sun Tracker is a blend of aged saisons refermented on Honey Punch Pluots, Shiro Plums, and conditioned on Lavender flowers. Sun Tracker alludes to the motion of plants in response to the direction of the sun. This movement is known as heliotropism.

This beer reminds us of strawberry popsicles. Walking through summer gardens. Brushing up against lavender shrubs. And also, drinking gin cocktails.

750ml bottle
6.7% abv

GW #3 – Painted Sunlight

Painted Sunlight is a blend of oak fermented gold ale and aged saisons that has been refermented on super ripe Saturn Peaches and White Pearl Nectarines.

During one of my first visits to the Northwest, I ate a peach for the first time. Now I’d had countless peaches in my life up until then but I had never really had a peach. This fuzzy beaut was at peak ripeness and biting into it was like a custardy stone fruit juice’splosion. Peach juice was on my face, running down my arm and made a sticky mess. It was glorious, a little obscene, and like how our 4 year old eats everything.

Painted Sunlight is inspired by this formative experience and starts with a soft creamy texture and is scented with peach perfume and warming spices. The acidity is bright and balanced along with peach rings and a side of marzipan.

750 ml bottle
5.2% abv

GW #2 – Bon Voyage

Bon Voyage uses A LOT of Regina and Montmorency cherries from Evans Family Fruit located in Hood River. Informed by traditional Lambic brewing methods but prepared méthode untraditionelle, the cherries were refermented on our oldest barrel fermented wild ale.

Brewed with a generous portion of raw wheat and aged hops, we partially cooled the wort in kettle before letting it come to room temp while slowly being influenced by the microbe magic in our brewery. Only then did we transfer the wort to the barrel, pitched our Hildgard and the Funky Bunch house culture and sent Bon Voyage on its long fermenting journey. The final blend introduces a young saison for freshness and fermentable sugars for conditioning.

Bon Voyage expresses rich cherry aromatics, cassia bark, rose, spiced pie crust, tame acid, and a cool damp cave.

750ml bottle
5.6% abv

GW # 1 – Strawberry

Young saison refermented on local Picha Farm Strawberries then blended with our barrel fermented gold ale. Rested in bottle with Yarrow from Duvall Herb Farm and Raw Wildflower Honey. Ripe Strawberry fields with a Yarrow companion and a hint of downwind pasture.

Gray Winds alludes to what we lovingly/despairingly call the dark season here in the Pacific Northwest. These annual inward journeys often result in transformations within the darkness and inspire reflections on the past and hopeful spells for the future. Gray Winds is our series of fruited blends and cofermentations that aspires to capture specific moments in time from seasons past and present them to the future.

750ml bottle
4.5% abv

Flowerful is our Biere de Coupage series. Expect a nuanced balanced blend with depth and drinkability that shifts with each iteration.  

Biere de Coupage is an old brewing technique that blends (or cuts) a young beer with an aged beer to provide the best characteristics of each. Flowerful is informed by these techniques and interpreted through our Hildegard lens. Locally foraged and grown botanicals are infused and blended with our saisons and palette of barrel aged stock. 

GRIGGS ’24 – Flowerful #6

Griggs is our sweet, well lived/loved neighbor who reached out to see if we could make use of some beautiful Cascade hops back in 2023. These storied hops have made their way into a now famous Fremont brewery’s first fresh hop beer many years ago. “A little brewery down the street” as Griggs likes to say with a twinkle in his eye.

This is our second time brewing with Griggs’ hops. Fresh Hops, Meadowsweet, and Lemon Verbena. 

So rather than a fading hop character, we think the extra time has treated Griggs well and he has been transformed into something greater than the sum of its parts.

The 2024 Griggs reminds us of faintly funky orange rinds, floral perfumes, and herbal spices.

5.2% abv
750ml bottle

SUMAC – Flowerful #5

“Sumac” is a blend of well aged Saisons that has been further aged on locally gathered Staghorn Sumac (provided by some sweet Hildegard friends), Calendula, and Chamomile flowers. Some beers reveal their direction early on, but Sumac took its sweet ass time on a scenic route. We believe she was worth the wait. 

