Holy Mountain Brewing Co. is not just a nod to Mount Rainier, the ominous holy mountain that looms over Seattle—it’s also the name of an album by the band Sleep, a favorite of the brewery’s heavy metal–loving owners, who met working at Schooner EXACT Brewing (Seattle). “I was running the sales program and Colin Lenfesty was a brewer,” says Co-owner Mike Murphy. “The experience and connections Colin and I had in the local beer community allowed us to promote the [Holy Mountain] brand and build quite a bit of local buzz before we even signed a lease.”
That lease was signed on a building across the street from the Southwest Queen Acre Greenbelt in downtown Seattle. The space is bright and clean and blasts metal music.
Old World meets New on Holy Mountain’s tap list, where the beer styles range from pale ale to mixed-fermentation saisons and barrel-aged farmhouse ales. “Barrels, Brett, and hops,” says Murphy about the brewery’s eclectic beer list. Almost always on that list is Holy Mountain’s house pale ale, Kiln & Cone: a bold, clean-drinking American pale ale liberally hopped with rotating hops varieties. “We don’t make any one beer year-round, though,” he says. “We make a wide range of wood-influenced and mixed-culture beers, along with rotating hops-forward clean beers instead.”