Meet-up at the malt shop

Palouse Pint is ready to start putting its malt where your mouth is tomorrow night.

After months of preparation , the first beers (and a whiskey) made with locally grown and produced malted barley will pour in a showcase event from 6 to 9 p.m. at Palouse Pint’s Spokane Business and Industrial Park facility in the Valley.

Tickets are $40 (available online at the above link), with proceeds benefiting Second Harvest Inland Northwest .

“We’ve been talking about this since December, or even November,” says Dan Jackson of LINC Foods , the local farmer co-op that owns the operation.

Palouse Pint’s initial malts are made with grains grown by co-op member Joseph’s Grainery in Colfax.

The first 5-ton batch was released as an English pale, but subsequent testing showed it didn’t reach the required kilning temperature and turned out to be a lighter pilsner malt.

A few breweries did what are billed as English-style beers with it based on the early label, including an IPA by Perry Street, a pale ale from Hopped Up and a mild “with a bit of a twist” by Young Buck.

The malt’s character will be particularly prominent in a pair of SMaSH (single malt and single hop) ales: one from Black Label and Badass Backyard brewed with fruity, piney, spicy Cleopatra hops, and another by Orlison with floral, herbal Tradition.

Big Barn brewed a Farm Mosaic IPA, while No-Li brings a California common (think Anchor Steam).

And Bellwether’s Thomas Croskrey, who specializes in Old World styles, has a pair of non-hopped gruits: one with yarrow, lavender, sage and grains of paradise, and a braggot (honey) version with chamomile, sage, lemon verbena, mugwort, allspice, juniper berries and coriander.

Along with the beers, Tinbender Craft Distillery did a speed-aged single-malt white whiskey.

In addition to the liquid goodness, you’ll be able to sample malt in its raw form: the original pilsner batch, another attempt at an English pale (which is awaiting test results) and a third batch made with soft white wheat instead of the usual barley.

“That should be kind of fun, especially if someone’s a brewer,” Jackson said.

But that’s not all you’ll get to eat. Clover’s Travis Dickinson and Culture Breads’ Shaun Thompson Duffy are preparing a menu including a pig roast and both pretzel rolls and tortillas made with Palouse Pint malt. The tortillas will be fried on the spot as part of a taco bar that will feature produce exclusively from LINC growers.