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BELLINGHAM, WA (MyBellinghamNow.com) – Looking for a cozy spot to scheme your next outdoor excursion? Or catch up with old friends? What about read a thriller or fantasy novel in a little nook with a large pint of ale?
When Tony Luciano and then co-owner Jack Fluger decided to open Stone’s Throw Brewery Company in Fairhaven, the vision of various spots to find your niche was at the forefront of Luciano’s mind. There are many surprises in the corners of the downtown Fairhaven brewery.
Going back nearly 15 years, the team behind Stone’s Throw purchased the home on Larrabee Avenue with the intent of turning the two-story, two-bedroom building with a detached garage into a space fit for their vision.
“We had an architect and an engineer and Jack and myself, and we would sit and make chicken wings on the back porch and talk about ‘What are our limiting factors?'” Luciano said. He added that the structural reasons came down to permitting requirements with the city of Bellingham.
Luciano with his wife and business partner Nadine van Niekerk lived in the house when they first purchased it. Over the course of the next couple years, Stone’s Throw founders slowly but surely turned it into the business we know today.
Deciding to brew on-site made for some interesting challenges for the team. Shipping containers became one such solution for a space problem.
The tradeoff with using shipping containers instead of building structures with plaster, wood and insulation meant less cost for materials but more in engineering and labor. Stone’s Throw touts their use of the metal containers for their business as one of the first in the city.
The five shipping containers are primarily used for brewing and storage. The bathrooms are housed in two of the shipping containers however.
Luciano and van Niekerk met through their background in wilderness therapy over two decades ago and wanted to open a brewery at the time, considering Oregon as well as van Niekerk’s birth country of South Africa as prospective options. They landed on Bellingham, where Luciano had attended Western Washington University several years before.
The brewery opened in April 2015 and Luciano bought Fluger out in 2021. Now, van Niekerk is the business partner that handles paperwork while Luciano acts as the brewmaster.
When it comes to Stone’s Throw’s community events, their calendar is stacked. But Luciano and van Niekerk didn’t plan that out, at least not completely.
People will approach Stone’s Throw about hosting an event, big or small, and the quantity of activities has built up to be worthy of a community calendar on the wall of the taproom.
“Stone’s Throw has become this anchor point because we are so open, and somebody has an idea. ‘Hey, can we do this here?’ ‘Sure, you can bring your stitching and sewing club here,’ or the people playing darts. They’re like, ‘Can we put up a dartboard?’ ‘Sure, put up a dartboard.’ And, so it is. We’re not this box that has our program. It is the people bringing the program to us, and they want to hang out.” – Tony Luciano
Though van Niekerk and Luciano don’t consider themselves to be a mainstay of the community, their space is very much a part of the Bellingham beer scene, known for helping each other out, both for convenience and for neighborly consideration.
Van Niekerk recalled how, years ago, Stone’s Throw wanted to throw a block party in Fairhaven reminiscent of Boundary Bay’s parties. They reached out to Boundary in hopes of learning a few tips.
“[Boundary] sent their event and marketing manager, who’s now become a really good friend to us, and they’re like, ‘Yep, go and give them advice.’ So she sat down with us, explained how they ran their big events, who we had to contact at the city, how we went about applying for permits, etc.” she said.
“Not only did they send an employee to give us advice, then on the day of the event, they showed up with equipment that we didn’t have, fencing and tables and two staff to help us set it up,” she continued.
While not the largest brewer in town, Stone’s Throw produces their fair share of in-house beverages. Between five flagship recipes and roughly 20 overall different brews per year, the brewery stays busy. They don’t sell cans or kegs of their product in any stores, which offers the team some options when it comes to specialized products.
Stone’s Throw participates like many local breweries in the fresh hop tradition in the late summer to early fall. When they do it, however, they don’t necessarily brew from a crop where they know the variety, making for a mystery brew.
“People come bring their hops from all over the county, and we pick them,” Luciano said. “We can identify some. We can’t identify some. So that’s kind of a wild thing.”
Luciano says that making mystery brews like this isn’t a commercially responsible choice as the chance of making a batch that tastes differently than expected is too high.
But being able to offer local growers the opportunity to taste the fruits of their labor is something that Luciano and his team enjoy providing.
Creating a community gathering space is part of the philosophy at Stone’s Throw, where music acts perform three nights a week and there are events for the majority of their days. This event venue reality surprised the married couple.
“I didn’t realize I was going to be a music venue, or people want to have their wedding reception party here and stuff like that,” Luciano said.
Along with being a spot for CSA farm box drop offs and hosting a geocache location, community members will bring objects they want to have displayed at the establishment because, as Luciano puts it, “it’s definitely the people that show up that make it special.”
“I think we’ve built something here that is beyond us in terms of people come here to see who else is here,” she said. “[I want to be] able to say that I have contributed to the community and [helped] to make it a better place.”
We are Whatcom is a weekly column featuring Whatcom County residents making a positive impact on the community. To submit a Whatcom County resident to be featured, click here.