Established: January 2007
2016 Brewery Production: 3 barrels • 6 kegs • 744 pints
McMenamins ales, including the pub's namesake Spartesian Ale (first conceived by former Washington Brewery Manager Tony Balzola) are sporadically brewed onsite in this, the most diminutive of McMenamin Breweries, and using the Spar's legendary Artesian water!
Want to try a beer made with 3,330-year-old artesian well water (give or take 50 years)? Then you’ve come to the right place. Our beer is brewed onsite, and the water comes from the artesian well bubbling away in the basement!
According to one hydrogeologist, the water is from an aquifer called the Tumwater Sand of the Holocene Epoch, a deposit of the Deschutes River (in Wa., not Ore.). The sand was deposited as the Deschutes re-established its channel after the last glacier withdrew from the Puget Sound, about 12,000 years ago – all of which makes for one historic pint of beer.