The extended maturation has resulted in a gentle beer that presents notes of summery dusty earth, dried flowers, and the nostalgia of sipping strawberry lemonade from your neighborhood stand

750ml bottle
5.2% ABV

Griggs – Flowerful #4

Griggs is our sweet, well lived/loved neighbor who reached out to see if we could make use of some beautiful Cascade hops. He grows these every year and usually sends them to his son to brew with.  Fortunately for us, his son was unable to use them this year and he reached out to us. These storied hops have made their way into a now famous Fremont brewery’s first fresh hop beer many years ago. “A little brewery down the street” as Griggs likes to say with a twinkle in his eye.

A fresh hop farmhouse ale conditioned with orange peel and calendula flowers. Orangcot (Orange + Apricot) fruit with some dusty sandalwood.

4.9% abv
750ml boyar

Flowerful #3 – Lupo Bianco

A hop forward saison and a bit of well matured barrel beer got together for a rest of medium length to get familiar with one another. It was then dry hopped with Cashmere and Idaho 7 Lupomax and Chamomile flowers. The results are of a soft tropical floral funk and zests of citrus melange on top of a fluffy bottom.

6.1% abv
750ml bottle

Flowerful #2 – Geranium

A barrel fermented Golden Ale blended with a lil saison and Geranium* flowers + a wink of tropical hops. We think it’s like star fruit custard topped with grapefruit flower zest and fresh pine drizzle… but you tell us (- ‿ ◦)

75cl(4.0% abv)
*from our garden

Flowerful #1 – Calendula

Well aged Calendula Saison blended with our Lux Belgian Pale. For our Calendula Saison, both fresh and dried flowers harvested from our garden, were added throughout the fermentation to capture and layer the floral complexities of this bright friend. The result is a fluffy springtime dry citrus marmalade and tastes like the color orange.

750ml bottle
3.9% abv

Tula is our ongoing expression of rustic saisons brewed simply with all Pacific Northwest ingredients using traditional processes and our house saison culture. Made with a bow towards the classic saisons of the French Belgian borderlands.

Tula #6

This bottling of our classic saison reminds us of hayfields and the first moments of rainfall. A clean bitterness with a soft spice presence from fermentation, Tula saison is a balanced and effervescent beer that pairs well with life.

Tula #3

So we have a friend who is a pretty savvy soup person. For privacy concerns, let’s call him Schm-Josh. He worked a long time at a brewery that used to not be corporate but then pivoted to being pretty corporate. During his going away party his work homies loaded a 44lb box of 9 year old whole leaf cascade hops in his car that he’d been saving in cold storage for one of those “lets do that this year” projects that was never the right year.

Schm-Josh then asked us “hey do you want 44 lbs of some old ass hops?” We were all “well slap my hop sack and call me Hildy, we’ll never say no to a 9 year old sackof hops!” Upon unsealing the bag, we were expecting a sweaty cheesy funkfest but were instead met with light grassy green tea and citrus.

Pre-industrialization farmhouse brewers typically just used what was on hand, including whatever hops they had. These hops were definitely not stored under ideal conditions and were a bit neglected but brought a certain intangible rustic character to their brews.

Embracing the “use what we got” philosophy, our third batch of Tula Saison uses these beautiful old Cascade hops and Climate Select Malt from Skagit Valley Malting. The results are a classic saison with a pleasing grass and floral hop character that finishes with a citrus spice from our house saison yeast. This iteration of Tula Saison reminds us of the classic saisons that have inspired us through the years.

750ml bottle
5.7% abv

Tula #2

With the cold snap we experienced back in November, our little brewery got cold. As all of our ferments slowed to a crawl, we had to get creative in order to brew a saison to our liking. Brewing seasonally doesn’t only mean tangible ingredients, it means treating time and temperature as ingredients as well.

With that in mind we set out to create our second batch of our Tula Saison. We used our house saison yeast for the first half of the fermentation and an expressive lager yeast for the second half and let it lager for 4 weeks.

The results are a hoppy spring saison of lime zest crodino with a rich and spicy rustic finish.

750ml bottle
5.7% abv

Tula #1

Our first brew at Hildegard is a deep bow towards the classic saisons of the French Belgium borderlands.  Tula is our ongoing expression of rustic saisons brewed simply with all Pacific Northwest ingredients using traditional processes and our house saison culture.  Open fermented with generous use of noble hops; it’s dry, effervescent, with lemon rind and peppery herb crackers.